Can we price beauty? Aesthetics and digital art markets

Alsultan, Sarah, Kourtis, Apostolos and Markellos, Raphael N. (2024) Can we price beauty? Aesthetics and digital art markets. Economics Letters, 235. ISSN 0165-1765

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Abstract

What is the relation between the aesthetic value of art and its market price? We address this question in the context of digital art markets by employing data from the popular CryptoPunks NFT art collection. We quantify the visual attractiveness of NFTs using four aesthetic measures that are associated with emotional effects in the cultural economics literature. Using a hedonic pricing model, we identify aesthetics as a driver of prices in digital art markets. Our results indicate that investors prefer NFTs with higher levels of colorfulness and texture complexity and lower levels of saturation and brightness.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability: The data used in this work are available for free from online sources, as mentioned in the text.:
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Finance Group Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Competition Policy
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	31 Jan 2024 03:24
Last Modified:	04 Mar 2024 18:27
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/94330
DOI:	10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111572

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