In the last two decades, a large body of research has been published on warnings. There have been hundreds of research-based articles written in various journals as well as several comprehensive books.
This special issue of Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries (HFEMSI) concerns the topic of warnings. Although there have been special issues on warnings in several human factors/ ergonomics journals, this is the first for HFEMSI. Warnings are relevant in the sectors of manufacturing and service because hazards are embedded in most contexts today. For example, in manufacturing, there are dangers in the production side of product and equipment, as well as hazards involved in the actual use. There are diverse contexts in which warnings are used as a means to disseminate safety information for the purpose of reducing hazard-related harm to people and property. Examples include warning labels on products, signage in environments, and admonitions in operator's manuals for industrial equipment.
Co-occurring with the growing body of warning research has been the development of models to conceptualize the cognitive processing involved when people encounter effective warnings (e.g., Edworthy & Adams, 1996;Lehto & Miller, 1986;Rogers, Lamson, & Rousseau, 2000). A recent iteration of the communication-human information processing (C-HIP) model (see Wogalter, 2006) can be used to conceptualize much of the body of research on warnings.
The C-HIP model depicted in Figure 1 has two main sections, each with several component stages. The first section of the framework uses a communications