The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias that occurs when consumers place a disproportionally high value on products they partially created. The name derives from the Swedish manufacturer and furniture retailer IKEA, which sells many furniture products that require assembly.
Official experiment results on the IKEA effect were first published by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School, Daniel Mochon of Yale University, and Dan Ariely of Duke University in 2011. Their experiments demonstrate that self-assembly impacts the evaluation of a product by its consumers. The experiment result suggests that when people use their own labor to construct a particular product, they value it more than if they didn’t put any effort into its creation, even if it is done poorly.