Psychology of collecting

A selection of various silver coins, a common example of collectable objects.

The psychology of collecting is an area of study that seeks to understand the motivating factors explaining why people devote time, money, and energy making and maintaining collections. There exist a variety of theories for why collecting behavior occurs, including consumerism, materialism, neurobiology and psychoanalytic theory. The psychology of collecting also offers insight into variance between similar behavior that can be recognised on a continuum between being beneficial as a hobby and also capable of being a mental disorder.[1] The large diversity of different types of collected objects and variance of collecting behaviors across these types has also been subject to research in psychology, marketing and game design.[2][3]

Collecting is known to be a common behavior, with one estimate suggests that 40% of United States households engage in some form of collecting behavior,[4] with another source suggesting a global estimate closer to 30% assuming low variance between countries.[5]

  1. ^ Nordsletten, Ashley E.; Mataix-Cols, David (April 2012). "Hoarding versus collecting: Where does pathology diverge from play?". Clinical Psychology Review. 32 (3): 165–176. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2011.12.003. PMID 22322013.
  2. ^ Toups, Zachary O.; Crenshaw, Nicole K.; Wehbe, Rina R.; Tondello, Gustavo F.; Nacke, Lennart E. (2016-10-15). "The Collecting Itself Feels Good". Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. Austin, Texas: ACM. pp. 276–290. doi:10.1145/2967934.2968088. ISBN 978-1-4503-4456-2. S2CID 3167498.
  3. ^ Allahdini, Arash; Chitsaz, Shahrzad; Saeedi, Hamid (2017-07-28). "A Consideration on Factors of Collecting Buying Behavior". International Journal of Marketing Studies. 9 (4): 111. doi:10.5539/ijms.v9n4p111. ISSN 1918-7203.
  4. ^ Ijams Spaid, Brian (2018-11-13). "Exploring consumer collecting behavior: a conceptual model and research agenda". Journal of Consumer Marketing. 35 (6): 653–662. doi:10.1108/jcm-05-2017-2224. ISSN 0736-3761. S2CID 239792246.
  5. ^ W., Belk, Russell (2001). Collecting in a consumer society. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25848-0. OCLC 46909826.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)