Game theory for showing interest and availability when dating
Sending costly signals may work, at least when the recipient is less attractive than the sender.
There's also a nice popular science book by Paul Oyer called Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating that covers some of this ground, including the paper linked above.
Another theoretical paper suggests that costly signals that are worthless to the recipient work nicely, because the cost signals to the recipient that the donor has resources and values her highly, but by being worthless, it screens out &quot;gold-diggers&quot; that merely want the gift. Perhaps setting a pile of cash on fire would do the trick?