Psychological Ownership and the Individual Appropriation of Technology

We use information technology to accomplish a significant portion of our daily tasks. The way individuals choose to use technology varies as much as the outcomes of their usage. Appropriation the way that people choose or learn to use technology has been explored at a group level to explain group behaviors and performance. Although appropriation antecedents and outcomes have been investigated in many studies, none has attempted to explain the motivations or factors influencing the individual appropriation of technology; nor has extant research discovered the impacts resulting from individual appropriation. In this exploratory paper, we inquire within this gap by arguing that appropriation and psychological ownership are theoretically equivalent. This new theoretical connection suggests potentially significant antecedents for individual appropriation, which have been overlooked.