Effect of freedom of customization on psychological ownership
Authors: Uwajima Yuki , Yang Wonseok 
Published: June 2024

The digitization of tangible assets, driven by advancements in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), not only fosters the emergence of new products, services, and markets but also significantly transforms consumer behavior from ownership-based to access-based consumption. This shift in consumption models can threaten or transfer consumers' psychological sense of ownership, presenting new opportunities for preservation. Particularly in streaming services such as Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Music, access-based content consumption may lead to a potential decrease in the psychological sense of ownership toward these services. Psychological ownership in access-based consumption refers to the psychological state in which consumers are conscious of ownership as an alternative to physical ownership. Given that perceived psychological ownership has been proposed to enhance loyalty and Willingness To Pay (WTP) for services, mitigating the decrease in psychological ownership is a crucial challenge, particularly in subscription-based streaming services, where retention is directly correlated with profits.Gary and Julie (2017) proposed that enhancing psychological ownership of music streaming services involves increasing consumers’ awareness that they can control the content created through shareable streaming profiles. Additionally, Inose (2023) emphasized the significance of enhancing the customization of music streaming services to amplify the desire for control, a factor contributing to the emergence of psychological ownership. Currently, existing streaming services offer features such as creating and sharing User-Generated Playlist(UGP) as playlists or favorites. Based on these prior studies and the current state of existing services, it is suggested that increasing the freedom of customization of the playlist features of streaming services can enhance psychological ownership. In design, there is limited research on freedom of customization during service usage.Therefore, this study investigates the impact of changes in freedom of customization in streaming service usage on consumer psychological ownership. To identify the factors that offer users a sense of psychological ownership of streaming services, a survey was conducted with 33 participants. Consequently, the elements related to playlist customization, such as changing playlist names and thumbnails, were identified. Moreover, elements related to sharing playlists with others were observed to have an impact on the psychological sense of ownership. Based on these results and prior research, the focus was narrowed to playlist customization.Subsequently, based on the identified elements, multiple UI samples with varying degrees of freedom for customization were created. A task was assigned to 20 students involving the creation of playlists with these UI samples, and then a survey was conducted to measure their sense of control and psychological ownership. The results revealed that an increase in the freedom of customization in playlists contributed to heightened psychological ownership of the service itself. However, an excessive increase in customization elements may lead to an operational burden during creation and excessive self-investment, potentially hindering the creation of playlists and the occurrence of psychological ownership.In conclusion, our study reveals that enhanced customization in streaming services boosts users' psychological ownership of these platforms. This insight can guide streaming service designers in identifying features and service requirements that elevate user loyalty and engagement.