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Dogs Have Masters, Cats Have Staff: Consumers' Psychological Ownership and Their Economic Valuation of Pets
Abstract and Figures
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.
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... For owners, a specific product can have a deep and important meaning, and they can form an emotional bond with the product (Mugge, Schifferstein, and Schoormans 2007). In addition, owners are likely to care for the product, protect it, and postpone its disposal or replacement (Kirk 2019;Shu and Peck 2011). Hence, owners may identify with their possessions and even regard them as their friends, relatives, and extended selves (Belk 1988). ...
This research explores consumers’ responses to sexual appeals in advertisements in the context of access-based consumption. The results indicate that male consumers’ responses
toward sexual appeals are more negative when the advertised products are access based
(versus ownership based). For female consumers, sexual appeals lead to equally negative
responses in the two consumption modes (Study 1). Male consumers react more negatively
to sexual appeals (versus nonsexual appeals) when the advertised product is access based
because of a heightened desire for possessiveness, which conflicts with the nonpossessive
nature of access-based consumption (Study 2). Notably, the negative effect induced by sexual appeals in access-based consumption mode is supported regardless of whether the
degree of match between advertised product and sexual appeals is high or low (Study 3).
Moreover, sexually conservative consumers respond to sexual appeals more negatively
when the advertised products are access based (versus ownership based) (Study 4). These
findings have important implications for advertising activities in the context of access-based
consumption and the sharing economy.
... Furthermore, PO refers to a psychological state whereby individuals feel 'as though the target of ownership or a piece of that target is "theirs"' (Pierce, Kostova, & Dirks, 2003, p. 86), which can exist without the legal and formal ownership towards the target or a special object (Karahanna et al., 2018). Over the past three decades, PO has been demonstrated as an important concept in the organisational domain (e.g., Brown, Crossley, & Robinson, 2014;Kim & Patel, 2017;Wang et al., 2019), and more recently in the consumer behavioural domain as well (e.g., Brasel & Gips, 2014;Kirk, 2019;Yuksel et al., 2019), to explain various desired behaviours, such as quality contributions to virtual communities (Lee & Suh, 2015) and spreading word-of-mouth (Kumar, 2019). ...
Encouraging online consumers to perform the voluntary extra-role behaviour, so called “consumer citizenship behaviour”, is crucial to organizational performance in the modern society. With the increasing adoption of gamification in the online environment, consumers are stimulated to perform such citizenship behaviours like recommendations, helping others and feedback. Drawing on the “Affordances-Psychological Outcomes-Behavioural Outcomes” framework and related literature, this study examines the relationships among perceived gamification affordances, psychological ownership and consumer citizenship behaviour. Based on the survey of 387 gamified MiniApps consumers in the e-commerce platforms, structural equation modelling is used to examine the model, and the results support most hypotheses. The research extends our understanding of the direct and indirect effects of perceived gamification affordances on consumer citizenship behaviour, and the mediating role of psychological ownership.
... Cat and dog adopters may also differ in their expectations for ownership which could affect the likelihood of owners adopting post-return 9,34,35 . For instance, preliminary data suggests cat owners believe their ability to control or modify their cat's behavior is low 36,37 , while most dog owners anticipate the need for training and expect to encounter some difficulties with dog behavior 33 . Cat adopters that experience undesirable behavior may believe the behavior cannot be modified and that a different cat would be better suited to their household. ...
Unsuccessful animal adoptions are stressful for many owners and may reduce their willingness to adopt again. The goal of this study was to determine the proportion of return owners who adopted post-return and investigate return characteristics that affected the likelihood of post-return adoption. We analyzed adoption records from a South Carolina animal shelter between 2015 and 2019 ( n = 1999) using a logistic regression model including post-return adoption (binary) and return reason, species, animal sex and age. We found one in 10 individuals adopted from the shelter within 12 months of return, and post-return adoption was associated with return reason and species. Returns due to owner-related reasons, such as the owner’s health (OR 0.20, 95% CI 0.07, 0.57) or unrealistic expectations (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.19, 0.94) were associated with significantly lower odds of post-return adoption. Owners who returned due to the animal’s health exhibited four times greater odds of post-return adoption compared with behavioral returns (OR 4.20, 95% CI 2.37, 7.45). Our findings highlight the value of ensuring adopters’ expectations are aligned with the reality of ownership and minimizing adopter-animal behavioral incompatibility as unsuccessful animal adoptions can reduce the owner’s willingness to adopt again and may affect the adopter’s relationship with the shelter.
