Ownership leads to conflicts: the double-edged impact of psychological ownership on communication satisfaction in virtual communities
Abstract
Purpose
Psychological ownership has been a topic of intense debate for several decades, especially in the digital era. In addition, as part of the digital public domain, virtual communities shape our digital lives. Unfortunately, few studies have examined the communication process in virtual communities from the perspective of psychological ownership. Moreover, information and organization are key aspects of virtual communities. This research aimed to explore the impact of psychological ownership on communication satisfaction from these two perspectives.
Design/methodology/approach
I collected 471 responses using a questionnaire. In terms of empirical methods, I developed a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the relationship between psychological ownership and communication satisfaction as well as the mechanism underlying this relationship – namely, information behavior. Specifically, I first examined the relationship between psychological ownership and information behavior. I then developed a comprehensive framework for the double-edged impact of psychological ownership in virtual communities on communication satisfaction.
Findings
I found that psychological ownership has a double-edged effect on communication satisfaction based on two types of information behavior in virtual communities. Specifically, organization-based psychological ownership (OPO) positively influences communication satisfaction through information exchange. In contrast, information-based psychological ownership (IPO) negatively impacts communication satisfaction through information-hiding.
Originality/value
The findings of this research demonstrate that psychological ownership has a double-edged effect on communication satisfaction. First, the findings of this study reveal the downsides of psychological ownership, which are not consistent with its beneficial role. Second, the negative effect of psychological ownership with regard to communication in virtual communities also helps explain communication failure in virtual communities. Finally, despite the downsides of psychological ownership in the context of a virtual community revealed by this study, this factor has an overall beneficial effect.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by the Youth Project of Liaoning Provincial Social Science Planning Fund (L23CXW002) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT23RC(3)043). Moreover, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who has contributed to this research. I would like to thank Assistant Professor Yongheng Liang from the School of Business at Soochow University, Assistant Professor Han Lin from the School of Communication at Soochow University, Postdoctoral Researcher Zhefei Li from the School of Management at Fudan University, Associate Professor Taoqin Chen from the SILC Business School at Shanghai University, Ph.D. candidate Tan Cheng from the School of Management at Fudan University, Dr Zhicheng Weng and Dr Zhi Li. I am grateful for their supports and valuable insights during the topic selection, research, writing, submission and revision stages of this paper. Secondly, I appreciate the guidance provided by the anonymous peer reviewers. Lastly, I would like to thank the editorial team at ITP for their support in the publication process of this paper.
Citation
Fang, L.B. (2024), "Ownership leads to conflicts: the double-edged impact of psychological ownership on communication satisfaction in virtual communities", Information Technology & People, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/ITP-08-2023-0768
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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