Compliance to owner's 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 examined. In the control condition, the disk drive was accompanied by a basic manual that contained equipment-safety warnings on pages 6 and 7. In another condition, the manual was identical except that the warnings were also reprinted redundantly on page 2 of the manual (which was blank in the basic manual). The remaining five conditions were identical to the redundant-warning condition, except that they also included a supplemental directive that was placed at various locations (on the shipping box, cover page of the manual, accompanying leaflet, disk drive cable, and front of the drive). The directive stated 'Please Read Page 2 of the Owner's Manual Before Connecting the Equipment’. The results show a trend of greater compliance with the redundant-warning (only) manual compared to the basic manual, b...