COMPLIANCE TO OWNERS MANUAL WARNINGS - INFLUENCE OF FAMILIARITY AND THE PLACEMENT OF A SUPPLEMENTAL DIRECTIVE

This research examined several methods of directing people to warnings in an owner's manual in order to increase compliance behaviour during the installation of a computer disk drive. Seven conditions were exam ined. In the control condition, the disk drive was accompanied by a ba sic manual that contained equipment-safety warnings on pages 6 and 7. In another condition, the manual was identical except that the warning s were also reprinted redundantly on page 2 of the manual (which was b lank in the basic manual). The remaining five conditions were identica l to the redundant-warning condition, except that they also included a supplemental directive that was placed at various locations (on the s hipping box, cover page of the manual, accompanying leaflet, disk driv e cable, and front of the drive). The directive stated 'Please Read Pa ge 2 of the Owner's Manual Before Connecting the Equipment'. The resul ts show a trend of greater compliance with the redundant-warning (only ) manual compared to the basic manual, but the difference was not stat istically significant. When the supplemental directive was located mos t proximally to the equipment and required physical interaction with t he warning during the task (front-of-drive condition), compliance was significantly greater than the basic and redundant-warning (only) manu al conditions. The results also show that, in general, users with less experience connecting electronic equipment complied more frequently w ith the warnings than users with greater experience. Additional result s indicate that less experienced users were not further influenced by the presence and location of the supplemental directive, but highly ex perienced users complied more often when the supplemental directive wa s placed in the more proximal locations. The results are discussed in relation to script theory and to previous research on familiarity. The present study suggests that well-placed safety information can be use ful in alerting users with varying levels of experience.