Protecting the children —a virtual reality experiment on consumers’ risk perceptions of household chemicals

Warnings on the labels of hazardous household chemicals (e.g. warning pictograms and use instructions) should create risk awareness and thus encourage safe storage, handling and disposal. However, scientific findings have called into question the effectiveness of warnings to prevent accidents, albeit mostly based on consumers' self-reports. This study aimed to contribute to existing data on household chemicals and consumer safety by applying a novel observational method using virtual reality (VR). The study participants (N = 119) were observed after receiving a task to childproof a virtual apartment from various interactable neutral and hazardous objects (i.e. knives, lighters and household chemicals with and without warnings) that were placed in the virtual apartment. For the analysis, the object placement (i.e. accessible or inaccessible to the children) and the level of interaction with the objects were coded, and the observational data were supplemented with data gathered through a questionnaire. The results showed that most hazardous household chemicals were moved to spots that were inaccessible to the children without any interactions of the participants with the warnings. Instead, they used their pre-existing knowledge and intuitive strategies to judge the objects’ risks. These potentially misleading intuitive strategies should be increasingly considered in the regulation of hazardous household chemicals. This study also discussed the use and limitations of VR for the observation of human behaviour and decision making under uncertainty.