Mere ownership effect

The mere ownership effect is the observation that people who own a good tend to evaluate it more positively than people who do not.

It is typically demonstrated in a paradigm in which some participants in an experiment are randomly assigned to own a good ("owners") by receiving it for free. Other participants are randomly assigned to simply evaluate the same good without receiving it. Participants who own the good typically rate it as more attractive or as liking it more than do participants who do not own it. It is not necessary to actually own a good to exhibit the mere ownership effect. Simply touching or imagining that one owns a good is enough to instantiate the mere ownership effect.

The mere ownership effect is often used as a case in which people show the endowment effect that cannot be parsimoniously explained by loss aversion.

Two routes have been proposed to explain the mere ownership effect. Both rely on the association of a good with the self.

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Wikipedia