Can we price beauty? Aesthetics and digital art markets

Sarah Alsultan, Apostolos Kourtis and Raphael Markellos

Economics Letters, 2024, vol. 235, issue C

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.

Keywords: Non-fungible tokens; Digital art; Hedonic pricing; Aesthetics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G12 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:235:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524000557

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111572

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