From: "Nathan Cochrane" <ncochrane at theage.fairfax.com.au> To: "Declan McCullagh \(E-mail\)" <declan at well.com>
Hi Declan
US economist, Edward Castronova, has discovered that female avatars, from worlds such as EverQuest, trade online at an average 10 per cent discount to their price were they male-designated.
Castronova theorises that the same forces at play in the real world that keep womens' earning power below that of their male counterparts -- even where they have identical skills -- are also at work online.
Men, it seems, like to appoint in their real-world successors analogs of themselves. Online, that behaviour carries over into who they appoint as their virtual alter-ego, the avatar.
"(R)elations between avatars are gender-based, and include chivalry, dating, and sex," Castronova notes in the 45-page report, The Price of Man and Woman: A Hedonic Pricing Model of Avatar Attributes in a Synthetic World. "(A)bility seems more important than sex in determining the value of a body. Nonetheless, among comparable avatars, females do sell at a significant price discount.
"The discount may stem from a number of causes, including discrimination in Earth society, the maleness of the EverQuest player base, or differences in well-being related to male and female courtship roles. We do know, however, that these differences cannot be caused by sex-based differences in the abilities of the body, since in the fantasy world of Norrath, there are none."
Castronova's first analysis of the Norrath economics, which I wrote about ($A1.65 to f2 Network members) at the time, found the virtual world ranked higher as a measure of GDP than some small nations.
MORE: http://bilskirnir.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_bilskirnir_archive.html#1056342647 76316268
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Nathan Cochrane
Deputy IT Editor
:Next:
The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.next.theage.com.au
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