Case 3.

1 –Keep your city clean: environmental concerns

The students in this case have to be made to appreciate the logic of preparing a blueprint of the research
plan they would like to use in order to arrive at answers to their formulated research questions. The
research question as stated in the case is to find out
What is the existing attitude of consumers towards household recycling?
Ans.1. Since the protagonist Ms. Nagarajan is interested in finding out the current attitude of the Indian
consumers about recycling and based on this she wants to assess the feasibility of her idea, the
requirement of the study is topical. The study has equal merit to be taken further by an
exploratory research design, in order to get clarity about identifying the research objectives and
hypotheses to be investigated, or the student could argue for using the descriptive design to
describe the current status of the variables under study. Some students might decide to use the
cautious approach of first using an exploratory design to identify and conceptualize the variables
and formulate the hypotheses and then conduct a descriptive study . It is the instructor’s
discretion about what is the perspective he/she wants the student to take back after the case
discussion.

Ans.2.Variables: the variable under study could be again generated through discussions. Some indicative
variables that could test the attitudes towards recycling might be as follows: –

o Environmental consciousness
o Waste management
o Concern for hygiene and cleanliness
o Perception about recycling
The instructors needs to direct the class discussion into clearly defining the variable to be
studied and must emphasize the importance of doing so. Operationalizing the variable
simplifies the task of research at the data collection stage.
Some students might also like to study other seemingly unrelated variables like education,
living in a self owned house or apartment. However, these must be discussed for their merit
as the student needs to understand that may be the person who is more educated might be
more willingly to appreciate the logic of recycling. Also in case the person is living in a self
owned accommodation he/she would like to avail opportunities which help them to manage
 their residential environment better. This discussion would help the student to appreciate the
need to look at a research problem holistically and from all possible perspectives.
Population under study: here the student needs to identify whether the opportunity needs to be explored
pan India, metros, only the city or only in the locality. As based on this the student might identify the
respondent population as-
Any person residing in (--------------------) who is responsible for waste management in his/her house.

Ans.3. As stated in answer 1 the student would advocate the use of a descriptive design as that is more
structured. Within this the students might raise both the possibility of a cross sectional and others
might argue for a longitudinal design. The students have to be told that since the decision requires
the business strategy to be implemented post the study it is advisable to go with the cross-
sectional design rather than a longitudinal. And within the cross-sectional since the case does not
throw light on whether there could be different groups of consumers who might be looking at
recycling differently , it is safe to advocate a single-cross-sectional design.