SURVEY RESULTS: NC Central Basketball Tournament

Guest Blogger - Laura

The data below are from a survey administered at a historically black college basketball tournament one month in 2009, resulting in a sample of 149 responses. The respondents provided information about their city of origin, age, gender, exposure to the RE3.org campaign, media usage and recycling behaviors at home, work and when out and about.

Data
Descriptive Statistics
The descriptive statistics show an age range of nine years to 69 years of age with the average age being 28. Around 47 percent of the respondents were women. Close to 90 percent of the respondents are from North Carolina. Around 21 percent of the respondents were familiar with the RE3.org campaign.

Respondents were also asked, "How often do you recycle?" and could choose monthly, weekly, daily or never in response. The data on recycling behaviors were summed to form a comprehensive index of recycling at home, work and when out. The range of the resultant measure is zero to nine, with nine indicating daily recycling at home, work and when out. The average score on the recycling index was 5.2.

Respondents who did NOT recycle were asked to choose why and were given the following options: not convenient, not in the habit, don't care/too much trouble, don't know how and other. Of those respondents who do NOT recycle, 14 percent say it's inconvenient, 16 percent forget, 2.5 percent don't care, 4.3 percent don't know how and 3.1 percent stated other reasons.

Data were also gathered on the type of medium most often used to listen to music; respondents could choose MP3, TV, radio, online or other. Responses were as follows: 46.9 percent listen to MP3, 23.5 percent listen to TV, 59.9 percent listen to radio, 27.8 percent chose online and 6.8 percent responded "other."

Correlations
- Exposure to the RE3.org campaign is significantly correlated with overall recycling behavior.
- Older respondents are less likely to listen to music on MP3s or the TV.
- Female respondents are significantly more likely to be familiar with the RE3.org campaign and more likely to listen to music on the TV or radio.
- Respondents who do not recycle because it is “inconvenient” also tend to respond that they “don’t care.” These respondents mostly rely on the internet for listening to music.
- Respondents who do not recycle because they “forget” are significantly less likely to be familiar with the RE3.org campaign. Conversely, exposure to the RE3.org campaign significantly lessens the tendency to “forget” to recycle.

Regression Analysis
Regression analyses allow researchers to test the effects of certain interventions (e.g., exposure to RE3.org campaign) on behaviors (e.g., recycling). This analytical technique is more rigorous than simple correlations because it allows the researcher to control for the influence of other factors and eliminate what might otherwise be spurious correlations. This regression analyzes the variation in respondents' recycling participation at home, work and when out. The predictors of recycling participation included in the regression are: age, city of origin, gender and exposure to RE3.org campaign. The results of the regression analysis follow.

The only statistically significant predictor of recycling participation is found to be exposure to the RE3.org campaign. That is, net of the influence of age, gender and location, exposure to the RE3.org campaign is the most relevant and consistent predictor of recycling behaviors. In fact, it is shown that exposure to the RE3.org campaign increases recycling behaviors by a value of 1.85, or the difference in being a "monthly" recycler versus a "daily" recycler.

Conclusions
Exposure to the RE3.org campaign significantly increases recycling participation among the sample from which the data are taken. No other variable included in the analysis (gender, age, city of origin) was found to have any effect on participation.