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Walden Universit
y
College of Management and Technology
This is to certify that the doctoral dissertation by
Mark Griffin
has been found to be complete and satisfactory in all respects,
and that any and all revisions required by
the review committee have been made.
Review Committee
Dr. Steven Tippins, Committee Chairperson, Management Faculty
Dr. David Banner, Committee Member, Management Faculty
Dr. David Bouvin, University Reviewer, Management Faculty
Chief Academic Officer
Eric Riedel, Ph.D.
Walden University
2015
Abstract
A Case Study of Blue-Collar Worker Retirement Investment Decisions
by
Mark Griffin
MBA, TUI University, 2010
BS, Park University, 2006
Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Management
Walden University
May 2015
Abstract
The finances of blue-collar workers were the most acutely impacted as these workers lost their
jobs during the Great Recession of 2007 through 2009. The literature revealed a minimal
understanding of how blue-collar workers allocated funds for their retirement, and what their
investments might be when they invested. To address this problem, the current qualitative study
addressed (a) how blue-collar workers chose to invest or not invest for retirement and (b) how
blue-collar workers diversified their portfolio if they chose to invest. Theoretical foundations of
the study were based on regret theory and prospect theory. A nonrandom purposeful sample of
10 blue-collar worker participants answered 19 open-ended questions. Data from these questions
were analyzed inductively. Findings revealed that, as participants reached the age of 30, they
started to consider investing for their retirement. Participants under the age of 30 were not as
likely to invest. Only one person over the age of 30 did not invest for retirement. The factors that
contributed to these blue-collar workers’ investment decisions for retirement were based on an
employer-provided retirement accounts, the fear of running out of money later in life during
retirement, and the addition of new family members. One of the most popular retirement
investment products for the participant group, which included mechanics, laborers, and material
movers, was the U.S. Treasury Bonds. Other popular investments were mutual funds, 401(k)s,
and IRAs. These findings may inform researchers who are conducting a study on the investment
decisions of blue-collar workers. The findings can also be beneficial for other blue-collar
workers by showing them that other blue-collar workers do invest, and by revealing their
rationales in doing so.
A Case Study of Blue-Collar Worker Retirement Investment Decisions
by
Mark Griffin
MBA, TUI University, 2010
BS, Park University, 2006
Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Management
Walden University
February 2015
UMI Number: 3685617
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Acknowledgements
First, and foremost, I want to thank my loving wife for being supportive of me
throughout this process and being understanding as my stress levels went up and down
throughout my four years here at Walden. Without her love and support this would have never
been possible, and I will be forever grateful to her for helping me out with this and watching our
two children while I spent countless hours doing my work.
I also want to take some time and say thank you to Dr. Peggy Swigart. She has spent
countless hours working with me on my resume/CV, and she also inspired me to choose the
finance concentration here at Walden. She was also a wonderful professor at TUI, and she is one
of the few people throughout the years who have been there for me and I can never thank her
enough for that!
Finally, I want to say thank you to the faculty and staff here at Walden University for all
of their help and guidance throughout the lengthy process of conferring my PhD. Specifically, I
would like to think Dr. Steven Tippins for his guidance and patience with me throughout this
process. Had it not been for the guidance that he had provided me I would not have made it this
far. I would also like to say thank you to Dr. William Brent for his help and guidance throughout
the process. Both Dr.’s Tippins and Brent also spent a fair amount of time speaking with me over
the phone trying to help me out as well, and I can never say thank you enough to them for that. I
would also like to say thank you to Dr. David Banner for his help as well, and I especially want
to say thank you to him for stepping in near the end of the dissertation process. I really
appreciate that.
i
Table of Contents
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. i
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study ....................................................................................1
Background of the Study ...............................................................................................2
Problem Statement .........................................................................................................4
Purpose of the Study ......................................................................................................5
Research Questions ........................................................................................................5
Theoretical Foundation ..................................................................................................6
Nature of the Study ........................................................................................................8
Definitions......................................................................................................................9
Assumptions .................................................................................................................12
Scope and Delimitations ..............................................................................................12
Limitations ...................................................................................................................14
Significance of the Study .............................................................................................15
Significance to Practice..........................................................................................15
Significance to Theory ...........................................................................................16
Significance to Social Change ...............................................................................18
Summary and Transition ..............................................................................................20
Chapter 2: Literature Review .............................................................................................22
Literature Search Strategy............................................................................................26
Theoretical Foundation ................................................................................................27
The Blue-Collar Worker ........................................................................................27
Blue-Collar Worker Severance Packages ..............................................................27
ii
Blue-Collar Worker Unemployment and Mortality Rates .....................................28
Theoretical Framework ..........................................................................................28
Personal Finance ....................................................................................................29
Why People Save .........................................................................................................30
Personal Savings ....................................................................................................30
Retirement ..............................................................................................................31
Social Safety Nets ..................................................................................................32
Prospect Theory ...........................................................................................................34
Theoretical Propositions ........................................................................................34
Prospect Theory ...........................................................................................................36
Previous Research ..................................................................................................36
Capital Market Theories ........................................................................................36
Disposition Effect ..................................................................................................37
Employee Satisfaction and Turnover .....................................................................38
Preference Foundations ..........................................................................................39
Student Academic Decision-Making Choices .......................................................40
Regret Theory ..............................................................................................................41
Theoretical Propositions ........................................................................................41
Regret Theory ..............................................................................................................41
Previous Research ..................................................................................................41
Perceived Unfairness .............................................................................................42
Return Shipping Policies of Online Retailers ........................................................43
Decision Curve Analysis........................................................................................43
iii
Reason-Based Choices ...........................................................................................44
