Abstract
In this paper we apply a gravity framework to user-generated data of a large online housing market platform. We show that gravity describes the patterns of inflow and outflow of hits (mouse clicks, etc.) from one municipality to another, where the municipality of the user defines the origin and the municipality of the property that is viewed defines the destination. By distinguishing serious searchers from recreational searchers we demonstrate that the gravity framework describes geographic search patterns of both types of users. The results indicate that recreational search is centered more around the user's location than serious search. However, this finding is driven entirely by differences in border effects as there is no difference in the distance effect. By demonstrating that geographic search patterns of both serious and recreational searchers are explained by their physical locations, we present clear evidence that physical location is an important determinant of economic behavior in the virtual realm too.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0247712 |
| Pages (from-to) | 1-31 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | PLoS One |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 24 Mar 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research has been made possible through financial support of the Netherlands' Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) and the Utrecht University Research IT Innovation Fund. Google Cloud has provided support in the form of access to its cloud services. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Steegmans, de Bruin. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
