Understanding The Impact Of Online Platforms On Human Society And Relationships: A Macro And Micro Perspective

Abstract

Online intermediaries along with IT-enabled features have ushered a new era for human society. It has affected all aspects of life from cultivating societal good to unintentionally causing societal challenges. Particularly, online platforms allow users to engage in online market places, where certain platforms allow men and women to connect with each other to pursue inter-personal exchanges. For example, online dating platforms allow singles looking for mates, find partners who agree to go for dates, where consensual intimate sexual experiences, like hook ups, can be a consequential outcome. In another situation, in online classified advertisement platforms, sex workers can illegally post ads to solicitate clients. The characteristics of online platforms along with their IT-enabled features have influenced this process. In this dissertation, I examine two questions looking at the interaction of IT artifacts on societal outcomes in a causal manner. First, I study the impact of entry of an online classified advertisement platform, Craigslist, on prostitution trends, which is an unintentional consequence of website operation. Second, the dissertation looks at the impact of an useful IT-enabled feature, the vote-identity revelation feature, on user engagement and matching outcomes in an online dating websites.