On the Internet you can be anyone: An experiment on strategic avatar choice in online marketplaces
通过实验室实验，研究了在线市场中卖家头像对交易行为的影响，发现真实头像能提高卖家可信度，但可自由选择头像时此效应消失，且男性更倾向使用女性头像。
In order to decrease social distance and increase trust on their platforms, many online marketplaces allow traders to be represented by profile pictures or avatars. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate whether the presence of seller avatars affects trading behavior in a market. We contrast markets without avatars with markets where avatars genuinely represent traders and markets where avatars can be freely changed at any time and may thus be chosen strategically. At the aggregate level, we find that the presence of genuine avatars increases the trustworthiness of sellers, but that this effect is undone when avatars can be chosen strategically. We do not detect aggregate effects on buyers’ trusting choices. Female avatars are more trusted, and correspondingly in the treatment with free avatar choice men are more likely to represent themselves with a female avatar than vice versa.