Detecting discrimination against homosexuals: Evidence from a field experiment on the Internet

This paper presents the first field experiment studying discrimination against homosexuals. The study is conducted on the rental housing market in Sweden using the Internet as a research platform. Two fictitious couples, one heterosexual and one male homosexual, apply for vacant rental apartments advertised by landlords on the Internet. Our findings show that homosexual males are discriminated on the Swedish housing market, since the homosexual couple gets far fewer call backs, invitations to further contacts and to showings of apartments than the heterosexual couple.