... Source: Primary data output after processing, 2020; (Darsam, 2020) This is in line with the findings of previous studies that the various potentials contained in the lake are not only limited to social potential. However, it also has a direct economic impact on the surrounding community, both from the fisheries sector, agriculture, creative micro-enterprises and various other potentials (Bockarjova et al., 2020;Faccioni et al., 2019;Johnson et al., 2021;Kirk, 2019;Maher et al., 2021;Matthew et al., 2019;Pakalniete et al., 2021;Pisani et al., 2021;Saleh et al., 2020;Sena et al., 2020). Source: Primary data output after processing, 2020; (Darsam, 2020) ...
So far, there have been no economic valuation studies to ecological studies that reveal the potential of the Tempe Lake area, so that policy makers have not been able to manage and use the Tempe Lake Area, at the most effective and efficient level, and able to distribute the benefits and costs of conservation fairly. The novelty of this research is trying to do an economic valuation, which is paralleled with an ecological study of the existence of Lake Tempe. This study aims to identify the ecological functions of Lake Tempe that give rise to various economic and non-economic benefits for the community around Lake Tempe, as well as to determine the amount of Total Economic Value (NET) of Lake Tempe. The data were analyzed by adding up the value of direct benefits, value of indirect benefits, value of choice benefits, value of existence benefits and value of inheritance benefits in the Tempe Lake area. This research data was collected through surveys and interviews with stakeholders who have a reciprocal relationship with the Tempe Lake area in Wajo Regency. The results showed that the total economic value obtained for the Tempe Lake area was Rp. 5,742,249,708,120,- per year with the largest contribution coming from the direct benefit value of Rp. 4,571,395,793,250,- per year or 78.7%. The implication of the research is the need for cross-sectoral joint coordination from various levels of government, to encourage the rehabilitation of forest areas around the Walennae and Bila watersheds. Dredging of Lake Tempe is urgently needed to cope with the annual flooding due to overflow of water. In addition, to increase the utilization of Lake Tempe, a more massive synergy between stakeholders is needed, to develop other untapped potential of the Lake Tempe area.Keywords: Valuation; Resource Economics; Ecology
... Dogs may have featured more prominently in vignettes due to a perception that they form strong affiliative bonds with humans, who are responsive to the canine gaze [58]. Dog owners may also have stronger bonds than cat owners, be more likely to seek veterinary attention for them, and consider more costly (and potentially more involved) intervention when compared with cat owners [59,60]. Dogs may feature more prominently than cats as owners of cats may avoid taking them to veterinary clinics due to "feline resistance" to carriers or transportation, and fearful behaviour in veterinary settings [61]. ...
Veterinary team members encounter a wide range of ethically challenging situations (ECS) in their work. Inability to resolve ECS in accordance with their values may negatively impact the wellbeing of veterinary team members. We sought to determine the types of ECS described in published ethical vignettes in the veterinary literature. We performed a strategic literature search, followed by a thematic analysis of vignettes published in the veterinary literature from 1990–2020. We identified 567 published vignettes in 544 publications. In the majority of vignettes, the protagonist was a veterinarian (61.6%) and the most common categories of animal involved were dogs (28.0%), livestock in general (10.8%), and cattle (10.6%). The primary type of ECS was coded for each scenario, generating 29 themes. These findings extend knowledge about types of ECS that may be encountered by veterinary team members. These themes can help to inform curricula and better prepare veterinary team members to navigate ECS. They may also highlight factors that contribute to ECS that can be addressed on a broad scale, such as through regulation, continuing professional development, or stakeholder education. Knowing that others may experience similar ECS may help veterinary team members feel part of a moral community.
