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

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.