EPA Regulations and the Impact on Transportation Standards
The objective of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is to establish a program that helps to minimize the greenhouse gas emission. The agency works in liaison with other organizations like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to enhance fuel efficiency. The growth in international trade has led to the expansion of the transport system, and subsequent increase in global warming.
To curb this, the Environmental Protection Agency has established regulations with an aim of ensuring that transport companies adhere to environmental rules. The regulations have had numerous impacts on the transportation standards. This paper proposes a study to determine the correlation between the Environmental Protection Agency’s policies and the transportation standards. Additionally, the study will examine the impacts of the policies on the organization of the supply chains transport.
Problem Statement
Abe, Hattori and Kawagoshi (2014) argue that presently, international traffic is leading in greenhouse gas emission. They claim that globalization coupled with the absence of strong environmental laws has resulted in an increase in environmental pollution.
Because transport sector is the primary source of greenhouse gas emission, scholars argue that the war against pollution can only be won by regulating this industry. The government ought to encourage the stakeholders in the transport industry to be environmental friendly. It underlines the reason the Environmental Protection Agency has come up with measures aimed at regulating the transportation industry. The regulations have had both economic and ethical implications on the transport industry.
Research Questions
The study aims at addressing numerous questionss. They include:
- What are the ethical consequences of the Environmental Protection Agency regulations on the transportation industry?
- What are the economic implications of the EPA regulations on the transportation standards?
- What motivated the EPA to come up with the transport regulations?
- What is the correlation between EPA regulations and the transportation standards?
Research Method
Sampling procedure
The study will use a comparatively similar group of the participant from the transport sector. The participants will come from companies that are affected by the EPA regulations in one way or another. Due to time constraint, the research will rely on qualitative data. Therefore, the researcher will use a purposeful sampling. The participants will be selected based on how well they are versed with the effects of EPA regulations on the transport industry.
The researcher will determine if the participants share considerable and meaningful experience regarding the impact of EPA regulations. The pollster will carry out an informal interview before selecting the members. The interview will help the researcher to determine how truthful will the participants be during the study. To guarantee a good study, the pollster will obtain informed consent from the participants.
The members will be informed of the importance of the study and the implications of partaking in the research. The participants will be given time to decide if they wish to participate in the study. The members that choose to participate in the study will have to sign an informed consent form.
Data Collection Method
The interview will be the primary mode of data collection. The researcher will conduct comprehensive interviews with the participants. The objective of the study is to describe the effects of Environmental Protection Agency regulations on the various transport companies. The pollster will conduct three- comprehensive interviews with each participant. The researcher will use the first interview to analyze his/her previous knowledge of the impacts of EPA regulations on the transport industry.
The second interview will be conducted based on the knowledge acquired from the first interview (Creswell, 1998). Finally, the researcher will conduct a third interview that will be prepared based on the data obtained from the first two interviews. The third interview will help to sort out the findings of the previous two interviews, thus arriving at accurate data.
Apart from conducting in-depth interviews, the researcher will also rely on field notes recording as a supplementary mode of data collection. Mostly, researchers get engrossed in the data collection process such that they are unconscious of what is happening (Creswell, 1998). Thus, there is the need to keep account of what the researcher will hear, experience and see in the course of data collection.
Data analysis
The process of data analysis will comprise five phases. The first phase will entail phenomenological reduction. The researcher will assume that all data has identical significance. The pollster will go through the data and eliminate irrelevant or repetitive statements. In other words, the researcher will use the transcriptions obtained from the participants to create a list. The pollster will then do away with the irrelevant expressions to create horizons.
Caelli (2001) suggest that the researcher should pay attention to the words of each interviewee to develop broad horizons. The second phase of data analysis will entail marking out units of meaning. In this stage, the researcher will extract the statements that appear to address the research questions.
The pollster should be keen in this phase to avoid unnecessary subjective judgments. All the statements derived from the horizons will be put through a thorough scrutiny and the residual units eradicated. The researcher will select a statement based on the number of times it appears and its actual content.
The third phase will involve grouping together the units of meaning to create different themes. The researcher is advised to shelve their presumptions to accomplish the objective of the study. The researcher will meticulously scrutinize the units of meaning to bring out the fundamental nature of the meaning of units in the holistic milieu. This phase will demand creative insight from the researcher (Caelli, 2001).
The researcher will categorize the units of significance from the clusters. At the fourth stage, the researcher will recapitulate every interview, authenticate and adapt it. The researcher will come up with a synopsis that captures all the themes deduced from the data.
The pollster will carry out a ‘validity check’ by going back to the participants to find out if the real meaning of the interview was rightly captured. The ‘validity check’ will help to make the necessary adjustments. Additionally, the researcher will use literature from peer-reviewed articles and field notes to confirm the accuracy of the synopsis.
Finally, the fifth step will involve identifying the distinctive themes that are common in all the interviews. Besides, the researcher will identify the individual discrepancies present in the interviews. The pollster should be keen not to group together common themes if considerable differences exist (Creswell, 1998).
The data analysis will culminate with the researcher compiling a compound summary that captures the horizons that generated the ideas. The researcher will eliminate the individual discrepancies to bring out the essence of the research questions.
References
Abe, K., Hattori, K., & Kawagoshi, Y. (2014). Trade liberalization and environmental regulation on international transportation. The Japanese Economic Review, 65(4), 468-482.
Caelli, K. (2001). Engaging with phenomenology: Is it more of a challenge that it needs to be? Quantitative Health Research, 11(1), 273-282.
Creswell, J. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.