How online shopping reveals we're RACIST: Study finds that internet customers are less likely to buy from black sellers



A yearlong experiment by U.S.researchers examining the sales of iPods on Craigslist in the U.S. revealed racial bias



The study found black sellers receive 13 per cent fewer responses and 18 per cent fewer offers as well as less money for items



Buyers interacting with black sellers behaved in ways that suggested they trusted them less

Shoppers are more likely to buy a product advertised from an online classified advert if they think the seller is white, a new study suggests.



A year-long experiment examining the sales of iPods on Craigslist in the U.S. revealed racial bias as black sellers did worse than their white counterparts



The research showed that black sellers got fewer responses and lower offers for their iPods, while shoppers were also less attracted to white sellers with tattoos on their wrists.



The research showed that black sellers got fewer responses and lower offers for their iPods, while shoppers were also less attracted to white sellers with tattoos on their wrists. The researchers posted similar photos of the devices being held by white and black men

ONLINE SHOPPING STATISTICS

The experiment found black sellers receive 13 per cent fewer responses.



Black sellers got 18 per cent fewer offers and the money was 12 per cent lower than that offered to a white seller.



White sellers with wrist tattoos had similar results.



Buyers interacting with a black sellers were 17 per cent less likely to include their names, 44 per cent likely to agree to a proposed delivery by mail and 56 per cent more likely to express concern about making a long distance payment.

U.S. researchers posted 1,200 classified adverts in over 300 areas of the U.S. between March 2009 and March 2010, to test for racial bias among buyers by featuring similar photos of the iPod held by a man’s hand that was wither black, white or white with a wrist tattoo.



The experiment found black sellers receive 13 per cent fewer responses, 18 per cent fewer offers and the money offered was 12 per cent lower than that offered to a white seller.



White sellers with wrist tattoos were found to have similar responses and offers.



In the study, published in the Economic Journal of the Royal Economic Society, buyers interacting with black sellers behaved in ways that suggested they trusted them less.



They were 17 per cent less likely to include their names, 44 per cent likely to agree to a proposed delivery by mail and 56 per cent more likely to express concern about making a long distance payment.



Professor Jennifer Doleac, assistant professor of public policy and economics at Virginia University, said: ‘We were really struck to find as much racial discrimination as we did.’

In the study, buyers interacting with black sellers behaved in ways that suggested they trusted them less. They were 17 per cent less likely to include their names, 44 per cent likely to agree to a proposed delivery by mail and 56 per cent more likely to express concern about making a long distance payment

She conducted the study with Luke C.D. Stein, assistant professor of finance at Arizona State University, when they were both doctoral students in economics at Stanford University.



The researchers placed their adverts among over 300 local classified ad websites with an average of 15.7 other adverts for iPod Nanos listed the previous week.



In more crowded markets, with over 20 iPod adverts, black sellers received the same number of offers and equal best offers relative to white sellers.



But black sellers suffered ‘particularly poor’ outcomes in markets with fewer products on sale, where they received 23 per cent fewer offers and best offers were 12 per cent lower.



The news comes after a recent study that found a person's race is still a major factor when picking a partner. Research examining the preferences of a dating app found black men and women receive fewer responses to their messages (graphic of results, pictured)

The study also found that black sellers do worst in markets with high property crime rates and more racially segregated housing, suggesting that at least part of the explanation is ‘statistical discrimination’ - where race is used as a proxy for unobservable negative characteristics – rather than simply ‘taste-based’ discrimination, Professor Doleac explained.



However, ‘it is also possible that bias against black sellers is higher in high-crime or high-isolation markets,’ she said.



The researchers also found evidence that black sellers do better in markets with larger black populations, ‘suggesting that the disparities may be driven, in part, by buyers’ preference for own-race sellers,’ according to the study.

‘We believe our study isolates the effect of race on market outcomes more convincingly than previous studies and provides some insight into why buyers are discriminating,’ Professor Doleac said.

The news comes after a recent study that found a person’s race is still a major factor when picking a partner.



Research examining the preferences of Facebook dating app, Are You Interested (AYI) found black men and women receive fewer responses to their messages.



It also found that men from all different races prefer a partner of another race over their own.

racial dating



The study found men respond to women around there times more often than women reply to men's messages and that the women studied were mostly drawn to white men

