  In weather disasters, first responders access dedicated communication
channels different from civilian commercial channels to facilitate rescues.
However, rescues in recent disasters have increasingly involved civilian and
volunteer forces, requiring civilian channels not to be overloaded with
traffic. We explore seven enhancements to the wording of Wireless Emergency
Alerts (WEAs) and their effectiveness in getting smartphone users to comply,
including reducing frivolous mobile data consumption during critical weather
disasters. We conducted a between-subjects survey (N=898), in which
participants were either assigned no alert (control) or an alert framed as
Basic Information, Altruism, Multimedia, Negative Feedback, Positive Feedback,
Reward, or Punishment. We find that Basic Information alerts resulted in the
largest reduction of multimedia and video services usage; we also find that
Punishment alerts have the lowest absolute compliance. This work has
implications for creating more effective WEAs and providing a better
understanding of how wording can affect emergency alert compliance.
