Abstract: As employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) is widely implemented in Chinese enterprises, the incentive mechanism of ESOP needs to be discussed insightfully The relationship model among ESOP, psychological ownership and employee performance is built, focusing on the impacts of the three dimensions of ESOP, namely the equity rights, information rights, and control rights on employee performance and the role of psychological ownership in this process The empirical research results showed that: for all types of employees, equity rights and information rights had a significantly positive impact on employee performance, and psychological ownership played a full mediating role in both effects However, the impact of control rights on employee performance was not obvious After analyzing the reasons, based on the employee classification, the impact of control rights on the performance of core employees was studied, finding that control rights significantly affected the performance of such employees, and psychological ownership also played a full mediating role in this process The conclusions were conducive to enriching the empirical research of the impacts of ESOP, and provided important inspiration for domestic enterprises to implement ESOP

Key words: motivation, employee stock ownership, psychological ownership, performance