Behavioral Consequences of Sexual Orientation Disclosure in a Large-Scale Digital Environment

TL;DR

This study investigates how disclosing sexual orientation affects individuals' behavior in a large online game, revealing significant negative impacts of coming out across diverse regions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel natural experiment using online game data to causally analyze behavioral responses to sexual orientation disclosure.

Findings

Disclosing sexual orientation leads to a substantial decrease in positive interactions.

The negative effects of coming out are persistent over time.

Regional differences influence the magnitude of behavioral responses.

Abstract

Many individuals hesitate to disclose their sexual orientation, anticipating that disclosure may alter how others respond to them. At the same time, concealing one's identity can entail substantial personal and social costs. Understanding how others react to sexual orientation disclosure is therefore central to evaluating the broader consequences of coming out. This paper uses an innovative data set from a popular online video game together with a natural experiment to causally identify behavioral responses to sexual minority disclosure. We exploit exogenous variation in the identity of a playable character to identify the effects of coming out on players' revealed preferences for that character across diverse regions globally. Our findings reveal a substantial and persistent negative impact of coming out.