Appropriate or Remix? The Effects of Social Recognition and Psychological Ownership on Intention to Share in Online Communities

Even though negative aspects of making use of others’ work, such as illegal appropriation, have been found in online communities, remixing is considered a type of constructive creation for generating and recreating creative works. To make constructive creation via remixing sustainable, it is critical for users to share their own creations and allow others to use them in these online communities. We propose psychological ownership and social recognition as key antecedents for original creators to increase their intention to share their works in an online remix context. In this study, we aim to examine the relationships between intention to share, psychological ownership, and social recognition. To investigate the effects of psychological ownership and social recognition on intention to share, we proposed research hypotheses based on the theories of social recognition and psychological ownership. Prior to testing the hypotheses, we conducted a preliminary study including user interviews and community log analysis within an online remix community. Specific patterns of psychological ownership and social recognition in the online remix context were found in accordance with the theoretical background. The results from the preliminary study were applied to forms of apparatus and stimuli in the following experiment. A quasi-experiment was designed to test hypotheses of causal relationships between the key factors. A prototype of an online remix community for smartphone themes was developed based on the detailed findings of the preliminary study and utilized as an experimental apparatus. Sixty-nine participants carried out our experimental procedure of creating, sharing their own work, checking responses from others, and reporting their intention to share their future creations. The results of the quasi-experiment supported all our research hypotheses. Social recognition was found to increase the intention to share. Moreover, psychological ownership was found to increase the intention to share, an observation that may seem at odds with the exclusive aspects of ownership found in prior studies. More interesting, the positive effect of social recognition on intention to share becomes stronger with a higher perception of psychological ownership. This article ends with theoretical and practical implications of the study results.

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