Following the Heart ...............................................................................................45
Post-Purchase Regret .............................................................................................46
Rationale for the Choice of Theories ...........................................................................46
Relevance ...............................................................................................................46
Relationship with the Study ...................................................................................47
Relationship of the Research Questions ................................................................48
Gaps in the Literature.............................................................................................49
Literature Review Related to Key Variables ...............................................................50
Studies Related to the Constructs of Interest Methodology...................................50
Approaches to the Problem ..........................................................................................54
Previous Attempts, Strengths and Weaknesses .....................................................54
Justification for Selection of Variables ..................................................................55
Review and Synthesis of Key Concepts ................................................................55
What Remains to be Studied ..................................................................................58
Studies Related to the Research Questions ............................................................58
Summary and Conclusions ..........................................................................................61
Chapter 3: Research Method ..............................................................................................66
Research Design and Rationale ...................................................................................66
Role of the Researcher .................................................................................................69
Methodology ................................................................................................................71
Participant Selection Logic ....................................................................................71
Instrumentation ......................................................................................................73
iv
Procedures for Recruitment, Participation, and Data Collection ...........................77
Data Analysis Plan .................................................................................................78
Issues of Trustworthiness .............................................................................................81
Credibility ..............................................................................................................81
Transferability ........................................................................................................82
Dependability .........................................................................................................83
Confirmability ........................................................................................................84
Ethical Procedures .................................................................................................85
Summary ......................................................................................................................87
Chapter 4: Results ..............................................................................................................90
Research Setting...........................................................................................................91
Demographics ..............................................................................................................92
Data Collection ............................................................................................................93
Data Analysis ...............................................................................................................95
Evidence of Trustworthiness......................................................................................100
Credibility ............................................................................................................100
Transferability ......................................................................................................101
Dependability .......................................................................................................102
Confirmability ......................................................................................................103
Study Results .............................................................................................................105
Summary ....................................................................................................................114
Chapter 5: Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations ..........................................116
Interpretation of Findings ..........................................................................................118
v
Limitations of the Study.............................................................................................126
Recommendations ......................................................................................................128
Personal Finance ..................................................................................................128
Potential Mixed Method Research .......................................................................130
Implications................................................................................................................131
Positive Social Change ........................................................................................131
Conclusions ................................................................................................................132
References ........................................................................................................................135
Appendix A: Interview Protocol and Questions ..............................................................148
vi
List of Tables
Table 1. Blue-Collar Worker Responses.............................................................................93
Table 2. Blue-Collar Worker Investment Decisions...........................................................98
1
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study
Nearly thirty-five percent of U.S. households indicated that saving for their retirement
was their most important savings goal, and in 2008 roughly fifty million American workers were
actively investing in their 401(k) plan (Holden & VanDerhei, 2010, p. 76). At the end of 2008,
401(k)s were valued at approximately $2.3 trillion, represented sixteen percent of all retirement
assets, and they equaled about 6% of the U.S. households’ financial assets (Holden &
VanDerhei). As the economy recovered from the recession of 2007 through 2009, many workers
found themselves unemployed, underemployed, or categorized under other forms of labor
underutilization (Sum, Khatiwada, McLaughlin & Palma, 2010) likely made it increasingly
difficult to allocate funds for their retirement. At the heart of the ranks of the unemployed were
blue-collar workers, and this group was unevenly made up of both men and women workers.
From the periods that covered November through December of 2007 to January through
February of 2010, the male employment declined by 5.67 million or 7.2% versus a drop of 2.17
million or 3.2% among women (Sum et al, 2010, p. 20-21). This loss of blue-collar employment
would account for eighty-one percent of the decline in jobs for men during this period (Sum et al,
2010, p. 20).
Although not all blue-collar workers found themselves unemployed, they were subject to
the overall purchasing decisions made by people in the global and U.S. economy. The
sentiments, attitudes, financial capacity, and subsequent behaviors of consumers represented a
substantial part of the U.S. national economy (Cutler, 2013, p. 19). Many of the products that
were purchased by people were previously made by factory workers and laborers, and other
people fell into the blue-collar category, were created either with the helped of technology or
2
manufactured entirely through the use of machines (Brown, 2012). This included the
manufacturing positions that were held at one time by these workers became automated.
While there was an abundance of literature (Ryack, 2011; Pillay, Kelly & Tones, 2010,
Levanon & Cheng, 2011) that discussed the ramifications of the recession of 2007 through 2009,
little research had been conducted to see if the subsequent recovery had affected the investment
behaviors of blue-collar workers. There was only one study (Goetzmann & Kumar, 2008) found
that spoke specifically to blue-collar worker investment portfolio diversification, and they found
that blue-collar workers were in the category possessing the least-diversified portfolio.
This study addressed this gap in the literature to determine what facets these workers
deemed to be necessary to be in place before they allocated resources, including their levels of
investment, for their retirement. The information gained from the study could provide useful
insights into these facets which could be used by society to have a better understanding of the
decision-making process used by blue-collar workers. This could led to a constructive impact on
both blue-collar workers and the society they live in, which could led to positive social changes
in both the fields of finance and academia. Included in this chapter were a background of the
study, research problem, purpose of the study, research questions, theoretical framework, nature
of the study, definitions of terms, assumptions, scope and delimitations, limitations, significance
and summary.
