Bringing safety analytics to the online shopper: evaluating designs for augmenting point-of-sale interfaces with safety information

PurposeThe widespread adoption of online purchasing has prompted increasing concerns about product safety, and regulators are beginning to hold e-commerce sites accountable for dangerous product defects. For online consumers, understanding the many inherent safety risks among the extensive array of products they browse is a formidable task. The authors attempt to address this problem via a client-side software artifact that warns shoppers about potential product safety hazards at the point of sale.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the authors built four candidate designs and assessed their effectiveness by means of a large randomized controlled experiment (n = 466). The authors define effectiveness as significant changes in dependent variables associated with health behaviors and technology adoption.FindingsThe authors find that all of the designs score high on adoption likelihood, that designs incorporating highlighting and scoring are better at increasing safety knowledge and that simpler designs are better at enhancing safety awareness.Originality/valueThese findings will inform the design of safety information dissemination systems and open new areas of safety awareness enhancement research. More generally, the authors introduce a novel method of testing text visualization variations and their impact on behavioral decisions.