[论文解读] What Happens After You Both Swipe Right: A Statistical Description of Mobile Dating Communications

Jennie Zhang, Taha Yasseri|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jul 12, 2016

Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior参考文献 4被引用 13

一句话总结

本研究分析了约200万条来自40万名单异性用户在一款热门应用上的移动约会对话元数据，采用统计建模方法研究沟通模式。研究发现，男性发起79%的消息，相互回应的对话通常在20条消息内促成电话号码交换，消息长度、延迟时间及对话持续时间均符合重尾分布，凸显了应用内约会互动中的关键性别与行为动态。

ABSTRACT

Mobile dating applications (MDAs) have skyrocketed in popularity in the last few years, with popular MDA Tinder alone matching 26 million pairs of users per day. In addition to becoming an influential part of modern dating culture, MDAs facilitate a unique form of mediated communication: dyadic mobile text messages between pairs of users who are not already acquainted. Furthermore, mobile dating has paved the way for analysis of these digital interactions via massive sets of data generated by the instant matching and messaging functions of its many platforms at an unprecedented scale. This paper looks at one of these sets of data: metadata of approximately two million conversations, containing 19 million messages, exchanged between 400,000 heterosexual users on an MDA. Through computational analysis methods, this study offers the very first large scale quantitative depiction of mobile dating as a whole. We report on differences in how heterosexual male and female users communicate with each other on MDAs, differences in behaviors of dyads of varying degrees of social separation, and factors leading to "success"-operationalized by the exchange of phone numbers between a match. For instance, we report that men initiate 79% of conversations--and while about half of the initial messages are responded to, conversations initiated by men are more likely to be reciprocated. We also report that the length of conversations, the waiting times, and the length of messages have fat-tailed distributions. That said, the majority of reciprocated conversations lead to a phone number exchange within the first 20 messages.

研究动机与目标

• 理解在约会应用上双方互赞后移动约会沟通的统计结构。
• 研究性别差异在消息发起、回复率及对话持续性方面的表现。
• 探讨用户间社会距离对沟通行为的影响。
• 识别与‘成功’相关的因素，操作化定义为交换电话号码。
• 提供匿名、应用中介的浪漫互动中二元沟通的大规模、数据驱动的描述。

提出的方法

• 收集并分析了在一款移动约会平台上，涉及40万对异性用户、约1900万条消息的约200万条对话元数据。
• 采用计算与统计分析方法，对消息时间、长度、互惠性及对话阶段进展进行建模。
• 应用生存分析与分布拟合方法，对消息间等待时间及对话持续时间进行建模。
• 根据社会距离（如同城、同校）对用户配对进行分类，评估其对沟通模式的影响。
• 将‘成功’操作化为交换电话号码，使用逻辑回归识别预测因素。
• 采用重尾分布建模（如幂律）对消息长度、消息间延迟及对话长度进行表征。

实验结果

研究问题

• RQ1 在移动约会互动中，男性与女性在发起和回应消息方面有何差异？
• RQ2 双方互赞后对话的典型发展轨迹是什么？其促成电话号码交换的速度如何？
• RQ3 社会因素（如地理位置接近或共享教育背景）如何影响沟通行为？
• RQ4 何种统计分布最能描述移动约会中消息长度、消息间延迟及对话持续时间？
• RQ5 哪些因素可预测对话是否会导致成功结果，即交换电话号码？

主要发现

• 男性发起了79%的所有对话，表明消息发起中存在显著的性别不对称性。
• 约一半的初始消息会得到回复，但男性发起的消息比女性发起的消息更可能获得回应。
• 大多数获得回应的对话在前20条消息内促成电话号码交换。
• 消息长度、消息间等待时间及对话持续时间均符合重尾分布，表明存在高度变异性与长尾特征。
• 促成电话号码交换的对话平均时长显著短于未促成交换的对话，表明早期终止现象普遍。
• 社会因素（如共享地理位置或教育背景）与更高的沟通持续率及互惠性相关。