Psychological Ownership Motivation and Use of Social Media

Abstract

We build on and extend research on psychological ownership by developing the concept of psychological ownership motivation. Drawing on psychological ownership theory that has identified the underlying motives (i.e., the need for effectance, self-identity, and for having a place) that are the roots of psychological ownership, we define psychological ownership motivation as the drive to engage in behaviors to satisfy the motives that underlie psychological ownership. We submit that psychological ownership motivation drives individuals to engage in social media use because social media have affordances to fulfill the underlying needs of psychological ownership. We develop measurement scales for these needs and our empirical results suggest that these needs collectively contribute to psychological ownership motivation, which, in turn, drives social media use.