Creator/Principal investigator(s)
Emma von Essen - Stockholm University, Department of Economics
Description
Theoretical and empirical work highlight the importance of trust and reciprocity in economic exchange. Online reputational feedback systems are crucial in generating trust and this is essential for economic success. Discrimination in feedback may, therefore, create inequality in the long run. We expect competition and selection to eradicate price discrimination and we, therefore, focus on discrimination in feedback. In addition, we look at discrimination and anonymity. Anonymity is a common feature online and is sometimes used as a strategy to circumvent discrimination. We construct a field experiment on eBay, where half of the sellers disclose their names in their usernames while the other half do not. eBay, however, automatically communicates the seller’s names to the buyer after the auction has ended. We find discrimination in feedback, but it only occurs when sellers had anonymous usernames, suggesting that anonymity as a fairness strategy might backfire.
Purpose:
Explore discrimination by gender and foreignness in buyer feedback online and how user anonymity can affect this possible dis
Language
English
Swedish
Research principal
Ethics Review
Stockholm - Ref. 2011/1328-31
Unit of analysis
Population
Buyers on Swedish eBay
Time Method
Study design
Experimental study
Sampling procedure
Time period(s) investigated
2012-04-30 – 2012-08-30
Geographic spread
Geographic location: Sweden
Research area
ECONOMICS
(CESSDA Topic Classification)
Social Sciences
(The Swedish standard of fields of research 2011)
Keywords
A matter of transient anonymity: Discrimination by gender and foreignness in online auctions, in von Essen, E. (2013). Understanding unequal outcomes: Studies on gender, social status and foreignness (Doctoral dissertation, Department of Economics, Stockholm University).
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Description
We construct a field experiment on eBay, where half of the sellers disclose their names in their usernames while the other half do not. eBay, however, automatically communicates the seller’s names to the buyer after the auction has ended. The seller names signal a combination of gender and foreignness (from a stereotypical Swedish perspective). We manually collected the data.Version 1.0
https://doi.org/10.5878/0w40-2q34
Citation
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Data format / data structure
Numeric
Creator/Principal investigator(s)
Emma von Essen - Stockholm University, Department of Economics
Time period(s) investigated
2012-04-30 – 2012-08-30
Variables
40