This study addresses the underlying mechanisms explaining the growing demand for pet fashion. While the literature suggests pet attachment as an antecedent of pet product purchase it is still not clear how this effect relates to pet anthropomorphism, self-expansion through the pet, and attachment in human relationships. To address these gaps, we propose a theoretical model which connects human partner attachment orientation, pet attachment, and the purchase of fashion pet clothing. Pet anthropomorphism provides a process explanation for the effect of pet attachment on purchase intention, and self-expansion through the pet constitutes a contingency factor of this process. To test this framework, a representative online survey of Australian pet owners recruited by commercial online panel provider Kantar-Lightspeed and an experimental study with university students were conducted. The findings contribute to the literature on consumption symbolism, self-identity, and attachment by disentangling and clarifying the influences of pet attachment, anthropomorphism, and self-expansion on the purchase of pet fashion products. Results provide also novel evidence on the impact of human avoidant and anxious partner attachment orientation on pet attachment and its downstream effect on pet product purchase.
This research examines the effect of a contagion threat on consumers' social connectedness. Across two experiments, we show that when consumers are near others in public places during a pandemic (but not before or after), they psychologically distance themselves by perceiving lower social connectedness. This reduction in social connectedness is higher when consumers have more (vs. less) psychological ownership of the public place (Study 1). Further, the negative effect of psychological ownership on social connectedness found during (but not after) a pandemic is attenuated when consumers do not believe the disease is a severe threat to their own health (Study 2). We examine downstream effects by illustrating that both individual psychological ownership and social connectedness contribute to collective psychological ownership, which in turn enhances stewardship of the public place. The interacting effects of a contagion threat and psychological ownership on stewardship are not explained by territorial infringement, self-esteem, perceived crowding, positive or negative affect, hope or nostalgia.
While perceived creativity is a valued asset within marketing and advertising, the literature has not explored external factors that influence creativity perceptions of consumers. In this research, we show that fear positively affects creativity assessments leading to increased advertising effectiveness, and that this effect is due to fear’s positive impact on engagement. Across seven studies, we show that these findings hold for both incidental and integral fear (i.e., fear appeal), for public service announcements and commercial advertisements, and across a variety of product categories. This research extends the creativity literature from a focus on definition of creativity and generation of creative outputs to new factors that influence creativity perception, and also adds to the literature on discrete emotions. In addition, the paper provides insight to marketers seeking to increase the effectiveness of their creative ads.
Objective:
To address the shortage of emergency veterinarians, the profession is exploring accelerated training pathways. We sought to contribute to the solution by developing the foundation for an open standard, competency-based veterinary emergency training curriculum for use by any program. We also developed a curricular delivery, tracking, and assessment system to demonstrate how the framework can be integrated into training programs. DESIGN: Hybrid Delphi method. SETTING: Academia and referral practice. ANIMALS: None.
Interventions:
None.
Measurements and main results:
An emergency veterinary competency framework was developed by adapting the human Model of the Clinical Practice of Emergency Medicine, which aligns with the Competency-Based Veterinary Education framework, to produce 4 areas of core competency: Patient Care, Interpersonal/Communication, Professionalism, and Practice-based Learning/Improvement. A comprehensive list of veterinary emergency skills was generated and organized within the framework utilizing the hybrid Delphi method. An initial survey completed by 133 emergency and critical care specialists and emergency room clinicians produced data regarding the value of specific skills. An 11-member focus group consisting of survey participants iterated upon the survey results to produce a master library of skills and cases, including 56 Patient Care, 43 Interpersonal/Communication, 11 Practice-based Learning/Improvement, and 20 Professionalism skills, as well as 155 case types. The curricular delivery system tracks and assesses case management proficiency and development of knowledge and professional skills using a patient care eLearning program and simulation training environment. CONCLUSIONS: The increasing need for emergency veterinarians is a shared industry-wide challenge. To contribute toward a collective solution, we have undergone an evidence-based process to create the foundation for an open standard competency framework composed of a library of skills and cases. We offer this open standard framework to the veterinary profession and hope it continues to grow and evolve as we drive toward developing competency-based training programs that address the shortage of emergency veterinarians.
