Where does ownership collide?

The state in which a person feels that some target, such as a job, an idea, a team, or an organization, is theirs, that it is mine, even when they hold no legal title to it. Pierce, Kostova, and Dirks laid out this idea in their 2001 Toward a theory of psychological ownership in organizations and developed it further in their 2003 review, arguing that the feeling grows through controlling the target, coming to know it intimately, and investing oneself in it. The referent here is a felt, subjective state inside a person, not a right a court will enforce, not an economic arrangement of who decides, and not a shopper's attachment to a product.[1][2]

Unit

One person's felt claim on a target, rated by degree

Recovery means

The feeling can fade when a person loses control of the target or invests less of themselves in it

Measured by

Assessed with self-report survey scales asking how strongly a person feels a target is theirs

The legal standing of a person over a thing, understood as a bundle of distinct incidents that a legal system recognises and will enforce against everyone else: the right to possess it, use it, manage it, take its income, sell or destroy it, and pass it on. Honoré's 1961 essay Ownership set out this classic list of the standard incidents of the fullest legal entitlement one can have in a thing. The referent is a normative claim backed by the coercive power of the state, held whether or not the owner feels any attachment, and it is not a private feeling, an incentive arrangement, or a shopper's valuation.[3]

Unit

One legal title, as the set of incidents it carries

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Established by legal doctrine and evidence of title, and adjudicated by courts rather than measured on a scale

The assignment of decision rights and claims to the returns of a resource, studied for how that assignment steers the behaviour of the people who hold them. Alchian and Demsetz's 1973 The property right paradigm treated ownership as a system of rights whose allocation determines who bears costs, who reaps rewards, and therefore how efficiently a resource gets used. The referent is an incentive structure analysed for its economic effects, not the doctrinal question of what a court will enforce, not a felt state of attachment, and not a consumer's raised valuation of a product.[4]

Unit

One allocation of rights and residual claims over a resource

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Analysed through economic models and studies linking who holds which rights to costs, effort, and resource use

The feeling of ownership a shopper develops toward a product, often before any purchase, through touching it, imagining using it, or being told it is theirs, and the way this feeling raises how much they value it. Shu and Peck's 2011 Psychological ownership and affective reaction showed that emotional attachment drives this felt ownership and that it helps explain the endowment effect, the tendency to demand more to give up a good than one would pay to get it. The referent is a consumer's attachment to a specific product and its effect on valuation, not a workplace feeling about a job, a legal title, or an economist's arrangement of rights.[5]

Unit

One shopper's felt claim on a product, and the value it adds

Recovery means

The feeling can weaken when the shopper stops handling or imagining owning the product

Measured by

Studied in experiments comparing valuations and self-reported attachment after touch or ownership priming