Background of the Study
When blue-collar workers considered retirement, family members generally participated
in the decision-making process (Ryack, 2011). This included whether to invest or not, how much
money would be invested, and built into this decision was the desire to be risk averse (Ryack,
2011). If the decision was made to invest, there were concerns about which retirement products
3
were right for a person or a couple and what decisions couples should make themselves as they
age (Tannahill, 2012). Regardless of age, health risks were a cause for concern as it threatened
both the financial survival and the ability of workers to work through the retirement years in the
event it became necessary (Caban-Martinez, Lee, Fleming, Tancredi, Arheart, LeBlanc &
Muennig, 2011). As workers aged and remained in the workforce, they also became increasingly
aware of the need to overcome age discrimination as they risked feeling increased levels being
tired and burned out (Gellert & Kuipers, 2008).
Part of the decision-making process to retire included delaying retirement until later in
life. These delays in the decision to retire had implications on the unemployment rates within the
economy as new workers were unable to enter as easily as a result of older workers remaining in
the workforce (Levanon & Cheng, 2011). One side effect for both younger and older workers,
who were unable to find jobs or transition into new careers, was that they were sometimes at risk
of entering into early retirement (Pillay, Kelly & Tones, 2010). The decision to retire or invest
for retirement was also negatively affected by the economic impacts of the recession of 2007
through 2009, as blue-collar workers had severe hardships based on the decline in their
employment status (Sum et al, 2010).
Technology also had a role in the employment status of workers who fell into the blue-
collar category (Brown, 2012). Tasks that used to be completed by these workers, such as cutting
a piece of metal or managing a warehouse, were embedded in a machine through the use of
software. In many cases this eliminated workers or reduced the amount of skill and pay needed
to fill a job. Since the 1970s, the inflation adjusted median income of working age households
had been slowing.
4
One gap in the knowledge was based on the investment behaviors of blue-collar workers.
Little research had been conducted on these workers to explain their current financial plans and
preparations for retirement. This included the facets that were necessary to determine their levels
of investment. Very little was known about the process that these workers used to made their
investment plans. This study addressed this gap in knowledge. The necessity of the study
stemmed from the need to understand the circumstances surrounding the decision of blue-collar
workers to determine their level of investment for their retirement, and with that information in
hand society as a whole could had a more in-depth understanding of an under-studied aspect of
the life of these workers.
Problem Statement
The significant problem the research addressed was the minimal understanding, which
included a gap in the area of finance-based research of blue-collar workers, of the facets that
these workers deemed necessary to be in place for them to allocated funds for their retirement.
Many reasons existed for people to refrain from investing and saving for their retirement, and as
previously mentioned there was a gap in the knowledge base where investing literature generally
stopped short of extensively covering the investment behaviors of blue-collar workers. As a
result of this, there were economic consequences to the job market recovery. There were also
macroeconomic implications of individuals who delayed their retirement, and some of them were
mixed which led to the delaying of the retirement decision (Levanon & Cheng, 2011). The
financial risk tolerance (FRT) of males and females varies, whereby males had more tolerance
than women, and people potentially sought out mates who had a similar FRT (Ryack, 2011). It
may have also been possible that spousal FRTs converged over time. These tolerances increased
in college students who had financial education incorporated in the curriculum in high school
5
(Ryack, 2011), but this did not provide long-term evidence that families would had FRT that
were similar going forward. However, one could also present the argument that it was likely that
not all families had both spouses working so the tolerance for investment could be significantly
reduced as a result especially if resources were limited.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this case study was to discover the factors that contributed to the decision
by blue-collar workers to allocated funds for retirement. This also included the levels of funding
should they decide to invest. Since these workers fell into various employment circumstances,
and as a result of the economic downturn and slow recovery, there were a wide variety of reasons
that were unknown for making or not making these investments (Sum et al, 2010). This study
used prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and regret theory (Loomes & Sugden, 1982)
as a theoretical basis for the research to uncover these reasons. Prospect theory was a theory
based on behavioral economics describing ways people made choices based on losses and gains
versus the final outcome, and it asserted that people evaluated losses and gains using heuristics
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Regret theory implied that if people made a wrong choice, they
remembered this choice the next time they made another decision under a similar set of
circumstances (Loomes & Sugden, 1982). These theories are covered later in this chapter, and a
more in-depth presentation was provided detail in Chapter 2.
Research Questions
These were the central research questions of the study:
1. What factors contributed to the decision by blue-collar workers to invest or not invest for
retirement?
2. How did blue-collar workers diversify their portfolio if they chose to invest?
6
These were the sub-questions of the study:
1. How much financial education did blue-collar workers feet they needed before investing?
2. In what ways did a blue-collar worker’s level of academic education affect their levels of
investing?
3. In what ways did economic conditions in the local area where blue-collar workers were
employed cause them to create their overall investment strategy?
4. In what ways did a blue-collar worker’s age and gender affect their retirement planning?
5. What were the different categories, and how much of each category, of investments blue-
collar workers allocated their money to?
Theoretical Foundation
The theoretical framework for this study was based on Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979)
prospect theory and Loomes and Sugden’s (1982) regret theory. Since prospect theory and regret
theory address ways people weigh monetary outcomes, they had been used extensively in many
aspects of personal finance. The case study approach, in concurrence with the prospect theory
and regret theory, was able to provide the details that covered the facets that blue-collar workers
felt were necessary to be in place before they allocated funds for their retirement. This decision,
or series of steps that led to a decision, was based on their preferences for the diversification of
their funds. Additional research and application of the prospect theory and regret theory offered
ways to determine how people made decisions with imprecise information as part of the
dissertation process (Özerol & Karasakal, 2008).