The popularity of companion animals in South Korea has increased rapidly in recent years. However, the injection of companion animals with unprescribed vaccines or antibiotic treatments by their owners without veterinary consultation has emerged as a serious animal welfare concern. To develop strategies for addressing this issue, first it is necessary to understand the determinants of such behavior. We considered that direct questioning of dog owners via a survey about their experiences of administering injections would be unreliable, hence an exploration of the determinants of owners’ opinions about self-administered injections was deemed a viable alternative. In this regard, as an exploratory study we conducted an online questionnaire survey that was completed by 654 companion dog owners aged between 19 and 39 years residing in Seoul, South Korea. The questions pertained to the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the owners, their attitudes toward their companion dogs, and their opinions on the provision of unprescribed owner-administered injections. A 5-point Likert scale was used to assess their opinions about unprescribed injections, with responses categorized as negative (disagree, strongly disagree) and non-negative (neutral, agree, strongly agree). Multivariable logistic regressions were used to assess the association of explanatory variables with whether the owners held negative opinions regarding unprescribed owner-administered injections. The results revealed that owners with more favorable attitudes toward their dogs tended to have negative opinions about unprescribed owner-administered injections (odds ratio = 3.50, 95%; confidence interval = 2.42–5.11), but no significant effect of household income. Although further research is required to confirm the causal relationships, improvement of owners’ attitudes toward their companion dogs may be important for addressing the problem of unprescribed injections.
Publicly owned or shared items can often suffer from a lack of stewardship due to a diffusion of responsibility, a dilemma sometimes known as the tragedy of the commons. We propose that even when an item is publicly rather than privately owned (e.g., a local pond or community park), there can still be high levels of psychological ownership. The benefit of high psychological ownership for public goods is that the individual then takes a stronger responsibility for care (stewardship) of the object, thus reducing the tragedy of the commons. We discuss interventions designed to increase ownership for shared and public goods, including the use of social identity to drive engagement, and offer experimental evidence for such approaches.
Naming products is quite prevalent in American culture; however, we are not aware of any consumer research that explores the effects of this phenomenon. Across three studies, we demonstrate that when consumers name products, their evaluations of those products increase (e.g., attitudes, purchase intentions, and willingness to accept). We find that name fit and creativity as well as subsequent psychological ownership drive this effect. We also demonstrate that the naming effect is quite robust—replicating across multiple products, presentation formats, and populations as well as persisting over time. These results contribute to consumer research by opening up a new substantive line of inquiry into the effects of naming products.
In this chapter, we present evidence that despite the intangible nature of digital technologies, consumers often come to feel psychological ownership of these technologies. Further, we find that digital technologies often facilitate the emergence of psychological ownership of non-digital targets. Digital affordances appear to play a key role in these processes. Digital affordances are characteristics of a digital technology object that facilitate users’ abilities to appropriate or engage with the technology (e.g., interactive design elements and interfaces) and can constrain or expand users’ opportunities for developing feelings of ownership for a digital target. Additionally, consumers’ motivational orientations and individual differences impact the extent to which they choose to leverage digital affordances and thus the extent to which affordances translate into feelings of ownership. We review research conducted in diverse digital contexts (e.g., websites, remixed content, virtual worlds, gaming, social media, virtual communities) and identify current implications for managers as well as future opportunities for researchers.
In consumer behaviour research, psychological ownership has been shown to impact positive outcomes important to marketers. However, an area that has been little-explored in marketing is a more nuanced side of psychological ownership: the potential for territorial behaviour. While researchers have long understood territoriality as fundamental to human nature, the nature of territory has frequently been regarded as a physical place. Only recently have scholars begun to focus on a view of territory as a psychological space, in which psychological ownership plays a critical role, and a broader understanding of territoriality that accounts for individuals’ psychological possessions has important implications for marketers. This chapter helps to fill this gap by providing an overview of existing research related to psychological ownership and territoriality in marketing, as well as suggestions for future research for marketing scholars. Researchers are encouraged to take a view of territoriality that extends well beyond physical spaces to the boundaries of the extended self in order to shed light on the important contribution territoriality can make to understanding both consumers and marketers alike.
