An illustration to come up with a research gap statement from an academic article review: an example related to waste disposal

An illustration to come up with a research gap statement from an academic article review. 

The name of the article is : Milica Paut Kusturica, Svetlana Golocorbin-Kon, Tijana Ostojic, Milena Kresoja, Marko Milovic, Olga Horvat, Tihomir Dugandzija, Nada Davidovac, Anica Vasic, Ana Tomas. 2020. "Consumer willingness to pay for a pharmaceutical disposal program in Serbia: A double hurdle modeling approach" Waste Management Volume 104, March 1: 246-253.

Content extract:

“Although more than half of the participants were aware that medicines may negatively impact the environment, environmental awareness did not necessarily equate with behavior that initiated proper disposal of unused medicines, indicating that other issues, such as the availability of an organized disposal system, play an important role (Paut Kusturica et al., 2012).

…. However, the new legislation has created many problems due to the vagueness of relevant regulations and inadequately defined responsibilities for drug wholesalers and manufacturers. In practice, there are many unresolved issues arising from unclearly identified financial responsibility, which allows both manufacturers and wholesalers to avoid their financial obligations, so that operators who may have an interest in this business do not know who will pay for this service….

… Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the current methods of disposal of unused medicines from households in Serbia, as well as the willingness of Serbian residents to participate and bear the costs of organizing the unused or unwanted medicines collection program. Secondly, this research aims to define factors contributing to an individual’s willingness to participate and pay for a medicine collection program….”

Research gap statement 1: the existing academic literature has inadequate evaluation findings on the current methods of disposal of unused medicines from households in Serbia.

Research gap statement 2: the existing academic literature has inadequate knowledge on “the willingness of Serbian residents to participate and bear the costs of organizing unused or unwanted medicines collection program”, specifically on the “contribution factors on resident participation willingness”.

The next step for the research student to do is to adapt the research gap statements 1 and 2 above to produce a localized and personalized version of the research gap statements; and from which to derive the localized and personalized version of the research objective statements.

Reference

Blog notes on the academic literature review approach (the academic-oriented project type: