Category Archives: News

Why is the topic of ownership worth studying?

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The concepts of possession, ownership and property play a fundamental role for human behaviour, social interactions and economic transactions. There are numerous resources from various disciplines dealing with exciting and surprising findings on ownership, which are now bundled and curated in the new special POP collection.

To get a first impression of the physical side of the POP (Possession, Ownership & Property) collection and to find out why world-leading experts (Floyd Rudmin, Russ Belk, Ori Friedman, Michael Heller, Jennifer Inauen, Carey Morewedge, Joann Peck, Jon Pierce, and Federico Rossano) think that ownership is an interesting topic to study and what research finding on the issue surprised them the most watch this video.

We present: The POP collection

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We are happy to announce the opening of the POP (Possession, Ownership & Property) collection at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business), which was initiated and curated by the Institute for Marketing & Consumer Research (m.core).

The POP collection is an evolving collection. It builds on a donation of an abundance of multi-disciplinary titles by Professor Floyd Rudmin (University of Tromsø), a prominent pioneer in the field.

Thank you, Floyd!

The printed books can be found in the WU Library. The digital collection contains bibliographical information on these books as well as numerous other important contributions in this field.

Search the digital collection according to your interests: HERE you find the link to the Possession, Ownership, Property Collection – Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Psychological ownership @ SCP 2020

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At the upcoming Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) conference in Huntington Beach, CA, there will be a session dedicated to the topic of psychological ownership. The session is called “Experiencing ‘MINENESS’: Extensions of Psychological Ownership in New Consumer Contexts” and is chaired by Ipek Demirdag, University of California Los Angeles. According to the conference website, it includes the following talks: “Creating Ownership Where Ownership Does not Exist: Psychological Ownership Increases Enjoyment in Sharing Economy” (Demirdag and Shu); “Virtual Touch Facilitates Psychological Ownership of Products in Virtual Reality” (Luangrath, Peck, Hedgcock, and Xu); “‘It Can (Cannot) Be Mine’: How a Person in a Photo Impacts the Viewer’s Perception of a New Experiential Product” (Lu, Peck, and Barfield); and “Psychology of Heritage: The Endowment Effect for Extraordinary Goods” (Christensen and Shu). The session will take place on Saturday 7 March from 9:10 to 10:30 am at Salon F of Hyatt Regency Hotel in Huntington Beach, CA. If you are attending the conference, don’t forget to mark your calendars. We are excited to hear more about current developments in psychological ownership research!

Listening to my music – and wanting more of it

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A recent study shows the relevance of psychological ownership theory in the domain of music streaming. Music streaming services have become the most popular way of consuming music nowadays. What characterizes the use of these services is a lack of legal ownership of the music that consumers listen to. But can consumers nevertheless develop feelings of psychological ownership? And what effects can that practically have? Sebastian Danckwerts and Peter Kenning (Heinrich‐Heine‐Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany) conducted a study to address these questions. The results show that consumers can indeed develop feelings of psychological ownership both of the service and the music featured. More importantly, this research also shows that music‐based psychological ownership is a predictor of users’ intention to switch from free to premium. Therefore, helping consumers develop a sense of psychological ownership may be profitable for providers of music streaming services.

You can read more about this research here.

Whose creation is it anyways? Valuation of ideas versus labor in adults

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Have you ever wondered what people value more in a creation, the idea behind it or the labor needed for its implementation – and who do they think owns the creation after all? Prior research has shown that children by the age of six begin to value ideas over labor. However, it is not clear whether the same applies also to adults. This is the question addressed by Pascal Burgmer (University of Cologne), Matthias Forstmann (Yale University) and Olga Stavrova (Tilburg University) in a paper recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. In their research, they presented participants with products that were the outcome of a collaboration between two people: the one had the idea and the other one worked in order to make this idea come true. Then, the researchers asked participants to indicate which one of the two persons, the idea giver or the laborer, contributed more to the creation of the product as well as who deserves ownership of it. Results showed that, contrary to children, adults valued labor more than ideas. This effect was replicated across different contexts, such as books, movies, recipes or business plans for start-ups. These findings provide novel insights into beliefs about ownership and the role that the distinction between ideas and labor plays in shaping these beliefs.

You can read more about this research here.

