The history of psychological ownership and its emergence in consumer psychology

This chapter is about the history of the construct psychological ownership and its migration into consumer psychology. The emergence of the construct in the organizational sciences is largely one of "serendipity" followed by our ability to "stand upon the shoulders of giants" whose prior reflections on the concept of ownership, and especially its manifestation as a psychological phenomenon, were extremely illuminating. We start with comments on what we believe to be the origins of the construct psychological ownership. This is followed by an overview of the theory of psychological ownership as both an individual and collective phenomenon. Finally, we conclude this chapter with a discussion of the emergence of the construct into the realm of consumer psychology.