Possession, feelings of ownership and the endowment effect

By J. Reb, Terry Connolly. Judgment and Decision Making, 2007

287 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Research in judgment and decision making generally ignores the distinction between factual and subjective feelings of ownership, tacitly assuming that the two correspond closely. The present research suggests that this assumption might be usefully reexamined. In two experiments on the endowment effect we examine the role of subjective ownership by independently manipulating factual ownership (i.e., what participants were told about ownership) and physical possession of an object. This allowed us to disentangle the effects of these two factors, which are typically confounded. We found a significant effect of possession, but not of factual ownership, on monetary valuation of the object. Moreover, this effect was mediated by participants’ feelings of ownership, which were enhanced by the physical possession of the object. Thus, the endowment effect did not rely on factual ownership per se but was the result of subjective feelings of ownership induced by possession of the object. It is these feelings of ownership that appeared to lead individuals to include the object into their endowment and to shift their reference point accordingly. Potential implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7956ad773fb098b1b29d9d2c3ab2557dfa1a6d40

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

Evolution of Consumption: A Psychological Ownership Framework (2020, background): “The immateriality of digital goods imbues them with many remarkable benefits but prevents consumers from having physical interactions with digital goods (Brasel and Gips 2014; Peck and Shu 2009; Reb and Connolly 2007).”
The "I Designed It Myself" Effect in Mass Customization (2010, background): “The endowment effect does not rely on legal ownership but is the result of subjective feelings of ownership (Reb and Connolly 2007), which can vary in intensity.”
Psychological ownership and affective reaction: Emotional attachment process variables and the endowment effect (2011, background): “Other research has found that psychological ownership can be increased through touch (Peck & Shu, 2009; Reb & Connolly, 2007), product imagery (Peck & Shu, 2009), or an active role in the design of a product (Fuchs et al., 2010).”
Tablets, touchscreens, and touchpads: : How varying touch interfaces trigger psychological ownership and endowment (2014, methodology): “The size of endowment effects generated in these studies through interface touch rival those from prior work using real products and actual ownership manipulations (Saqib, Frolich, & Bruning 2010; Reb & Connolly 2007), highlighting the power of interface touch in shaping consumer behavior.”
Access-Based Services as Substitutes for Material Possessions: The Role of Psychological Ownership (2020, background): “This mental state denotes a sense of possession of a particular target, even in the absence of any legal ownership (Pierce, Kostova, and Dirks 2001; Reb and Connolly 2007).”