Psychological ownership research in business: A bibliometric overview and future research directions

Despite the academic importance and industry imperatives of psychological ownership (PO), surprisingly little research has comprehensively addressed its structure and thematic evolution through organizational and customer lenses in the business domain. We examined 541 articles from the Web of Science database to depict the landscape of PO business research and to map its developmental trajectory between 1995 and 2022. We used two bibliometric techniques: (a) performance analysis to present research constituents’ performance in the field, including total publications and the number of publications and citations by journal; and (b) science mapping to identify intellectual and thematic relationships among research constituents, including the most influential publications, co-citation analysis, and co-word analysis. Finally, we outlined a conceptual model and several promising avenues for future research.