Racial discrimination on online second-hand shopping platforms. An Experimental Study on the Influence of Skin Colour on Consumer Interaction

The death of George Floyd on May 25th 2020 has created a lot of debate regarding the topic of systemic racism throughout the world (Oriola & Knight, 2020). Systemic racism is deeply ingrained in our society and it occurs on many levels: the individual level, the institutional level, and the cultural level (Bowser, 2017). The existence of systemic racism limits the quality of life for many different communities. As of today, in contemporary society, racism has become more covert in real life than it used to be. However, this is quite different on the Internet. On the web, individuals more easily act out and express their racist beliefs and thoughts (Ortiz, 2020). Previous studies found that online racism limits opportunities for people of colour, for example on online marketplaces (Edelman et al., 2017; Ge et al., 2020; McLaughin, 2018). With platforms whereon you can sell your own clothes – such as Vinted and Depop – becoming more popular these days, the question arose whether the skin colour of users of these platforms has an influence on how others interact with them. Do black sellers receive lower price bids than white sellers? Or do white sellers gain more interaction with their items than black sellers? Considering the above, a research question was formulated. The research question this study gives an answer to is as follows: “To what extent does a model’s race have an influence on consumer interaction with clothes on sale on online second-hand shopping platforms?” In order to answer this particular question an experimental research design was created and executed. The experimental research design includes two types of experiments: an online field experiment on Vinted and an online experimental survey created with Qualtrics. Both experiments focus on whether the skin colour of a model has an effect on how individuals interact with the clothes they see, either on Vinted or in the online experimental survey. The results of the experiments suggest that, statistically, skin colour does not have a major significant effect on the consumer interaction with clothes on sale on online second-hand fashion platforms. However, one important finding did indicate the existence of unconscious biases among respondents of the online experimental survey. It can thus be concluded that a model’s skin colour does have a small effect on how individuals interact with clothes sold on online second-hand fashion platforms. This study shows that unconscious biases as well as racism are still prevalent in contemporary society.