What’s in a Name? Artist Reputation and Willingness to Pay for Paintings
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Abstract
Often buyers are unable to judge the quality of a painting, and the artist’s reputation determines the price they are willing to pay. This study was designed to validate the hypothesis that the identification of an artist increases the willingness to pay (WTP) for popular artists compared to less popular artists, and to examine how such knowledge of art affects these results. A quasi-experimental, survey of 150 participants recruited at Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, India rated the same ten paintings, five popular and five lesser-known. One group of respondents was given name of the artists and the other group was not. As no price range was provided, WTP was log-transformed and standardized within each respondent, and a popularity premium (popular minus unpopular) was calculated. Among 136 analysed respondents, those who saw the name showed a much larger premium (M = 1.24) than those who did not (M = −0.18), U = 4072, p < .001, rank-biserial r = −.78, Welch’s t(133.71) = 12.15, d = 2.06. The effect was replicated by a trial-level mixed-effects model (b = 3.24, p < .001), robust methods to deal with outliers, and for each of the 10 individual paintings. There was a significant correlation between Aesthetic Fluency and WTP overall (r = .64). It made the prediction only when names were presented (r = .64; when hidden, r = .24.). Named products had more convergence between stated and revealed preference. Ultimately, the premium seems to be majorly driven by reputation, not visual appearance.
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