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

IntroductionThe 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.MethodThree 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.ResultsThe 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”).ConclusionThe 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.Practical application. The findings from this research could aid warning designers in selecting understandable wording that gives rise to different levels of compliance intentions.