Psychological Ownership of (Borrowed) Money.

The current research introduces the concept of psychological ownership of borrowed money, a construct that represents how much consumers feel that borrowed money is their own. The authors observe both individual-level and contextual-level variation in the degree to which consumers feel psychological ownership of borrowed money, and variation on this dimension predicts willingness to borrow money for discretionary purchases. At an individual level, psychological ownership of borrowed money is distinct from other individual factors such as debt aversion, financial literacy, income, intertemporal discounting, materialism, propensity to plan, self-control, spare money, and tightwad–spendthrift tendencies, and it predicts willingness to borrow above and beyond these factors. At a contextual level, the authors document systematic differences in psychological ownership between different debt types. They show that these differences in psychological ownership manifest in consumers' online search behavior and explain consumers' differential interest in borrowing across debt types. Finally, the authors demonstrate that psychological ownership of borrowed money is malleable, such that framing debt using language lower in psychological ownership can reduce consumers' propensity to borrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) is the property of American Marketing Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)