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Which price, if we all like it? Effects of liking and emotional consensus on art prices in auctions

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  • Marie BLUM

    (LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg)

Abstract

This paper investigates whether consensus on liking and emotion play a role in explaining art auction prices. This study fills a gap in the economics of art literature by considering subjective perceptions of artworks in addition to objective factors in art pricing models. We conduct a survey to measure the degree of consensus on liking and emotion for 124 artworks in two distinct social groups: art collectors (i.e. art market insiders, N=146) and non-collectors (i.e. art market outsiders, N=192). We focus on the comic art market, as it is one of the rare art markets in which it is relatively easy to reach collectors. We find that liking and emotional consensus are reflected in art prices but differently depending on the social group. Specifically, our results show that artworks generally achieve higher prices when they are consensually liked by insiders or eliciting positive emotions to them. However, we find that what is consensually liked by or evokes positive emotions to outsiders generally achieve lower prices at auction. This finding is remarkable as it shows that aesthetic codes and information shared among collectors do not spread to outsiders, but rather go in the opposite direction.

Suggested Citation

  • Marie BLUM, 2021. "Which price, if we all like it? Effects of liking and emotional consensus on art prices in auctions," Working Papers of LaRGE Research Center 2021-11, Laboratoire de Recherche en Gestion et Economie (LaRGE), Université de Strasbourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:lar:wpaper:2021-11
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Jaehyuk Choi & Lan Ju & Jian Li & Zhiyong Tu, 2023. "Information extraction and artwork pricing," Papers 2302.08167, arXiv.org.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    art prices; auction; emotion; liking; consensus; art expertise.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

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