My meat or my Earth?

Posted on March 12, 2025 by ownershipblog

Getting consumers to adopt a more sustainable behavior is not an easy task. Even with the right mindset, overcoming psychological barriers and changing one’s habits can be hard.

Prior research finds that Psycholigical Ownership can be an effective tool in pursuit of this challenge. For example, PO is shown to be effective in increasing recycling intention through eliciting the sense of stewardship over our planet (Felix & Almaguer, 2019).

When it comes to sustainable consumption, one particularly stubborn area is diet. Food production is responsible for roughly 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions (Crippa et al., 2021; van Dijk et al., 2023). Yet many consumers, even those environmentally conscious, frequently fail to connect their dietary choices with environmental consequences.

In their recent paper published in Appetite (2025) Frem and Nguyen explore how Psychological Ownership can help tackle this challenge. The authors address a famously tough dietary topic – meat eating and hybrid meat alternatives. Hybrid meat is a meat product that contains both meat and alternative plant-based protein sources (van Dijk et al., 2023). Recent consumer research shows that hybrid meat is more appealing than fully plant-based meat alternatives both for its sensory properties and for the minimal degree of behavioural change required. Yet, many meat eaters are still sceptical.

In two studies, Frem and Nguyen show that making a call encouraging customers to help take care of “Your Earth” (vs. “The Earth”) increases the sense of Psychological Ownership resulting in a significant increase of Purchase Intention. Interestingly, anthropomorphising Earth also has a positive effect on purchase intention of hybrid meat products. Importantly, in case of anthropomorphism, the stewardship manipulation (“Your Earth” vs. “The Earth”) does not carry any added value for the purchase intention.

These findings underscore the power of messaging in shifting consumer behavior even in such challenging domains as diet. The results show that there is a variety of tools marketers can use to encourage sustainable consumption and not all of these tools need be employed at once. While some branding contexts may be better fitting for anthropomorphism, in others Psychological Ownership may be the right tool for the job.

You can read the full article here.

How do circular take-back programs shape the way we value products and what psychological ownership has to do with it?

Posted on November 28, 2024 by ownershipblog

Sustainability is on everyone’s mind every step of the product life cycle. Many companies are implementing circular take-back programs as part of their sustainability initiative programs. But these programs are doing more than just benefiting the planet—what consumers can do with the product at the end of its life is changing how they perceive and value these products.

A recent article by Anna Tari and Remi Trudel dives deep into the psychology behind these programs, revealing how they enhance a consumer’s connection to their purchases and increase the price people are willing to pay.

In 8 studies, Tari and Trudel find that consumers are willing to pay significantly more for the products from the circular take-back programs. The effect holds across different domains, be it apparel, stationary, furniture or tea set. The boost in valuation for take-back products is explained by increase in disposal control and psychological ownership.

Establishing a circular take-back program can be a challenging and costly task for the company: setting up the infrastructure, considering possible liability issues, forecasting the demand — are just a few things to consider. But if it is good for the environment and consumers are ready to pay more for that feeling of closeness and control, it might just be worth it!

You can read the full article here.

“Nature is mine”: How can we measure psychological ownership of nature?

Posted on April 28, 2023 by ownershipblog

The concept of psychological ownership of nature, or the feeling that nature is “mine” or “ours,” has gained significant attention in recent years as a way to encourage pro-environmental behaviors. However, until now, there has been a lack of psychometrically validated measures to assess this construct accurately, limiting its potential impact in research and practical applications.

Xiongzhi Wang, Kelly S. Fielding, and Angela J. Dean address this gap in their recent paper (published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology) by developing and validating scales to measure individual and collective psychological ownership of nature, using a representative sample of Australian adults.

Different to other approaches measuring feelings of psychological ownership, their measure did not capture the associated attributes of ownership feelings toward nature (e.g., control, intimate familiarity), but rather directly assessed the ownership core (i.e., “mine-ness/our-ness”). The authors developed and validated scales of both individual (“Nature is mine”) and collective psychological ownership of nature (“Nature is ours”). Their results also indicate that these two forms of psychological ownership may have different affects on pro-environmental behaviors, as collective psychological ownership was more strongly associated with environmental concern and environmental self-identity and individual psychological ownership was more strongly associated with territoriality and dominionistic beliefs toward nature. Both scales offer a new tool for researchers interested in understanding psychological ownership and promoting pro-environmental behaviors.

You can read more about the research of Wang, Fielding, & Dean (2023) here.

Do you already own virtual land in the Metaverse?

Posted on September 20, 2022 by ownershipblog

Well, you could. If you spent some money, you could be the owner of a Metaverse real estate. With its augmented and virtual reality technologies, the Metaverse extends your physical world. But can you actually own something in an extended reality, a virtual space, like the Metaverse? And how do such forms of digital consumption change our understanding of possessions and ownership?

Russell Belk (York University), Mariam Humayun (University of Ottawa) and Myriam Brouard (University of Ottawa) took a closer look at the Metaverse, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), cryptocurrencies and other forms of digital and virtual consumption. In their recent article, they discuss problems that arise as metaverses evolve and change, as well as consequences of fractional ownership and fractional property rights. For instance, if you own a real-world item (e.g., a painting) you have the right to modify it (e.g., cut it up), to sell it to someone else, or to dispose of it. But ownership of virtual objects is complicated, and in some ways different from ownership of physical objects, as Belk, Humayun, and Brouard (2022) explain. By buying an NFT, you usually do not gain the right to manipulate it, nor do you usually gain any right (like copyright or intellectual property rights) to the original art object (whether it be physical or digital). Will our understanding of ownership change in light of these developments?

