Solving stewardship problems with increased psychological ownership

Abstract

Publicly owned or shared items can often suffer from a lack of stewardship due to a diffusion of responsibility, a dilemma sometimes known as the tragedy of the commons. We propose that even when an item is publicly rather than privately owned (e.g., a local pond or community park), there can still be high levels of psychological ownership. The benefit of high psychological ownership for public goods is that the individual then takes a stronger responsibility for care (stewardship) of the object, thus reducing the tragedy of the commons. We discuss interventions designed to increase ownership for shared and public goods, including the use of social identity to drive engagement, and offer experimental evidence for such approaches.