Prospect theory was a behavioral economic theory forwarded by Daniel Kahneman and
Amos Tversky in 1979, and it described the choices made by individuals as ones that were
chosen based on the potential value of losses and gains rather than the final outcome (Kahneman
7
& Tversky, 1979). It was developed as a descriptive model of decision making under risk and
was created as an alternative model to expected utility theory, which was based partly on
lotteries and gambling. Expected utility theory was alleged to have exhibited several pervasive
effects that were inconsistent with the choices made by risky prospects (Kahneman & Tversky,
1979). People would tend to underweight the outcomes that were probable in comparison to
outcomes that would be viewed as certain. This would result in what was known to be dubbed
the certainty effect, which contributed to risk aversion and choices that would had otherwise
involve sure gains into seeking risks and choices involving sure losses (Kahneman & Tversky,
1979).
Based on two fundamental assumptions, regret theory was created by Graham Loomes
and Robert Sugden, and it was introduced as an alternative to prospect theory in the December of
1982 edition of The Economic Journal as an explanation of gambling choices (Loomes &
Sugden, 1982). The first assumption was based on the notion that many people experienced
sensations of regret and rejoice, and the second one was based on the notion that when people
made decisions that they were not certain about, they tried to anticipate and take account of those
sensations (Loomes & Sugden, 1982, p. 820).
Loomes and Sugden also had deep-seated arguments for the reasoning behind these
assertions that would be the underlying basis for the construction of their theory: “In relation to
the first assumption, it seemed to us that psychological experiences of regret and rejoicing could
not properly be described in terms of the concept of rationality: a choice may be rational or
irrational, but an experience was just an experience. As far as the second assumption was
concerned, if an individual did experience such feelings, we could not see how he could be
deemed irrational for consistently taking those feelings into account” (Loomes & Sugden, 1982,
8
p. 820). The theory had also been used in the decision sciences to understand how choices were
made with respect to avoiding a wrong decision or regretting the failure to take an action after an
occurrence had transpired (Tsalatsanis, Hozo, Vickers & Djulbegovic, 2010). Chapter 2 covered
these theories and their uses in the study in more detail.
Nature of the Study
The nature of this study was based on qualitative inquiry with a focus on the case study
method. Case studies allow for the study of the a single case, within the site of the location of the
research, and focused on the decisions made by blue-collar workers as they chose whether or not
to invest and their levels of investment should they chose to invest. Qualitative research was
consistent with understanding how blue-collar workers factored in the different facets of the
decision-making process of allocating funds for their retirement in that it allowed for direct
initial and follow-up communication with respondents in a way that permitted them to provide
open and in-depth responses to questions.
To determine what these facets were, qualitative analysis assisted in identifying what
these facets were from the beginning to the end of the research. The initial intention was as
follows: As part of the case study, a group of blue-collar workers in the Inland Northwest and the
Midwest were asked to take part in an interview via Skype or in person depending on how far
they were away from me. I ended up calling each of the participants over the phone, and four out
of 10 allowed me to record the phone call.
As it will be discussed later, since I was transcribing their answers from phone calls that
were recorded and writing notes down from the phone calls that were not recorded, it would not
have made sense to use NVivo to generate codes and look for themes since the data was recorded
in two different ways. Another change to the research that caused this to happen was the inability
9
to gather participants from an organization that would allow me to come into the work place and
recruit participants. Instead, I used the snowball sampling technique, and the answers to the
questions were compiled into two separate tables and placed into categories listed primarily by
age. This was done in order to show how the responses varied in a way that was logical at the
time of the writing of this dissertation. It also allowed for the trend of choosing to invest based
on the proximity to retirement between the participants, which was not necessarily how they
viewed their own retirement investment decisions throughout the interviews. This will also be
explained later.
However, these changes ended up producing the goal of ten participants, and the
limitations to the findings of the study will also be explained later in this document. This
procedure was in line with the changes that had to be made to the research and was approved by
the chair of the dissertation prior to it happening. The questions were open-ended allowing for
in-depth responses from the participants. A thank you card was mailed to them thanking them for
completing the interview. Chapter 3 provides more details about the overall methodology.
Definitions
The field of finance included jargon where many terms had a specific meaning when used
to describe the various elements of investing. Some of the terms that were used throughout the
study were:
401 (k): A qualified plan established by employers to which eligible employees may
make salary deferral (salary reduction) contributions on a post-tax and/or pretax basis (Internal
Revenue Service, 2013).
Blue-collar worker: Blue-collar workers were generally defined consist primarily of four
groups of occupations: construction and extraction occupations; installation/maintenance and
10
repair crafts (electrical and electronic technicians, heating and air conditioning mechanics, auto
repair technicians); production workers (machine operators, fabricators, assemblers); and
transportation operatives, including truck and bus drivers and material movers (Sum et al, 2010,
p. 9).
Broker: A party that arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller, and gets
a commission when the deal is executed (Farlex, 2013).
Diversification: Reducing risk by investing in a variety of assets (Farlex, 2013).
Emergency Fund: Money that is set aside for emergencies to protect future income
streams and to protect against unexpected income shocks (Scott et al, 2013). Examples of this
included unexpected health expenses, unemployment, reductions in wages and disability.
