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ownership
You value things more once you claim them.
A 1990 study showed that people value an object significantly more simply because they consider it to be 'theirs' for a short period.
Participants were given a coffee mug and asked what they would sell it for, then compared to those asked what they would pay to acquire it. The 'owners' demanded double the price of the 'buyers'.
Ownership changes the value of an object before you even use it.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Kahneman et al., 1990, Journal of Political Economy
- What the check found
- The 1990 paper 'Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem' by Kahneman, Knetsch, and Thaler in JPE is a seminal study that established the endowment effect using coffee mugs.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.