Contribute to MY IT Service: Encouraging Technology Extra-Role Behaviors in User-Artifact Interactions from a Psychological Ownership Perspective

Access-based and algorithm-empowered IT services (e.g., Spotify and Duolingo) have become ubiquitous, introducing a new form of user-artifact (U-A) interactions that extend beyond traditional user-user (U-U) interactions. However, the on-demand nature of these services, which fosters low perceptions of ownership, makes it challenging to retain users and encourage their voluntary contributions. Drawing on the literature on psychological ownership and extra-role behavior, this study sheds light on how the technology could be designed such that users are more likely to use the technology and to perform technology extra-role behaviors (TERBs) in U-A interactions, by examining psychological ownership of IT service (POITS) as the underlying mechanism. Employing mixed methods, this study further unveils the mechanisms of how users form such a psychological bonding with an avatarless algorithm in the human-algorithm interactions by co-constructing an extended self, advising on algorithm appreciation and AI adoption.

History: Suprateek Sarker, Senior Editor; Huigang Liang, Associate Editor.

Funding: This project received funding support from the Warwick Business School Primary Data Collection Fund and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72571232, 72371023, and 72371220].

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2021.0620.