Understanding the Participation of Passive Members in Online Brand Communities Through the Lens of Psychological Ownership Theory

•Proposed a conceptual model portraying passive members’ individual psychological ownership and collective psychological ownership towards the online brand community stimulating their participation intentions.•Data collected from 221 passive brand community members employed to test the model.•Individual as well as collective sense of psychological ownership held by passive members towards online brand communities affect their participation intentions positively.•Participation intentions of passive members further drive them to purchase the focal brand of the community and spread positive word-of-mouth about the community.