The mediation of matchmaking: a comparative study of gender and generational preference in online dating websites and offline blind date markets in Chengdu

Hannah Rose Kirk and Shriyam Gupta

图片来源：baidu.com

Online dating has modernized traditional partner search methods, allowing individuals to seek a partner that aligns with their preferences for attributes such as age, height, location, or education. Yet traditional forms of partner selection still exist, with continued parental involvement in the matching process. In this paper, we exploit different matchmaking methods with varying degrees of youth autonomy versus parental involvement. We use a unique dataset collected in Chengdu, China, where profiles from the blind date market (n = 158) capture parental preferences and profiles from an online dating website (n = 500) capture individual preferences. Regarding gender, we find that men generally display a desire for women younger, shorter, and less educated than themselves, while women desire older and taller men of the same education as themselves. With regards to parental influences, we find parents specify a narrower range of accepted partner attributes. Further, we find an interaction effect between gender and generational influences: the preferences of parents advertising their daughters on the blind date market show a greater discrepancy in attribute preferences to the online daters than parents advertising their sons.

Since the advent of the reform and opening-up, Chinese society has undergone a considerable structural change (Guan et al. 2018; Gao and Wang 2020). These modernizing influences on Chinese society and economy have simultaneously recast mate selection and matchmaking approaches (Chang et al. 2011; Blair and Madigan 2016, 2018). Under traditional approaches to matchmaking in China, third parties such as parents and other connections within a closed-form social network recommend partners from a known pool of individuals with strategic benefits for the family in mind (Riley 1994). Such traditional forms relying on social connections lessen the probability of matching with a stranger. The coming of the internet age has revolutionized methods of matchmaking with the rise of online dating. One of China’s most popular dating websites claims to host up to 60 million daters, with the largest fraction of users being between 20 and 30 years old and mostly single (Xia et al. 2014).

While new forms of matchmaking have been introduced, genderFootnote1 and generational norms that have defined the partner selection process for centuries continue to exert their influence, creating a push and pull between traditional and modern values on China’s youth. Regarding gender, while on the one hand, women have more say in both social and economic life owing to their greater educational and occupational freedoms, substantial progress still needs to be made in attitudes towards gender equality (Attané 2012). Similarly, with reference to generational norms, while individualism is on the rise (Sun and Ryder 2016), filial piety continues to determine parent–child relationships (Zhang 2016; Hu and Scott 2016). It is unclear how this negotiation between two temporally shifting value systems has engendered changes in the attribute preferences that Chinese men and women hold for their prospective partners. Thus, it is not surprising that researchers have called for more empirical work on the partner selection process in contemporary China and investigations into how attitudes and expectations are moderated by factors such as gender and generation (Blair and Madigan 2016, 2018).

This paper aims to assess how partner preferences are moderated by gender and generational norms in China. This assessment has three specific objectives. First, whether there are differences in attribute preferences for partners by gender, i.e., are there differences in partner preferences for males and females? Second, whether there are differences in partner preferences across generations, i.e., are there differences between parents acting on behalf of their children versus these children acting autonomously? Lastly, building on the two above, whether there is an interaction of gender and generation in determining partner preferences, i.e., do parents have differential preferences for their daughters as compared to their sons?

To answer these questions, we use two samples with varying degrees of youth autonomy versus parental involvement. The former preferences are captured by individual dating profiles from an online website, and the latter by profiles advertised by parents on ‘blind date markets’ (xiangqinshichang, 相亲市场),Footnote2 which are public gatherings in large open parks where daters’ details are displayed on printed placards (Wong 2014). Clearly, individuals acting for themselves online still have implicit channels of parental influence. Thus, this study does not seek to distinguish between individuals and parents explicitly but instead uses a proxy of the greater strength of parental involvement in partner preferences by comparing matchmaking methods. Overall, we find significant differences in gender preferences for attributes such as age, height, and partner education. Furthermore, we find that parents' preferences for their sons are different from their daughters. These findings suggest that gender and generational norms continue to mediate the mate selection process in contemporary China and do so in different ways for youths and parents.

The paper proceeds as follows: In Related works section, we discuss the relevant theoretical background to the study and provide an overview of how norms have changed with socioeconomic transformations in China. Data and methods section provides details of the data collection and our statistical methodology. Results section presents the results, and Discussion section situates these findings and the limitations of our study within existing empirical and theoretical frameworks. Finally, Conclusion section offers concluding remarks and recommendations for future research.

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https://journalofchinesesociology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40711-021-00159-6

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《中国社会学学刊》(The Journal of Chinese Sociology)于2014年10月由中国社会科学院社会学研究所创办。作为中国大陆第一本英文社会学学术期刊，JCS致力于为中国社会学者与国外同行的学术交流和合作打造国际一流的学术平台。JCS由全球最大科技期刊出版集团施普林格·自然(Springer Nature)出版发行，由国内外顶尖社会学家组成强大编委会队伍，采用双向匿名评审方式和“开放获取”(open access)出版模式。JCS已于2021年5月被ESCI收录。