The territorial foundations of human property

Many animal species have morphological and cognitive adaptations for fighting with others to gain resources, but it remains unclear how humans make fighting decisions. Non-human animals adaptively calibrate fighting behavior to ecological variables such as resource quantity and resource distribution. Also, many species reduce fighting costs by resolving disputes based on power asymmetries or conventions. Here we show that humans apply an ownership convention in response to the problem of costly fighting. We designed a virtual environment where participants, acting as avatars, could forage and fight for electronic food items (convertible to cash). In two experimental conditions, resources were distributed uniformly or clustered in patches. In the patchy condition, we observed an ownership convention — the avatar who arrives first is more likely to win — but in the uniform condition, where costly fights are rare, the ownership convention is absent.