In order to decrease social distance and increase trust on their platforms, many online marketplaces allow traders to be represented by profile pictures or avatars. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate whether the presence of seller avatars affects trading behavior in a market. We contrast...

The goal of this paper is to provide an overview on the Virtual Laboratory infrastructurefor online economic experiments. We summarize our experience gainedfrom performing several economic experiments on the Internet. The experimentswe have run range from electronic markets to individual...