What’s mine is mine: unpicking the psychological reasons people like to own things

People like owning things. Today, we most often see evidence of this on the internet, particularly on social media, that is filled with ads to buy things and people showing off their possessions, especially those of a high value, as a means of expression of personal success.

Western philosophers have devoted vast amounts of time down the ages to picking over the details of the nature of property. Aristotle believed that as long as they were motivated by the desire to own things, citizens would become rational, productive members of society. Many hundreds of years later, eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume expanded on this view, arguing that ownership acts as a stabilising influence on society. The dream of property ownership became a central part of the ‘American Dream’ as it developed throughout the mid-twentieth century.

This Psychological Ownership, established as being deeply ingrained in Western Culture, presents an interesting barrier for the implementation of circular models. Circular models often involve sharing, renting, leasing, or accessing products instead of owning them. This is in direct contradiction to this Psychological Ownership phenomenon. If western society is so deeply associated with owning things as a status symbol, how does a system of sharing become successful?

Research conducted by Globescan across populations in 31 countries over the past three years found that just 20% of people on average were willing to consider renting or leasing products rather than owning them.

In order to make this circular material economy model viable, we must change the nature of the relationship users have with the products they would rather own, in some cases switching away from a simple one-off purchase to some form of access model. And this shift has already proven to be successful.

There has been a lift over recent years ..... and services like Spotify, and Netflix have popularised the ability to subscribe to access to music and films rather than own the physical objects.

But, as a concept, why have services offering access but not ownership to media, such as Netflix and Spotify, been more successful than things like product rentals?

In this case, the conveniences of access with these media services, has matched the conveniences of full ownership, leading to negligible differences in renting vs. owning.

When it comes to products, however, there is simply not as convenient of a system of access in renting as there is in owning. In media, paying for, and streaming a movie on Netflix, requires about the same effort as buying a physical copy of said media.

The bottom line is that the move towards a circular economy means that marketers need to consider the psychological needs of their users in a different way to classic buyer research, and then feed this knowledge back into the business model design process.

Review

As an aspect of attempting to design a new system, I am very familiar with the concept of user hesitation. When designing anything "new", it's the one thing you really have to worry about. When a design or product you are attempting to put out there isn't received well, even if it is theoretically designed perfectly, or solves some monumental issue, still could be considered unsuccessful if you do not account for the existing psychology of your clients. Considering what they are familiar with, and they expect of products, is paramount to that design becoming successful.

Reference

Murphy, C. (2023, January 23). What’s mine is mine: Unpicking the psychological reasons people like to own things. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/articles/unpicking-the-psychological-reasons-people-like-to-own-things