THE EFFECTS OF COLOUR ON USERS’ COMPLIANCE WITH WARNING BANNER MESSAGES ACROSS CULTURES

The objective of this research in progress is to understand how colour affects users’ decision-making processes in the context of warning banner messages. So far, little research has examined this complex psychological and cognitive process wherein the psychology of colour can play an important role in the relationship between the warning message and the user’s decision-making process (the decision to continue or to exit). We aim to close the existing research gap by studying the effects of colour on users’ decision-making processes across different cultures. More precisely, we intend to understand: 1) how different colour applications (black, blue, yellow, red, green, white) influence users’ decision-making processes; 2) how diverse cultural groups are affected by different colour applications and 3) how warning messages impact the users’ decision-making processes during the first and successive event occurrences. We build our work on the theory of psychological reversals to colour, supported by
the Cognitive-Affective model of communication. We intend to conduct online experiments across different cultures, measuring actual users’ behaviour. The results of this study will reveal new factors that influence users’ attention. This could advance our understanding of the psychological process that precedes the decision itself and may offer important theoretical and practical implications.