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36 Law & Hum. Behav. 293 (2012)
Blind Consent? A Social Psychological Investigation of Non-Readership of Click-through Agreements

handle is hein.journals/lwhmbv36 and id is 291 raw text is: Law and Human Behavior 2012. Vol. 36. No. 4. 293-311 © 2011 American Psychological Association 0147-7307/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/h0093969 Blind Consent? A Social Psychological Investigation of Non-Readership of Click-Through Agreements Victoria C. Plaut and Robert P. Bartlett, III UC Berkeley School of Law Across two studies we aimed to measure empirically the extent of non-readership of click-through agreements (CTAs), identify the dominant beliefs about CTAs contributing to non-readership, and experimentally manipulate these beliefs to decrease automatic non-reading behavior and enhance contract efficiency. In our initial questionnaire study (Study 1), as predicted, the vast majority of participants reported not reading CTAs and the most prevalent beliefs about CTAs contributing to nonreadership included: they are too long and time-consuming, they are all the same, they give one no choice but to agree, they are irrelevant, and vendors are generally reputable. Manipulating these beliefs on a simulated music website (Study 2) revealed an increase in readership. In addition, CTA compre- hension and CTA rejection rates were both increased significantly by manipulating the length of the CTA. These results demonstrate support for the influence of widely held beliefs about CTAs on contract readership, provide evidence against the common limited cognition perspective on non-readership, and suggest that presenting CTAs in a short, readable format can increase CTA read-ership and comprehen- sion as well as shopping of CTA terms. Keywords: form contracts, disclosure, non-readership, construal, widespread beliefs It is now widely accepted that a primary contributing factor to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007-2008 was the marketing of adjustable-rate mortgages to borrowers who had little understand- ing of their underlying risks. A central focus of financial reform following the housing crisis has accordingly been to ensure that individuals are better informed about the contract terms that gov- ern their consumer credit transactions -a goal featured most no- tably in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As summarized by Warren (2010), its chief architect, the new consumer bureau is based on a pretty simple idea: people ought to be able to read their credit card and mortgage contracts and know This article was published Online First June 16, 2011. Victoria C. Plaut and Robert P. Bartlett, III, UC Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley, California. This research was funded by a University of Georgia Research Foun- dation faculty grant to both authors. We thank Niki Schley, Kati Cooper, Robert Boone, Jessica Fowler, Bryan Williamson, and Jackie Simms for their research assistance, UGA's CITP group for programming the PDM website, and Alem Tecle and Leslie Stone for assistance with manuscript preparation. This article also benefited from comments received from Rob MacCoun, Jeffrey Rachlinski, and participants in Berkeley's Law and Economics Seminar, Cornell's Law and Economics Colloquium, NYU's Law and Economics Seminar, the Faculty Colloquium at University of Georgia School of Law, and the contracts section of the 2009 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Victoria C. Plaut and Robert P. Bartlett, III contributed equally to this article. Order was determined at random. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Victoria C. Plaut, UC Berkeley School of Law, 591 Simon Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-7200, USA. E-mail: vplaut@law.berkeley.edu; or Robert P. Bar- tlett, III, UC Berkeley School of Law, 890 Simon Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-7200, USA. E-mail: rbartlett@law.berkeley.edu the deal. Yet, notwithstanding the simplicity of this idea, a rather complicated empirical fact promises to make its realization a formidable challenge: In particular, consumers have long refused to read mass market contracts (Eisenberg, 1995). Why don't consumers read form contracts? Are there any con- ditions under which efforts to enhance consumer readership might actually succeed? To get at these questions, we undertake a psy- chological investigation of the causes of non-readership of mass market contracts in one of the most notorious domains of con- sumer non-readership: Internet click-through agreements (CTAs). Used by online vendors to set forth their legal relationship with consumers (Kunz, Del Duca, Thayer, & Debrow, 2001), CTAs are ubiquitous in the online world. Requiring but a simple mouse click of I agree to be formed, CTAs are commonly used to establish the terms of use of a website, the terms on which a consumer may download and use a software program, or even the terms on which a consumer can apply for a home mortgage or credit card. As with standard, paper-based contracts, anecdotal evidence and recent empirical research indicates that individuals overwhelm- ingly make the choice to accept but not read-CTAs (Bakows, Marotta-Wurgler, & Trossen, 2009; Becher & Unger-Aviram, 2008; Hillman, 2006a). This documented phenomenon of blind consent thus makes CTAs a natural starting point for investigat- ing the causes of consumer non-readership. At the same time, the fact that CTAs are presented, assessed, and accepted entirely in an online environment provides a unique opportunity to subject con- sumer behavior to experimental analysis given the ability to elec- tronically monitor contract reading. Non-readership of CTAs also poses important public policy considerations in its own right. Like their older, paper-based cousins, CTAs generally constitute enforceable contracts given that legal doctrine requires simply that an individual manifest 293

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