CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — There’s a good reason why that fine china set or crystal stemware collection inherited from grandma sits in a box gathering dust in the basement.
According to new research co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign marketing expert, consumers don’t simply donate family heirlooms and move on from them when they no longer spark joy. Instead, they remain concerned with how those heritage goods will be passed on to new owners and whether their legacy will continue.
As the households of the baby boom generation downsize, their adult children continue to face difficult decisions about what to do with the sometimes unwanted leftover goods bequeathed to them. A new paper indicates that descendants who inherit meaningful possessions often opt to keep heritage goods together as a set rather than breaking them up and giving them away piecemeal, said Ravi Mehta , the Walter H. Stellner Professor of Marketing at Illinois.
“While previous research has focused on why people hold onto meaningful possessions, this research examines what happens when letting go of those possessions becomes necessary,” said Mehta, also the associate dean of graduate programs and a professor of business administration at Gies College of Business .
The research, which was co-written by Hyewon Oh of the Stevens Institute of Technology, will be published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research .
Across a qualitative pilot study and four experiments, the researchers found that heirs thought keeping items together when giving them away helped preserve the family history and legacy embedded in the heritage goods. However, when goods such as dinnerware or hardcover books were viewed as independent pieces rather than a unified whole, heirs become more willing to distribute them across multiple charities if doing so increased the likelihood that the items would continue to be used.
“We found that people prefer to maintain the systemic integrity and sanctity of the product, even when they are giving it away for free,” Mehta said. “In other words, if it’s a dish set, they chose to keep all the dishes together and donate the entire set rather than breaking it apart and spreading it out over many different charities.”
The findings revealed that consumers remain concerned about the fate of heritage goods long after their ownership of them ends, Mehta said.
“More broadly, the research highlights that facilitating the circulation of heritage goods may require addressing not only practical concerns such as who gets what, but also the psychological needs of heirs — specifically, their desire to see their family history and legacy continue in some sort of useful manner in the future,” he said.
The research has implications for charities, donation platforms and organizations involved in reuse and resale, the researchers said.
“For many families right now with aging parents and relatives, this is a very relevant issue,” Mehta said. “The results suggest that heirs may be more willing to donate heritage goods when they believe the goods’ legacy will be preserved — either by keeping items together or by ensuring that individual pieces continue to be appropriately used.”
Journal of the Association for Consumer Research
Randomized controlled/clinical trial
People
Preserving Legacy at Disposal: How Heritage Goods Shape Donation Allocation
14-Oct-2026