Psychological ownership, or the feeling that something is mine, has garnered growing attention in marketing. While previous works focuses on the positive aspects of psychological ownership, this research draws attention to the darker side of psychological ownership, territorial behavior. Results of five experimental studies demonstrate that when consumers feel psychological ownership of a target, they are prone to perceptions of infringement and subsequent territorial responses when they infer that another individual feels ownership of the same target. Potential infringers are held less accountable when they acknowledge ownership prior to engaging in otherwise threatening behaviors, and when they could not be expected to know that a target is owned, as it was not clearly marked. In addition, narcissists are subject to a psychological ownership metaperception bias, and are thus more apt than low narcissists to perceive infringement. A multitude of territorial responses are documented for both tangible (coffee, sweater, chair, pizza) and intangible (a design) targets of ownership. Further, consumers infer the psychological ownership of others from signals of the antecedents of psychological ownership: control, investment of self, and intimate knowledge. Theoretical implications for territoriality and psychological ownership are discussed, along with managerial implications and areas for future research.
Two-way communication capabilities in digital media enhance consumers' psychological ownership and valuation when their motivation is recreationally-oriented, but not task-oriented. High need for cognition and low social connectedness attenuate this effect.
Digital goods are, in many cases, substantive innovations relative to their physical counterparts. Yet, in five experiments, people ascribed less value to digital than to physical versions of the same good. Research participants paid more for, were willing to pay more for, and were more likely to purchase physical goods than equivalent digital goods, including souvenir photographs, books (fiction and nonfiction), and films. Participants valued physical goods more than digital goods whether their value was elicited in an incentive compatible pay-what-you-want paradigm, with willingness to pay, or purchase intention. Greater capacity for physical than digital goods to garner an association with the self (i.e., psychological ownership), underlies the greater value ascribed to physical goods. Differences in psychological ownership for physical and digital goods mediated the difference in their value. Experimentally manipulating antecedents and consequents of psychological ownership (i.e., expected ownership, identity-relevance, perceived control) bounded this effect, and moderated the mediating role of psychological ownership. The findings show how features of objects influence their capacity to garner psychological ownership before they are acquired, and provide theoretical and practical insights for the marketing, psychology, and economics of digital and physical goods.
Humanoid robots (androids if male; gynoids if female) are becoming increasingly humanlike, not only in appearance, but in responsiveness, emotions, movements, and ability to interact with humans. The counterpart to computerized machines becoming more humanlike is cyborgs (cybernetic organisms) – humans who are becoming more machinelike. Robots and cyborgs are no longer only figures out of science fiction. They are becoming part of our lives as robots move into our homes and as we adopt various internal and external modifications and devices that make us, at least in certain senses, superhuman. If superhuman seems too strong a claim, we have only to reflect on all the things we can do with a smart phone; it puts the world's knowledge instantly at our fingertips and helps us with everything from route finding, to meeting potential partners, to monitoring our health, diet, and fitness, doing our banking, and watching events unfold across the globe (e.g., Bode and Kirstensen 2016). But these developments are just a taste of things to come. Benford and Malartre (2007, p. 8) observe that: Soon robots will be everywhere, performing surgery, exploring hazardous places, making rescues, fighting fires, handling heavy goods. After a decade or two they will be unremarkable as the computer screen is now … robots will increasingly blend in … The cyborgs will be less obvious. Many changes will be hidden from view. At first these additions to the human body will be interior, as rebuilt joints, elbows, and hearts are now. Then larger adjuncts will appear, perhaps on people's heads or limbs. Soon we will cross the line between repair and augmentation, probably first in sports medicine and the military, then spreading to everyone who wants to make the body perform better. Such hybridization and merging of humans and nonhuman devices affects consumer self-definition and raises a number of behavioral, moral, ethical, and legal issues. For example, as machines like automobiles become more autonomous, it has been suggested that they could become not only self-driving, but self-owning vehicles.
This research examines the effectiveness of public recognition in encouraging charitable giving, demonstrating that public recognition can sometimes decrease donations. While previous work has largely shown that making donations visible to others can motivate donors, the present research shows that the effectiveness of public recognition depends on whether potential donors are under an independent (i.e., separate from others) or interdependent (i.e., connected with others) selfconstrual. Across seven experimental studies, an independent self-construal decreases donation intentions and amounts when the donor will receive public recognition compared to when the donation will remain private. This effect is driven by the activation of an agentic motive, wherein independents are motivated to make decisions that are guided by their own goals and self-interests, rather than being influenced by the opinions and expectations of others. This research contributes to the understanding of the nuanced roles of both public recognition and self-construal in predicting donation behavior. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved.