IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ijrema/v42y2025i3p594-609.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rarity, the WTA-WTP disparity, and price adjustments in the NFT market

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Yuanyuan
  • Huangfu, Bingrui
  • Qiao, Zheng
  • Zhao, Xi

Abstract

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have become popular and are frequently traded in marketplaces. The current study examines how an NFT’s within-collection rarity influences sellers’ and buyers’ pricing and pricing dynamics. Relying on the pricing history of CryptoPunks, one of the most famous and valuable NFT collections, we find that rarity’s positive impact on willingness to accept is greater than on willingness to pay, which generates a larger pricing disparity. We further examine rarity’s impact on subsequent price adjustments and find that as rarity increases, buyers are more inclined to make greater price concessions, and sellers are reluctant to reduce their prices. Results also show that rarity’s positive impact on pricing is moderated by the NFT’s past ownership, agents’ trading experiences, and agents’ average holding periods for previous NFTs. Finally, an experiment reveals the mediating role of the focus on rarity that sellers tend to consider more about the NFT’s rarity than buyers, and therefore rarity’s positive impact on pricing is more salient for sellers than buyers.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Yuanyuan & Huangfu, Bingrui & Qiao, Zheng & Zhao, Xi, 2025. "Rarity, the WTA-WTP disparity, and price adjustments in the NFT market," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 594-609.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:42:y:2025:i:3:p:594-609
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2024.10.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811624000910
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2024.10.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:42:y:2025:i:3:p:594-609. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-research-in-marketing/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.