THEORETICAL AND MODEL DEVELOPMENT

In entrepreneurship theory, ownership is most often associated with the amount of equity controlled by an individual entrepreneur. However, several scholars acknowledge that feelings of ownership often exist in the absence of objective control. As such, we explore emerging literature on psychological ownership to provide a theoretical basis for explaining how the psychological state of ownership can persist apart from the amount of equity an entrepreneur controls. Specifically, we show how key determinants of psychological ownership interact and relate to specific entrepreneurship processes, develop a theoretical model, and examine the contribution of this work back to the psychological ownership literature. Several empirical implications of our model and directions for future research are discussed as well