Conclusion
We performed an RCT to investigate using designed messages to increase positive attitudes toward IT innovations. Before receiving the designed messages, the respondents perceived the IT innovations to threaten future generations more than the respondents themselves. The message effects were statistically significant; that is, the positive attitudes of respondents who perceived stronger support from previous generations on reading the messages were increased more. The sense of familial support and the intervention effects were boosted by viewing an illustration showing the relationship of how previous generations benefit present and future generations via IT innovations, compared with only reading a textual message containing the same information. The intervention effects were also statistically significant for the perceived risks to the respondents themselves, not just to future generations.We analyzed which personality traits contributed to the message effects using the HEXACO model. Fearfulness, which is a facet of Emotionality, boosted the intervention effects on the perceived risks to both the respondents themselves and to future generations. Responses to an open-ended question suggested that respondents with high Fearfulness were expecting IT innovations to help to reduce risks in daily life, such as improving medical treatments or preventing traffic accidents. Agreeableness boosted the intervention effects too, but only for perceived risks to future generations. Typical responses were expectations that IT innovations should benefit the general public.Our previous study showed that a designed message had similar effects on attitudes to risk from air pollution caused by industrialization to our designed message about IT innovations [Examples of further case studies for potential applications are low-carbon technologies or carbon recycling technologies, which would have a large influence on future society. In particular, technologies that will need large infrastructure will encounter not-in-my-back-yard problems, which describe the phenomenon where new public assets are approved of by the general public but are not accepted by residents of the place where the assets are built. These changes may encounter risk-averse attitudes from local residents, even if the social benefits are clear. Thus, we will investigate how our designed message framework can be used for information provision about these new technologies in future work. Our two case studies do not guarantee that our framework is universally effective for information provision about every kind of risk because it is natural that there are limitations to the applicability of the method, and our future work will also explore under which conditions the designed messages are effective or can have negative effects.