Exchange Traded Fund (ETF): An investment vehicle traded on stock exchanges, much
like stocks do, and they hold assets like stocks or bonds (Kothari & Kudal, 2012). They were
usually designed to track an index, and they could combine the valuation feature of a mutual
fund or a unit investment trust.
Mutual Fund: A mutual fund is a type of investment company that pools money from
many investors and invests the money in stocks, bonds, money-market instruments, other
securities, or even cash (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 2010).
Prospect Theory: Decisions investors made in the presence of uncertainty were based on
cognitive psychology rather than rationality (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). There is a preference
of investors to avoid losses over acquiring gains by judging gains and losses relative to a specific
reference point like the purchase price of an asset (Hodnett & Heng-Hsing, 2012).
11
Regret Theory: People anticipate regret in the event they made a wrong decision, and
they take this anticipation into consideration in their future decisions (Loomes & Sugden, 1982).
Fear could cause a dissuasion or motivation to do something based on previous decisions.
Retirement Fund: A fund, or set of funds, that house investment products for one’s
retirement (Scott et al, 2013). An example of such a fund may be a mutual fund.
Risk Tolerance: An investor's ability or willingness to accept declines in the prices
of investments while waiting for them to increase in value (Farlex, 2013).
Security: A security is a fungible, such as a stock, negotiable instrument representing
financial value (Farlex, 2013). Securities were broadly categorized into debt securities (such as
banknotes, bonds and debentures) and equity securities (common stocks). They also included
derivative contracts, such as forwards, futures, options and swaps. The company or other entity
issuing the security is called the issuer.
Stock Broker: A stock broker or stockbroker is a regulated professional broker who buys
and sells shares and other securities through market orders or Agency Only Firms on behalf
of investors (Farlex, 2013). A broker may be employed by a brokerage firm.
Underemployment: Individuals working part-time (under thirty-five hours per week) but
desire full-time jobs and were available to work full time (Sum et al, 2010). This could also
included individuals who had skill sets that their current employer is not using.
Unit Investment Trust: A U.S. investment company offering a fixed (unmanaged)
portfolio of securities having a definite life (Farlex, 2013). They were assembled by a sponsor
and sold through brokers to investors.
12
Assumptions
There were several assumptions that I had that I could not necessarily demonstrate to be
true through the use of peer-reviewed journals. I assumed that blue-collar workers had not
returned the levels of employment that existed prior to the great recession. This assumption was
consistent with the levels of underemployment that blue-collar workers had experienced as a
result of the 2007 through 2009 recession (Sum et al, 2010). I also assumed these workers were
likely under investing for their retirement as a result of their employment. It was necessary for
this assumption to be included in the study because these workers were likely going to have
difficulties investing money for their retirement if they had either a limited stream of income or
no income at all.
Scope and Delimitations
The specific aspects of the research problem addressed in the study and research
questions that were meant to determine the overall factors that contributed to the decision by
blue-collar workers which affect their level of investments for their retirement comprised the
overall scope of the study. In order to determine their level of investments, there was an attempt
to discover the ideas, concepts, decisions and other attributes that helped blue-collar workers
arrive at this decision in the event they chose to invest. This included an attempt to determine if
an individual’s financial education affected the way they invest with respect to allocating funds
for their retirement. Since there was a potential that an individual’s academic education affected
their levels of investing (Ryack, 2011), there could be a connection with blue-collars’ worker
investment behaviors. There was a possibility that economic uncertainties existed within the
worker’s specific region in which they lived that could be tied to the U.S. recovery of the
recession of 2007 through 2009, so there was an attempt to discover what aspects affected their
13
decision to invest. As people age, and as their financial education increases, their investment
behaviors change (Tannahill, 2012). A person’s gender could also affect their FRT (Tannahill,
2012), which could potentially have an effect on their long-term investment choices. I
categorized the responses from the research questions in order to answer the questions.
The boundaries of the study included how it was constrained in terms of time,
participants, and processes (Creswell, 2013). The constraints of the study were limited in
different ways. Participants were limited to blue-collar workers who were employees in the
Inland Northwest and the Midwest. They had two weeks to answer the questions of the study.
There were other theories which were related to blue-collar workers that were not used in
this study. One such example is the programme theory, and it was constructed based on two main
components that included the impact theory and process theory (Durand, Berthelette, Loisel &
Imbeau, 2012, p. 496). The impacts were represented in the form of cause and effect linkages
between activities and expected outcomes. The process theory was based on activities that a
given program was expected to carry out and the resources necessary to do it. One particular use
for the programme theory was to determine ways to rehabilitate injured workers, mainly blue-
collar workers, and get them back to work. The reason that these three theories were not used
was because although the health of a worker could be a part of the reason they were working or
were not working, it was not the focal point of the study. They were also not directly relevant
since the study was meant to discover the facets necessary for blue-collar workers to invest and
their levels of investment if they did chose to invest, including their diversification methods.
The process of the case study presented a constraint because it was going to be limited to
a singular case study. However, since there was only one case study there was an opportunity to
obtain more in-depth findings from the research. These findings offered the possibility of being
14
transferred to other studies, and since the economic recovery from the severe U.S. recession of
2007 through 2009 was likely going to take many years to be realized, researchers were likely
going to see opportunities to explore vast areas of the overall economy. The workers who were
deemed to be hit the hardest by the recession, which were the blue-collar workers (Sum et al,
2010), are likely going to be the focus of many research inquiries in the future. The findings of
this study could prove to be useful to them as these researchers embark on their journey to
answer their questions, which allowed for several positive social impacts to society to be
realized.
