Confirmatory factor analysis of the psychological ownership questionnaire for the South African context

Abstract

Feelings of possession and ownership are part of the natural human condition. The self includes everything that a person can call his/her own, both material and non-material. Feelings of ownership influence a person’s attitudes, motivation and behaviour. Both ownership and psychological ownership are rooted in a person’s feelings of possession. There are many results from managing psychological ownership, but two specific ones are organizational effectiveness and positive behavioural effects. The purpose of this study was to investigate the construct validity of the psychological ownership questionnaire within the South African context. If psychological ownership can be measured, it will assist in the process of managing organisational change and commitment. The psychological ownership questionnaire was applied to a group of randomly selected employees to determine construct validity. This questionnaire assesses promotive and preventative psychological ownership - two theoretically derived forms of psychological ownership. These two forms of ownership have five factors namely territoriality, efficacy, accountability, belongingness and self-identity. The questionnaire was validated using data from a professional, skilled and semi-skilled sample (n=145) in order to prove construct validity trough confirmatory factor analysis. This study confirmed the 5-factor model by means of factor analysis. However, the correlation between self-identity and belongingness was extremely high and these two factors were merged to produce a 4-factor model. It is recommended that psychological ownership in the South African context is measured using the 5-factor model. Although construct validity was proven in this study, further research of construct validation in different contexts is encouraged to strengthen the current theory.