Dr. JaeHwuen Jung, Assistant Professor at Temple University presenting "The secret to finding love: A field experiment of choice structure in online dating platform"

Online matching platforms require new approaches to market design since firms can now control many aspects of search and interaction process through various IT-enabled features. While choice structure—the size of choice set and the number of choices a platform offers to its customers—is one of the key design features of online matching platforms, its impact on engagement and matching outcomes remains unclear. In this study, we examine the effect of different choice structures on the number of choices and matches on the platform by conducting a randomized field experiment in collaboration with an online dating platform. Specifically, we design four treatment groups with different choice structures where users can only interact with other users in the same group, select users who are in a similar age range and live in same geographical location, and randomly assign them to each treatment group. We find that providing higher choice capacities to male and female users have different effect on choice behaviors and matching outcomes. Moreover, while increasing the choice capacity of male users yields the highest number of choices, increasing the choice capacity of female users is the most effective way to increase matching outcomes. Structural analysis further reveals the underlying mechanisms of choice behavior and matching results, suggesting that users significantly decrease the number of choices after receiving a choice from other users and the effect of the choice capacity on matching outcomes differs by gender. We further provide counterfactual analysis that explores optimal choice structure design depending on the gender ratio of the online dating platform.

Presenter’s brief bio:

JaeHwuen Jung (Jae) is an assistant professor of Management Information Systems at Fox School of Business, Temple University. The unifying theme of his research is to causally examine the impact of new technology channels, digital platforms, and technology-enabled features on user behavior and firms’ outcomes. Specifically, he studies social influence at the mechanism level by drawing on theories from economics and social psychology. His recent papers address research questions including (1) how can firms optimally design referral programs to increase social contagion and word-of-mouth, (2) how mobile app adoption impacts user behavior and outcomes and increases word-of-mouth for the firm, and (3) how social learning impacts user’s co-creation and engagement. Jae uses an interdisciplinary multi-method approach to understand the underlying mechanisms at work that support the causal inference.

He has received a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota and holds an M.S in Management Engineering and B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Before joining the Ph.D program, Jae worked for 6.5 years as an IT application architect, serving in many capacities relating to project management, IT systems integration, and legacy systems migration.

Learn more about Dr. Jung.