Limitations
A case study researcher had to be able to decide the bounded system in which to study,
which would mean recognizing that several maybe possible candidates for selection and the case
itself, or several cases located within the overall study, had to be worthy of study (Creswell,
2013). This included studying a single case or multiple cases. It was possible that studying more
than one case could dilute the findings of the overall analysis since the more cases one studies
meant a potential reduction in the depth of any single case. Even with a singular case there could
be the possibility of a reduction in the ability to generalize the findings. One particular reason for
this was because, unlike quantitative-based research where variables could be tested, it may be
difficult for another researcher to take a similar given set of circumstances and reproduce similar
results since qualitative variables were explained instead of being tested.
Since the study took place in the Inland Northwest and the Midwest, it may be difficult to
reproduce similar results in another part of the United States. The participants were also limited
to employees located in that region. There were several major biases that I could identify prior
going into the study. One such bias was my own personal experience with blue-collar workers. I
15
had several family members including myself who were blue-collar workers at one point or
another. My first job was actually as a blue-collar worker where I worked at Midas helping the
mechanics as a parts-runner along with other duties in the shop. This bias towards blue-collar
workers was what led me to choose them for the study. The other biases were based on the
assumptions below.
Some of the reasonable steps that I was taking to address these biases included being
objective with the findings of the research, which meant removing my personal feelings and
opinions from the overall research process.
Significance of the Study
Significance to Practice
There are three over arcing areas to the professional practice and finance that could be
improved upon based on the outcome of the research. Quality research, as one could argue,
should be able to provide assistance to the field in which it attempts to serve. It is, after all, the
duty of academia to educate future leaders. In this case, it was the intention to add to the existing
literature base so that there would be a chance for practitioners to find it. The first is the potential
to understand the process that goes into investment decision-making choices that are made by the
group of blue-collar workers that will have participated in the study. It is not yet known what
would have to be in place, such as secure employment or a favorable local labor environment,
which the blue-collar workers would deem to be necessary in order to invest for his or her
retirement. As was previously stated, there is very limited information in the existing literature
that could point to a more conclusive answer here. However, this will be discussed in more depth
in Chapter 2.
16
Secondly, with the findings in hand, the field of finance could potentially develop a more
creative financial education and literacy product that could be potentially crafted for the blue-
collar worker category. One could also argue that other categories of workers outside of the blue-
collar community would also benefit from this. Finally, the opportunity for feedback from the
blue-collar community as a whole at a later date could also potentially provide useful
information for researchers and practitioners alike that could lead to an increased level of
understanding of how well the blue-collar workers who would be using the newly developed
financial education and literacy seem to understand the information that they are getting as well
as ways that this information can be improved upon.
Significance to Theory
In order to understand how the research had a positive effect on the two theories used in
the study, it is important to revisit the portions of these theories that are at the heart of the work.
Since prospect theory and regret theory address ways people weigh monetary outcomes, they had
been used extensively in many aspects of personal finance. Prospect theory is a behavioral
economic theory forwarded by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979, and it describes
the choices made by individuals as ones that were chosen based on the potential value of losses
and gains rather than the final outcome (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). It was developed as a
descriptive model of decision making under risk and was created as an alternative model to
expected utility theory, which was based partly on lotteries and gambling. Expected utility theory
was alleged to have exhibited several pervasive effects that were inconsistent with the choices
made by risky prospects (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). People would tend to underweight the
outcomes that were probable in comparison to outcomes that would be viewed as certain. This
would result in what was known to be dubbed the certainty effect, which contributed to risk
17
aversion and choices that would had otherwise involve sure gains into seeking risks and choices
involving sure losses (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979).
Based on two fundamental assumptions, regret theory was created by Graham Loomes
and Robert Sugden, and it was introduced as an alternative to prospect theory in the December of
1982 edition of The Economic Journal as an explanation of gambling choices (Loomes &
Sugden, 1982). The first assumption was based on the notion that many people experienced
sensations of regret and rejoice, and the second one was based on the notion that when people
made decisions that they were not certain about, they tried to anticipate and take account of those
sensations (Loomes & Sugden, 1982, p. 820).
The study added to academic literature, and reinforced the two existing theories that were
used in the study, as it discovered what the reasons were that added to the factors surrounding the
decision made by blue-collar workers to contribute funds to their retirement. The general
circumstances surrounding these workers, in general, was also worthy of noting. There was a
depression in many blue-collar labor markets, and it would not be solved by a modest recovery
of the U.S. economy over a short period of time (Sum et al, 2010). This allowed for increased
understandings of the real impact to individual retirement, perhaps even on larger portions of the
overall economy, which could be broadly viewed based on the new findings as part of the
inquiry and could open up new opportunities for further inquiry. As a result of the inquiry, the
data could be used to increase awareness within both the investment community and society as a
whole allowing for opportunities for new ideas to potentially be created to helped people
allocated funds for their retirement.
18
Significance to Social Change
One of the most challenging parts of affecting a positive change to society is by finding a
way to let the people in which the research serves speak for themselves. This study allowed such
a change to take place through the use of qualitative inquiry, which, as will be explained, allows
for in-depth answers by research participants that allows for the researcher to adequately explain
what was being communicated by the group. The qualitative inquiry was used as the main
methodology for the research inquiry, and the case study method that was chosen had the ability
to provide meaningful results, because there were a number of gaps in the literature and one
could argue that society as a whole could gain from in the event that these holes were at least
partially closed.
