Events

Professor Anandasivam Gopal
Head, Division of Information Technology and Operations Management
President’s Chair in Information Systems and Innovation
Nanyang Business School-Division of Information Technology & Operations Management
Nanyang Technological University

The talk will briefly outline the context of online matrimonial matching platforms as a service and discuss their structure as well as the opportunities that they provide to study platform-related questions of interest. In addition, two ongoing research projects pertaining to matrimonial matching will be briefly discussed. The first one pertains to the effect of hate crimes in the US to marriage-market activity, captured through activity on matrimonial matching platforms. We argue, and show, that hate crimes aimed at Indian immigrants in the US have a chilling effect on matrimonial interest directed to individuals from India located in the US. This effect can negatively influence immigration to the US through the route of marriage, with potentially negative policy implications for certain industry segments in the US. The second paper addresses the question of caste-based endogamy in the Indian matrimonial context. Using detailed data from a large-scale matrimonial matching platform in India, we show that “platformization” can help address the strangle-hold of caste-based endogamy that has long characterized Indian marriages. We study how signaling non-endogamous preferences can lead to positive outcomes at early stages of matrimonial search. The talk will also discuss opportunities for new research within the interesting and novel context of matrimonial matching platforms, serving as a counterpoint to the more commonly observed dating platforms within IS and OM research.