You can find more about the research of Belk, Humayun, and Brouard (2022) here.

How to promote psychological ownership for a shared resource?

Posted on June 2, 2022 by ownershipblog

Shared resources, such as safe water infrastructure, have the potential to positively affect the environment and people’s health. In recent decades, there has been increased efforts around the world to install new shared safe water infrastructure. However, ensuring such infrastructure in low- and middle-income countries remains a challenge, often due to negligent operation and maintenance. One possible solution to ensure long-term functionality and access would be the participation of communities in planning, installing, and managing the shared resources. In their article, Benjamin Ambühl, Bal Mukunda Kunwar, Ariane Schertenleib, Sara J. Marks, and Jennifer Inauen (Eawag: Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation, University of Bern) address this issue by investigating the effects of a participatory intervention on the acceptance, use, and management of community-based safe water infrastructure in rural Nepal and the mediating role of psychological ownership. The authors conducted a nonrandomized cluster-based controlled trial with pre–post intervention assessment in 33 villages in rural Nepal. Their results reveal that participatory intervention activities, such as influence in decision-making or contributing materials and labour, favourably affected self-reported outcomes and use of the water supply infrastructure but not observed functionality or drinking water quality. Certain participatory activities related to increased psychological ownership, such as involvement in decision-making, attending meetings, and contributing materials. Concerning the mediating role of psychological ownership, the study reveal that the effects of some forms of participation on outcomes were mediated by psychological ownership whereas others were not. By examining community managed systems and environments, the authors extend previous research on the effect of psychological ownership on stewardship of public goods (see research by Peck et al., 2021).

You can find more about this research here.

Who should you entrust with your data? – Your selfish or your prosocial friend?

Posted on October 5, 2021 by susanneruckelshausen

We frequently share personal data with companies when using online services. Oftentimes, these data not only include information about ourselves, but also information we hold about others, for example friends and family. In their recent research, Joris Demmers, Andrea N. Weihrauch, and Frauke H. Mattison Thompson from the University of Amsterdam examine whether consumers differ in their willingness to share others’ data depending on their social value orientation. Their findings reveal that selfish people are less likely to share others’ data compared to prosocial people, because they feel less ownership for others’ data than prosocials do. Thus, possibly contrary to your own intuition, you might want to trust your selfish friend more than your prosocial friend when it comes to your online privacy.

Demmers et al. (2021) argue that feelings of ownership are the reason why people are more or less likely to infringe on others’ privacy. Future research should have a closer look at further explanations for why people infringe on others’ privacy by sharing their data online. When is the cost of infringing on someone else’s privacy perceived as justifiable? An even deeper understanding of why these so called interpersonal privacy infringements occur is essential to prevent possible harmful consequences of this behavior. Check out this article by Kamleitner and Mitchell (2019) to find out more about the phenomenon of interpersonal privacy infringements.

Click here to read the full article by Demmers et al. (2021).

Can psychological ownership help to mobilize people to get vaccines?

Posted on September 29, 2021 by ownershipblog

Vaccines have been crucial for dealing with infectious diseases. However, overcoming vaccine hesitancy remains challenging. In their article, Hengchen Dai (Anderson School of Management, University of California) and colleagues examine whether a communication strategy using reminders impact vaccine intentions. They report data from two sequential large-scale randomized controlled trials that investigate whether nudging people to get vaccinated can improve the uptake of vaccines. The authors randomized whether participants received text-message-based reminders or not and assessed whether they subsequently scheduled an appointment for the COVID-19 vaccine and eventually obtained the vaccine. In the first reminder the authors varied whether the reminder was designed to induce feelings of psychological ownership over the vaccine. Reminders indicated that the vaccine had ‘just been made available for you’ and encouraged participants to ‘claim your dose’. The results reveal that text-based reminders designed to overcome barriers can effectively encourage vaccinations. The effects are heightened when the reminders leverage psychological ownership, making people feel that a dose of the vaccine belongs to them. The research of Hengchen Dai and colleagues thus provide valuable insights into how vaccine uptake can be maximized and highlight the value of inducing feelings of ownership.

You can read more about this research here.

The more high-end an owned item, the longer the intended duration of ownership – Are Luxury and Sustainability one and the same?

Posted on April 30, 2021 by ownershipblog

Consumers who adopt a lifestyle of “slow-fashion” purchase fewer, higher-end products that will last longer in comparison to cheap products that will be quickly thrown away. In their recent research, Jennifer J. Sun (Columbia Business School), Silvia Bellezza (Columbia Business School), and Neeru Paharia (McDonough School of Business) propose that purchasing luxury products can be more sustainable than purchasing lower-end products because of their longer lifespan. Although high-end products may be more durable, consumers still prefer to allocate the same budget on multiple lower-end products instead of purchasing fewer higher-end products. Consumers in general believe that high-end products last longer, but they fail to consider the product’s durability when making a purchase. Thus, marketers of high-end brands face the challenge of how to best educate their potential consumers in discerning the high quality and durability of their goods. However, it is relevant to mention that the authors also touch upon the darker sides of luxury. In that sense, product durability alone may not lead to comprehensively sustainable business practices.