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Date
2025-08
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Economics
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https://doi.org/10.34944/yayx-pb16
Abstract
Are youths who consume pornography more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors? Using longitudinal data from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) and an individual fixed effects strategy, chapter one investigates the relationship between pornography use among 13- to 23-year-olds and a range of subsequent risky sexual behaviors. It also estimates a lagged dependent variable (LDV) model where risky sexual behavior of the previous wave is included as a control. The findings suggest that moderate and frequent pornography use increases the likelihood of engaging in acts such as unprotected sex and having multiple sexual partners. Finally, a heterogeneity analysis by gender reveals that males and females behave differently in response to exposure to pornography, but that is true for only a few indicators of risky sex. This chapter's findings provide critical information on determinants of risky sexual behavior and meaningful evidence for the policy debate on government censoring and monitoring online behavior.
Does the widespread consumption of internet pornography trigger violence? By analyzing local market (USA) website traffic data from major pornographic websites spanning from September 2019 to October 2022 and crime measures from NIBRS, chapter two sheds light on this question. For identification, I leverage exogenous variation in the supply of pornographic materials caused by the publication of an opinion essay in the New York Times and employ a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) strategy with a treatment intensity approach. The analysis utilizes geographical variation in the fraction of pornographic users visiting the impacted website. The DiD estimates indicate that one-percentage-point increase in exposure to the supply shock is associated with a reduction of approximately 2.4\% in all measures of violence, such as simple and aggravated assault, relative to their respective average observed in the data. This finding provides valuable insights into the ongoing policy debate regarding government censorship and monitoring of online behavior, suggesting that reducing access to certain online content can influence violent behavior at the community level.
Instantly accessible digital goods, such as online pornography, are deliberately designed to capture attention, prolong engagement, and encourage habitual use, often without any explicit financial cost. This phenomenon prompts an important question: Can digital goods, perceived as free, generate addictive consumption patterns similar to those observed with substances such as drugs or alcohol? Using website traffic data from U.S. local markets and after-tax hourly wage as a proxy of price, chapter three investigates this question through the lens of the theory of rational addiction in the context of internet pornography consumption. The result documents strong empirical support for the rational addiction hypothesis, which suggests that consumers of internet pornography are forward-looking and make consumption decisions that maximize their lifetime utility, even when those decisions lead to persistent and potentially harmful patterns. This finding provides valuable insights into the ongoing policy debate regarding government censorship and monitoring of online behavior.
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