Selling sex: what determines rates and popularity? An analysis of 11,500 online profiles

Abstract

Sex work, or the exchange of sexual services for money or goods, is ubiquitous across eras and cultures. However, the practice of selling sex is often hidden due to stigma and the varying legal status of sex work. Online platforms that sex workers use to advertise services have become an increasingly important means of studying a market that is largely hidden. Although prior literature has primarily shed light on sex work from a public health or policy perspective (focusing largely on female sex workers), there are few studies that empirically research patterns of service provision in online sex work. This study investigated the determinants of pricing and popularity in the market for commercial sexual services online by using data from the largest UK network of online sexual services, a platform that is the industry-standard for sex workers. While the size of these influences varies across genders, nationality, age and the services provided are shown to be primary drivers of rates and popularity in sex work.

Keywords:

• sex work
• popularity dynamics
• gender
• online marketplace
• UK

Acknowledgements

We thank Ieke de Vries for helpful comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

All the data used in this work is publicly available via Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/OMCDPI

Additional information

Funding

TY was partially supported by an EPSRC grant no. EP/N510129/1.