Communicating a safety-critical limitation of an infant-carrying product: The effect of product design and warning salience

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted to determine how the features of a product and the salience of its warnings affect potential purchasers' perceptions of a safety-critical product attribute. The experimental product was an infant carrier, which represents a class of products known to be inappropriately used as as infant car seats. Sixty-two subjects were asked to examine and select an infant car seat/carrier product from a group of four infant-carrying products. Dependent measures included the subjects' knowledge that the experimental product was not designed to protect an infant in an auto accident and their attention to various warnings. Removing a potentially confusing product feature did not significantly reduce the proportion of subjects who mistakenly thought the product was designed for use as a car seat. However, collectively, the features of the product prompted more than a third of the subjects to incorrectly assess the safety-critical limitations of the product. Increasing the warning's salience significantly increased the proportion of subjects who noticed and read it, but only in the most conspicuous condition was there an increase in the proportion of subjects who correctly recognized the product's limitations.