Effects of emphasis terminology in warning instructions on compliance intent and understandability

• Published in: Journal of safety research Vol. 55; pp. 41 - 51
• Main Authors: Kim, Soyun, Wogalter, Michael S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Ltd 01.12.2015; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Accident Prevention - methods; Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Communication; Compliance; Compliance intent; Comprehension; Correlation analysis; Experiments; Female; Humans; Intention; Male; Measures of variability; Perceived hazard; Risk-Taking; Safety; Terminology; Vocabulary; Warnings; Young Adult; Perceived hazard; Vocabulary; Compliance intent; Terminology; Warnings
• ISSN: 0022-4375; 1879-1247
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jsr.2015.07.008

The aim of this study was to examine whether differing terminology in warning directives can influence compliance intentions and understandability. Despite its important role for warning effectiveness, warning instructions has not received much attention in warning research. Emphasis terms that can be used in warning directives were investigated. Three experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, participants rated a set of 12 warning directive statements consisted of one basic warning directive, which served as the control and the other 11 one- or two-word emphasis phrases that added to a basic directive. In Experiment 2, participants rated 37 emphasizers on compliance intent. In Experiment 3, participants rated the same emphasizers on understandability. The first 2 experiments showed substantial differences in compliance intentions depending on the emphasizer used. For example, some terms and phrases (e.g., “urgent”) produced high compliance intent whereas others showed lower compliance intent (e.g., “recommended”). In Experiment 3, some terms were rated as understandable (e.g., “important”), whereas others were rated as somewhat understandable (e.g., “compulsory”). The addition of emphasis terms to the warning directives influenced people's compliance intent and understandability. In addition, significant correlations were found among compliance intent, understandability, and measures of variability. . The findings from this research could aid warning designers in selecting understandable wording that gives rise to different levels of compliance intentions. •This research investigated one-word or two-word phrases that can be used in the warning directives (instructions) on compliance intent and understandability.•Three experiments were conducted. The first two experiments examined a set of emphasis terminologies on compliance intent and Experiment 3 evaluated perceived understandability.•The findings were that some terms (e.g., “urgent” and “extremely important”) increased compliance intent whereas the others (e.g., “recommended”) lowered compliance intent.•Another finding was that significant correlations were found with perceived understandability with compliance intentions and measures of variability.