It’s the best time of the year to say thank you – to all of you and to Floyd Rudmin, in particular!

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This time of the year is always a good chance to step back from our busy schedules and take some time to express our gratitude toward significant people in our lives. We have very good reasons to do so this year! Besides thanking you all for your interest in and support of this blog, we want to express our deepest gratitude to Floyd Rudmin (University of Tromsø). He has made us and by extension all of you a truly unique pre-Christmas gift.

Floyd, a prominent pioneer and incomparable maverick in the field of ownership, has generously donated his invaluable and truly interdisciplinary collection of books on ownership and possession to m.core (Institute for Marketing and Consumer Research) at WU Vienna. We see ourselves as stewards of this treasure and are doing our best to preserve and extend this resource and to make it accessible to as many as possible. Floyd’s collections consists of over 130 books and numerous copies of book chapters and journal articles. Throughout his decades-spanning career he has meticulously gathered titles across a variety of disciplines ranging from anthropology over psychology, sociology, and history to law and political sciences.

We are very happy and thankful that this true treasure of literature on ownership has now found a new home at WU. The collection can now be found at a separate location in the WU library. We are sure that this will be a great opportunity for the entire community to visit our university in Vienna and have a look for yourselves at this marvelous collection – which we are continuously growing (further suggestions are more than welcome!). In addition we are trying to digitize everything where the rights allow doing so and we will host a link to the full collection as soon as this is searchable.

In the spirit of the days, we could not stress enough how great it is when “mine” becomes “ours” and eventually “everyone’s”. Thank you so much Floyd for your generous gesture and this intellectually rewarding transfer of ownership! We would like to invite all blog readers to freely spread the word about it and help us grow this collection.

We wish you all a Merry Holiday Season and a joyful, inspiring and fulfilling New Year 2018!

Who owns the monkey selfie? The case of animal copyrights

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A settlement has been reached in the long-running legal battle over who owns the copyright of the famous “monkey selfie”. The pictures were taken in 2011 in Indonesia by a macaque using camera equipment belonging to the British photographer David Slater. Shortly after, a legal dispute began as Slater objected to Wikipedia Commons’ hosting the pictures. Wikipedia refused to remove the pictures claiming that the copyright belonged to the monkey. In 2015, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) joined the dispute by suing on behalf of the monkey named Naruto, based on the argument that the monkey should be assigned the copyright. Finally, the photographer whose camera was used for the selfie agreed to donate 25% of any future revenue from the pictures to charities dedicated to protecting the monkeys’ natural habitat. Definitely a thought-provoking case raising unique issues about expanding legal rights to non-human animals.

Update: The Future of Ownership Research – Insights from the Opening & Closing Forums

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The collaboratively discussed insights from the Opening and Closing Forums, which where held within the scope of “The Future of Ownership Research” workshop this July 2017, are now readily available to download.

You can either click [HERE] to download the full summary or go to the event’s page to do so.

A visual summary of the Closing Forum is provided below.

The_Future_of_Ownership_Research_short

On this note we would like to thank all participants for collaborating so effortfully with us on this! We believe that the questions that were raised will guide us towards a prosperous future in ownership research!

“The Future of Ownership Research” Workshop 2017

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As already announced earlier this month, our team hosted an interdisciplinary workshop on ownership research at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business in collaboration with our colleagues Joann Peck (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Stephan Dickert (Queen Mary University of London).

Ownership_Workshop_2017_90

The Origanizational Committee

The workshop took place on July 7th and 8th and we are now happy to be able to share the highlights of this special get-together with you. You will find a detailled report by [CLICKING HERE]. Alternatively, you can also reach the page through the main navigation under the “events” tab.

We are still in the process of adding more material as we go so make sure to check back regularly for new insights on the future of ownership research.

“The Future of Ownership Research” – Workshop at WU Vienna

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Dear readers,

as aleady announced earlier this year, we are hosting a workshop on ownership research titled “The Future of Ownership Research” at the Vienna University of Economics & Business (WU Vienna), which will take place this Friday and Saturday, July 7th + 8th.

TheScienceofOwnership.org will of course cover the workshop in more detail, so be prepared to read more about it soon.

Detailled information about the speakers and the program can be found [HERE].

We are looking forward to providing you with an update soon.

– The Science of Ownership Team