Urban Art District Value Co-Creation: A Study of Daily Operations and Periodic Events in Dafen Oil Painting Village, Shenzhen, China

Value co-creation research on urban art districts has paid limited attention to how temporality shapes co-creation processes. This study addresses this gap through an analysis of Dafen Oil Painting Village in Shenzhen, China, comparing value co-creation under two temporal modes—daily operations and the Dafen International Oil Painting Biennial—via in-depth interviews with 58 stakeholders. The analysis shows that (1) daily operations involve an incremental pattern of trust building–network formation–value sedimentation, as described by long-tenured stakeholders; (2) the Biennial involves a compressed pattern of resource mobilization–collaboration intensification–multidimensional outcomes , as described by event participants; and (3) an interactive accumulation–breakthrough–integration dynamic forms between both modes—which the study develops into a temporal complementarity framework—as indicated by stakeholder accounts. By developing a temporal complementarity framework grounded in an in-depth analysis of Dafen Oil Painting Village, this study extends value co-creation theory’s temporal dimension and provides art-district managers with strategies for orchestrating daily and event-based development modes.