IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/applec/v51y2019i57p6100-6112.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sexual economic theory & the human mating market

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Whyte
  • Robert C. Brooks
  • Benno Torgler

Abstract

In this study, we apply economic principles to the heterosexual human mating market using data on the socio-demographics, biology, attractiveness, sexual behaviour, and reproductive history of 3,261 Australian online dating participants. More specifically, by using survey participants attractiveness ratings as a proxy for market value, we are able to quantitatively explore theories of sexual economics (SET), which conceptualizes sexual access as an economic resource supplied by women in the human mating market. Our study tests this theory further by incorporating heterosexual market substitutes (namely, 953 bisexual and pansexual individuals) to more accurately integrate the relevant supply and demand forces impacting market value and the commodity of sexual access. We find not only that bisexual and pansexual women (but not men) enjoy a market premium (7.3% higher; p

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Whyte & Robert C. Brooks & Benno Torgler, 2019. "Sexual economic theory & the human mating market," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(57), pages 6100-6112, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:51:y:2019:i:57:p:6100-6112
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1650886
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2019.1650886
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00036846.2019.1650886?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stephen Whyte & Robert C Brooks & Ho Fai Chan & Benno Torgler, 2021. "Sex differences in sexual attraction for aesthetics, resources and personality across age," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(5), pages 1-19, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:51:y:2019:i:57:p:6100-6112. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RAEC20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.