title: Extracting multistage screening rules from online dating activity data.
abstract: This paper presents a statistical framework for harnessing online activity data to better understand how people make decisions. Building on insights from cognitive science and decision theory, we develop a discrete choice model that allows for exploratory behavior and multiple stages of decision making, with different rules enacted at each stage. Critically, the approach can identify if and when people invoke noncompensatory screeners that eliminate large swaths of alternatives from detailed consideration. The model is estimated using deidentified activity data on 1.1 million browsing and writing decisions observed on an online dating site. We find that mate seekers enact screeners ("deal breakers") that encode acceptability cutoffs. A nonparametric account of heterogeneity reveals that, even after controlling for a host of observable attributes, mate evaluation differs across decision stages as well as across identified groupings of men and women. Our statistical framework can be widely applied in analyzing large-scale data on multistage choices, which typify searches for "big ticket" items.
authors: Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; ebruch@umich.edu.
authors: Elizabeth
authors: E
authors: Bruch
authors: Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; Department of Statistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109;
authors: Fred
authors: F
authors: Feinberg
authors: Department of Management and Marketing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
authors: Kee Yeun
authors: KY
authors: Lee
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior; D003657:Decision Making; D003662:Decision Theory; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage / Q000523:psychology; D060756:Social Networking
keywords: choice modeling; computational social science; mate selection; noncompensatory behavior