The Impact of Psychological Ownership on Value in Use and Relational Outcomes

Services largely represent transactions through which customers gain the right to use tangible or intangible resources of service providers. In doing so, customers attain access to resources without the need to own them legally. Feelings of ownership have important behavioral, emotional, and psychological consequences, even when a consumer is only the user of resources, not the legal owner. Research in the organizational field has especially investigated this so-called psychological ownership. Following this research, the current study investigates the effects of customer-perceived psychological ownership in the field of car-sharing services. Based on a qualitative pre-study, a quantitative study was conducted, that shows that psychological ownership has a significant positive influence on each of the identified value-in-use dimensions. Furthermore, the study reveals how the various dimensions influence customers’ satisfaction, affective commitment and word-of-mouth intention.