Telling the “bad” to motivate your users to update: Evidence from behavioral and ERP studies

User resistance to software updates, which has long been a concern for software vendors, has spurred extensive research to investigate the characteristics of update messages hindering user updates. However, little is known about how to promote updates by update message design. This research focuses on how design elements, such as text-based framing (gain-framed vs. loss-framed) and image-based emotional tones (positive high arousal vs. positive low arousal), influence user motivation for updates and interact with their motivational orientations. The behavioral findings highlight that incorporating loss-framed text and positively high-arousing images in update messages effectively boosts user update behavior. Moreover, framing types interact significantly with users’ motivational orientations. Importantly, both promotion-focused and prevention-focused users consistently show stronger intentions to update when exposed to loss-framed texts, emphasizing the significant role of loss framing in promoting update behavior. In addition, ERP (Event-Related Potential) findings uncover the attentional and motivational processes underlying user behaviors by monitoring P100 and P200 component dynamics. This research contributes significantly to update message design literature and offers valuable insights for software vendors seeking to encourage user update behavior by highlighting the importance of considering framing types, emotional tones, and individual traits.