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. 2024 Feb;50(2):270-284.
doi: 10.1177/01461672221129757. Epub 2022 Oct 26.

The Two Routes of Collective Psychological Ownership: Rights and Responsibilities Explain Intentions to Exclude Outsiders and Engage in Stewardship Behavior

Tom Nijs  1 , Borja Martinovic  1 , Maykel Verkuyten  1
Affiliations

The Two Routes of Collective Psychological Ownership: Rights and Responsibilities Explain Intentions to Exclude Outsiders and Engage in Stewardship Behavior

Tom Nijs et al. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

People can have a sense of collective ownership of a particular territory, such as "our" country, "our" neighborhood, and "our" park. Collective psychological ownership is argued to go together with rights and responsibilities that have different behavioral implications. We found that collective psychological ownership leads to perceived determination right, and indirectly to the exclusion of outsiders from "our" place. Simultaneously, collective psychological ownership leads to perceived group responsibility, and indirectly to engagement in stewardship behavior. These results were found among Dutch adults, cross-sectionally in relation to their country (Study 1; N = 617) and a neighborhood (Study 2; N = 784), and experimentally in relation to an imaginary local park (Study 3; N = 384, Study 4; N = 502, both pre-registered). Our research shows that the feeling that a place is "ours" can, via perceived rights and responsibilities, result in both exclusionary and prosocial behavioral tendencies.

Keywords: collective psychological ownership; determination right; exclusion of outsiders; group responsibility; stewardship.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Standardized coefficients of the path model of Study 1. Note. Total effects were reported between square brackets. Included control variables were not reported. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Standardized coefficients of the path model of Study 2. Note. Total effects were reported between square brackets. Included control variables were not reported. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Standardized coefficients of the path model of Study 3. Note. Total effects were reported between square brackets. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Standardized coefficients of the path model. Note. Total effects were reported between square brackets. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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