Positive social change comes in many forms, and the blue-collar worker was arguably
one of the major categories of workers that made up the backbone of the United States. Merely
reviewing quantitative-based data would not be appropriate in this case because, in many
circumstances, as we had seen above, questions could only be answered by communicating
directly with individual study participants in a way that allowed them to provide their own
personal in-depth responses to open-ended questions, which was not typical of quantitative
research.
The findings of the study could be used by a wide variety of people including blue-collar
workers in general, institutional investors, and academicians. The findings would likely be used
by these groups to address their current practice, and this would especially be true for
institutional investors. There would be a high likelihood that they could use the findings to create
suitable low-cost investment products that could be ideal for blue-collar workers. This could
bring about positive social change for these workers as they would be able to understand their
19
own investment behaviors more clearly in a way that allows them to confidently allocated funds
for their retirement going forward. These changes would be limited to the findings of this study
as they were presented, but they would also enhance the existing knowledge. This would mean
an increased possibility for other researchers to take the findings of this study and expand on it in
a variety of ways that could create positive social change in the finance field and perhaps in other
academic and professional practice fields.
Social change that can affect the positive relationships between the academia and
practitioners was also one of the goals of this work. One can argue that there is generally a
difference between the ways something is taught versus the way it is practiced professionally.
This causes poor distinctions of facts between the effectiveness of higher education and the
communities in which they serve. In general, any research that can bridge these gaps is generally
welcomed by the two groups. So the potential for social change becomes closer to being realized
when participants are allowed to share their opinions on why they do something, or why they do
not, and sometimes their words say one thing and their actions say something else.
This study also allows for this distinction to be elaborated on in a manner that is
sometimes realized with research conducted, perhaps even by the most seasoned of researchers,
in a way that makes sense to the readers. In order for social change to be as positive as it can be,
it has to be presented in such a way that people can actually see what happened and why with
respect to what changed. When a group of workers, such as the blue-collar workers that were
researched here, get an opportunity to shed light on some of their decisions that are personal to
them and their families and share it with the world then there is a chance that others will see the
results in an unbiased way that allows for a meaningful sharing of ideas between the author and
the audience. That was the intention of this research inquiry, and by shedding some light on these
20
workers and their investment decisions there is the potential that people may see that investing
for their retirement is necessary so that they do not run out of resources as they age, perhaps even
as they age to a point where they are no longer able to work.
Summary and Transition
As the economy recovered from the recession of 2007 through 2009, many workers
found themselves unemployed, underemployed, or in being categorized under other forms of
labor underutilization (Sum et al, 2010) likely making it increasingly difficult to allocated funds
for their retirement. When blue-collar workers were considering retirement, family members
generally participated in the decision-making process (Ryack, 2011). This included whether to
invest, how much money would be invested, and built into this decision was the desire to be risk
averse (Ryack, 2011). The significant problem the research addressed is the minimal
understanding, including a gap in the areas of finance-based research of blue-collar workers, of
the facets that had to be in place for these workers to allocated funds for their retirement. The
purpose of this case study was to discover the factors that contributed to the decision by blue-
collar workers to allocated funds for retirement. The theoretical framework for this study was
based on Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979) prospect theory and Loomes and Sugden’s (1982)
regret theory. The nature of this study was based on qualitative inquiry with a focus on the case
study method. The specific aspects of the research problem addressed in the study and research
questions were meant to determine the overall factors that contributed to the decision by blue-
collar workers which affect their level of investments for their retirement comprised the overall
scope of the study. The study added to the academic literature by discovering what the current
reasons were that added to the factors surrounding the decision made by blue-collar workers to
contributed funds to their retirement. The literature review covered these topics in higher levels
21
of detail by expanding on concepts and theories that related to the study, as well as a more in-
depth background of blue-collar workers and their earnings power.
22
Chapter 2: Literature Review
The significant problem the research addressed was the minimal understanding, including
a gap in the areas of finance-based research of blue-collar workers and the facets that had to be in
place for these workers to allocated funds for their retirement. The purpose of this case study was
to discover the factors that contributed to the decision by blue-collar workers to allocated funds
for retirement. This also included the levels of funding should they decide to invest. Since these
workers fell into various employment circumstances, and as a result of the economic downturn
and slow recovery, there were a wide variety of reasons that were unknown for making or not
making these investments (Sum et al, 2010). Many reasons existed for people refraining from
investing and saving for their retirement. As a result of this, there were economic consequences
to the job market recovery. One of the biggest reasons, arguably, that had implications on these
economic consequences to the job market recovery was job security. For example, a study
(Bargain, Immervoll, Peichl, & Siegloch, 2012, p. 136) found that low-skilled and nonstandard
workers faced above-average risks of earnings losses, in particular if they worked in the
manufacturing sector where output reductions were very large. Another reason included the
choice of the location of a potential employer, because this had an effect on employment
opportunities of workers in the labor market. A study by Eriksson and Lagerström (2012) used
data from the Internet-based CV database called My CV sponsored by the Swedish Public
Employment Service to investigate if women were more restrictive than men and their choice of
search area, and the study also sought to determine if this was of importance to the early stages
of the hiring process. They discovered that women were more restrictive in some cases than men,
which could perhaps shed light on potential employment trends here in the U.S. Eriksson and
Lagerström also posited that women were less likely to search for employment in metropolitan
23
areas or areas that were far away from where they currently live. The study also indicated that
female searchers got fewer firm contacts, and this was explained by their more restrictive search
area. The conclusions indicated that when controls for the search were used, the negative gender
effect disappeared (Eriksson & Lagerström, 2012).
