Tuesday, August 4, 2020

In financial cities we observe that on average online porn viewing decreases as financial stress increases; evidence suggests the causing channel to be altered mood

Sex and “the City”: Financial stress and online pornography consumption. Michael Donadelli, Marie Lalanne. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, August 3 2020, 100379. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbef.2020.100379

Abstract: We examine the effects of financial stress on online pornography consumption. We use novel data on daily accesses to one of the most popular porn website (xHamster) for 43 different cities belonging to 10 countries for the year 2016. In financial cities, in which people are more likely to be affected by financial stress, we observe that on average online porn viewing decreases as financial stress increases. We present some evidence suggesting the causing channel to be altered mood.

Keywords: Financial stressUncertaintyOnline pornography


4. Concluding remarks
This paper employs a unique and novel dataset providing accesses to one of the most visited porn website for several cities around the world in order to examine the relationship between financial stress and online pornography consumption. Regression results suggest that during stressing days people are less prone to go for online pornography. The effect seems to be driven by financial cities: financial stress does indeed affect pornography demand as people living in the proximity of financial districts are more likely to be impacted by stock markets fluctuations.
Unfortunately, our data are not granular enough to (strictly) capture the behavior of people working in the financial industry (e.g., financial analysts, traders, market makers, private bankers etc...) or living (strictly) in cities’ financial districts (e.g., Canary Wharf in London or FiDi in New York). Moreover, we rely on accesses to xHamster only. In this respect, future research could make an effort to retrieve richer data in order to get more insights on the relationship between online pornography consumption and financial market dynamics. We believe that examining the effects of rising financial stress on people’s daily standard entertainment activity (including online pornography viewing) represents an interesting avenue of future research.

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