Caution! Warning Effectiveness may be More Obfuscated than it Appears: Making Sense of the Warning Literature

Abstract

Much research on warnings has the ultimate goal of assessing warning effectiveness or behavioral compliance with the warning. Despite this seemingly common goal, research conducted on warnings differentially concentrates on various aspects of the warning process, all of which are necessary to comply with a warning, but each is not sufficient to ensure compliance when considered in isolation. Thus, this extensive review of the literature will consider research on the four stages of warning compliance: namely, notice, encode, comprehend, and comply, and will seek to evaluate the effectiveness of product warnings as a whole. In addition to determining the effectiveness of warnings at each stage of the warning process, this research will also identify areas in need of further research, especially those pertaining to behavioral compliance, and will propose a framework for conducting experiments to adequately and more fully address behavioral compliance and warning effectiveness for on-product warnings.

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