Dogs have masters, cats have staff: Consumers' psychological ownership and their economic valuation of pets

Colleen P. Kirk

Journal of Business Research, 2019, vol. 99, issue C, 306-318

Abstract: Results of three experiments reveal that consumers place a higher economic valuation on dogs versus cats, as evidenced by willingness to pay more for life-saving surgery, medical expenses, and specialty pet products, as well as increased word-of-mouth about the pet. This effect is explained by consumers' enhanced psychological ownership of and resulting emotional attachment to the pet. The effect is reversed when a dog acts like a cat and a cat acts like a dog and is due to the perceived ability to control the animal's behavior rather than other attributes intrinsic to the pet. This research offers a first look at psychological ownership of a living creature and its effect on economic valuation.

Keywords: Psychological ownership; Pets; Dogs; Cats; Economic valuation; Attachment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319301468
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:99:y:2019:i:c:p:306-318

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.02.057

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().