According to a recent Stanford study, online shoppers are more willing to buy goods from a white seller than a black one, and will tend to pay white sellers more money.

Researchers Jennifer Doleac and Luke Stein, doctoral candidates in economics, posted ads on classified advertising websites to conduct the yearlong study. Some of the ads featured a light hand holding an iPod nano, while others featured a dark hand holding the same product.

The ads with a black hand were 13 percent less likely to receive responses and were offered from two to four percent less than the ads with a white hand.

The study also found that the gap depended on the geographic location of the ad. While black sellers got 32 percent less offers than whites in the Northeast, there was little discrepancy in the West. Other factors, such as crime rates and racial separations in the given area, had an effect on the amount of money offered to each of the hands.

“The fact that we found this much evidence of racial discrimination in this population of people is striking,” Doleac told the Stanford News Service.

Doleac also expressed concern that the effect is smaller with the well-educated, young group of people that would be likely to stumble upon the Internet ads, and that the disparities would be greater in the general population.

— Joseph Beyda