Leung Sharkey (2009) - Out Of Sight Out Of Mind The Mere Labeling Effect Of Multi Category Membership In Markets

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Reference(s)

• Leung, Ming D., and Amanda J. Sharkey (2009), "Out of sight, out of mind: The mere labeling effect of multi-category membership in markets" pdf

Abstract

Extant work shows that actors who span multiple social categories are devalued relative to their more specialized peers. Two reasons have been proffered: 1) category spanners are of lower-quality or, 2) category spanners are difficult to understand and therefore ignored. It has been challenging for extant work to disentangle these two. This paper tackles this issue by employing a natural experiment on a peer-to-peer lending website. Difference in difference analyses show that, regardless of underlying ability or quality, perceptions of category spanning can result in devaluation.