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This research investigates the cognitive perceptual process that homeowners go through when faced with the decision to protect themselves from the risk of wildfires. This decision can be examined by looking at the interaction between the integrated protection motivation theory-transtheoretical model and different levels of homeowners' subjective knowledge related to wildfire risks. We investigated the role of motivation, decision stages of risk readiness, and subjective knowledge on the number of risk-mitigating actions undertaken by homeowners living in high-risk communities. The results indicate that homeowners who are in an early or precontemplative stage (both low and high subjective knowledge) as well as low knowledge contemplatives are motivated by their perceived degree of vulnerability to mitigate the risk. In contrast, high knowledge contemplatives' potential behavioral changes are more likely to be motivated by increasing their perceptions of the severity of the risk. Risk-mitigating behaviors undertaken by high knowledge action homeowners are influenced by their perceptions of risk severity, self-efficacy, and response efficacy. In contrast, the low knowledge action homeowners engage in risk reduction behaviors without the influence of any of the PMT variables; demonstrating their motivation to emulate others in their community. These results have implications for the type of information that should be used to effectively communicate risks in an effort to influence the diverse homeowner segments to engage in risk-reduction behaviors.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the comments and suggestions of Brigitte Braig and Niraj Dawar.Various theories suggest that the perceived similarity of objects facilitates the transfer of knowledge, affect, and intentions from one object to the other. However, there is disagreement as to the meaning of similarity and how it should be operationalized among these various theories, and no effort to relate these various measures to one another exists in the literature. In an empirical study, the authors examine the relationships among measures of product similarity in three different contexts: (1) goalcongruent products, (2) moderately goal-incongruent products, and (3) extremely goal-incongruent products. The results of exploratory factor analyses revealed that perceived similarity is a multidimensional construct and that the number and structure of these dimensions of similarity are different when products differ in their degrees of goal congruency. Structural equation analyses of the measures based on a second sample confirmed the structure obtained in the earlier exploratory analyses and demonstrated that brand attitudes and purchase intention exhibit different relationships to the underlying dimensions of similarity in the goal-congruent and goal-incongruent conditions, consistent with expectations based on the theory of goal-derived categorization. The authors discuss implications of these findings for theory and practice.

The authors review the diverse literature on the effects of product warnings. They conclude that warnings inform rather than persuade consumers and consumers selectively attend to warning messages. They also examine research on potential warning message ineffectiveness due to frequent use and on possible reactive behavior induced by warning messages. They conclude that greater caution in the design of warning messages is needed because of the multiple effects of warnings and the varying responses of different groups of consumers. Furthermore, they suggest that warning messages should be designed using empirical research rather than expert opinion or judgment.