Did You Invest Less Than Me? The Effect of Other’s Share of Investment on Psychological Ownership of Crowdfunding Projects

Bong-Goon Seo and Do-Hyung Park
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Bong-Goon Seo: Graduate School of Business IT, Kookmin University, Seoul 02707, Korea
Do-Hyung Park: School of Management Information System, Kookmin University, Seoul 02707, Korea

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: The development of information technology, in an online context, has expanded into collective consumption, e.g., crowdfunding projects. Moreover, people feel a sense of psychological ownership (“it is mine”) toward projects they invest in, even if their attributes are immaterial or intangible. This research focuses on changes in psychological ownership based on the characteristics of crowdfunding projects, which are collectively invested in with others, and the attributes of objects (tangible/intangible). Specifically, this research seeks to determine how psychological ownership is affected by information about the amount of money invested by others in a shared project. Additionally, this research investigates whether psychological ownership changes based on others’ investment (less/more) and the attributes (tangible/intangible) of the project. The findings from the empirical analysis indicate that psychological ownership changes based on information regarding other people’s investment in a shared crowdfunding project. The results also show that, in projects with tangible attributes, psychological ownership changes based on investment information; however, no changes were observed in projects with intangible attributes.

Keywords: psychological ownership; share of investment; crowdfunding; tangibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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