“Social Influence in the Darknet Market: The Impact of Product Descriptions on Cocaine Sales”, 2024-02 ():
Background: The rise of the darknet market, supported by technologies such as the Tor Browser and cryptocurrencies, has created a secure environment in which illicit transactions can occur. However, due to the lack of government oversight in this hidden online domain, darknet markets face large challenges in upholding social order. Hence, this study explores the social dynamics that promote social order in a darknet market, focusing on the impact of item descriptions on sales. In particular, the study examines how text contained in product listings can influence sales and contribute to social order.
Method: To conduct this analysis, we examined 4,160 cocaine listings on AlphaBay, which was active from December 2014 to July 2017 and is one of the largest darknet markets in history. Using generalized additive models (GAMs), we assessed the impact of various listing description features, including content and semantic structure, on cocaine sales.
Results: The results showed that sales increased by 61.6% when listings included delivery information in their description, compared to offers that did not. In addition, the standardized sentiment score (ranging 0–1) of the product description increased positively, and estimated sales increased by 260.5%. We also found that international shipping reduced sales by 28.3%. Finally, we found that listings stating the product origin increased sales for all continents except Asia.
Conclusion: The study sheds light on the characteristics of product advertising that facilitate social order within a darknet market. Listings that include delivery details in the description reduce uncertainty about a critical stage of the transaction process while using positive language increases trust. This study makes both an empirical and a theoretical contribution by demonstrating the influence of ad descriptions on sales and the intricate role of social influences in shaping market order.
[Keywords: darknet market, social order, social influence]
…Data & methods: Our study analysed a dataset of 114,385 items, 6,033 sellers, and 1270,000 reviews collected on AlphaBay’s darknet market 26–28 January 2017 by 2017. Most listings on the AlphaBay platform were included in the dataset, even if the items were not purchased. However, 1,636 pages from Tor could not be downloaded, resulting in around 700 missing listings, but these only accounted for 0.01% of all listings and were therefore unlikely to affect our results. We focused our analysis on cocaine listings for two main reasons. First, given the high price and potential dangers associated with the drug, consumers were expected to carefully examine the information in sellers’ listing descriptions. Second, the text mining technique used in this study required a certain degree of homogeneity in the text content. Therefore, we began by selecting all products that fell within the ‘cocaine’ category (5,485). Subsequently, we eliminated listings that lacked quantity information in their item descriptions (258). Lastly, we eliminated products that, despite being categorised as cocaine, were not genuine cocaine-related items, such as ‘lidocaine’ and similar substances (956) as well as products for which the listed weight in grams was not clearly expressed (109). Consequently, the final dataset encompassed 4,160 cocaine listings by 714 distinct vendors.