Finally, politics could be swayed since public policy could be influenced by voters, and
workers cast their vote on labor market regulation depending on the past payoffs that they
accrued when one of two competing parties with different labor market policy platforms was in
power (Martin & Neugart, 2009). However, Lafontaine and Sivadasan (2009) argue that they
found some evidence that labor costs were less responsive to sales revenue in more highly
regulated markets, which provided strong evidence that labor regulations dampen the responses
to demand and supply shocks.
There were also macroeconomic implications of individuals delaying their retirement,
and some of them were mixed which led to the delaying of the retirement decision (Levanon &
Cheng, 2011). The first implication could be indirectly based on trends in the labor market.
Silvia and Iqbal (2011) conducted a study which posited that since the 1970s, the employment
growth rate had been experiencing a decreasing pattern. The most noticeable increase was found
to be from the decade that covered 2000 through 2009 (Silvia & Iqbal, 2011; Figura & Wascher,
2010). Although studies (Belz, 2013; Dong, Mitchell, Lee, Holtom & Hinkin, 2012; Fouad,
Cotter, Carter, Bernfeld & Liu, 2012; Nash & Church, 2012; Sanders & McCready, 2009) later
in this chapter discuss workers being forced into early retirement or unable to find work for
various reasons, a second implication could be based on the work by Figura and Wascher (2010)
that found relative declines in demand rather than technological innovations as the key drivers of
the elevated levels of job destruction and permanent layoffs in the affected industries, which
24
included machinery and furniture manufacturing, textiles, metals, and nonmetallic mineral
product manufacturing. Finally, Graves (2011) asserted that the rate of introduction and market
penetration of new goods, sometimes referred to as product innovation, through technological
advance for existing goods, sometimes referred to as process innovation, importantly affected the
labor supply decision. Graves also posited that a relatively rapid influx of new goods would
generally increase labor supply, while relatively more technological advance for existing goods
would reduce labor supply to the market. The risk, if any, which a worker was willing to take
with their investments, also played a crucial role in their funding of their retirement.
The financial risk tolerance (FRT) of males and females varies, whereby males had more
tolerance than women, also potentially explains why people potentially seek out mates who had a
similar FRT (Ryack, 2011). It may also be possible that spousal FRTs converge over time. These
tolerances increased in college students who had financial education incorporated in the
curriculum in high school (Ryack, 2011), but this did not provide long-term evidence that
families had FRT that were similar going forward. However, one could also present the argument
that was likely that not all families had both spouses working. So the tolerance for investing
could be significantly reduced as a result, especially if resources were limited.
Another potential argument, such as the one brought forth in this study regarding blue-
collar workers, was that financial risk tolerances (FRT) could be a determining factor in whether
or not an individual or couple would ultimately make the decision to allocate funding for their
retirement. Although one study (Gibson, Michayluk & Van de Venter, 2013) found no
significant relationship between FRT and marital status, education or wealth, there were others
(Ryack, 2011; Duasa & Yusof, 2013) that did. Larkin, Lucey, and Mulholland (2013) argued that
there was no one-size-fits-all quantitative approach to measure FRT. However, Gibson
25
Michayluk and Van de Venter asserted that there was a statistically significant positive
relationship between financial risk tolerance and income, while financial risk tolerance was
lower for females and older individuals. They concluded that individuals, who perceive the stock
market to be riskier today, compared to two years ago, had lower average risk tolerances and
higher FRTs were found for individuals with positive future stock market performance
expectations. Their study also concluded that while males exhibited higher levels of subjective
investment knowledge compared to females, for both genders higher levels of investment
knowledge were associated with higher levels of financial risk tolerance. Other underlying facets
of FRT were presented in a study by Sages and Grable (2010) found individuals who exhibited
the lowest level of financial risk tolerance tended to be the least competent in terms of financial
matters, had the lowest subjective evaluations of net worth, and experienced the least satisfaction
with their financial management skills.
The purpose of this case study was to discover the factors that contributed to the decision
by blue-collar workers to allocate funds for retirement. This also included the levels of funding
should they decide to invest. Since these workers fell into various employment circumstances,
and as a result of the economic downturn and slow recovery, there were a wide variety of reasons
that were unknown for making or not making these investments (Sum et al, 2010). This study
used prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and regret theory (Loomes & Sugden, 1982)
as a theoretical basis for the research to uncover these reasons.
This chapter covered the major underpinnings of the study, which included the literature
search strategy, why people save, in-depth coverage of both prospect theory and regret theory,
including recent research that had used these theories along with the rationale for choosing them.
An explanation of the over arcing research questions of the study, to included the sub questions
26
and variables used in the study, were also reviewed. The research questions are also explained
again, in more detail with respect to how they fit in with the study and how they were used, in
Chapter 3.
Literature Search Strategy
A literature search was conducted using the Walden University Library, and the search
engines in the library used were EBSCOHost, ProQuest, ScienceDirect and Sage Premier.
Keywords and key terms included retire, prospect theory, regret theory, blue-collar workers,
manufacturing, laborer, line item operator, construction, qualitative study, case study, financial
education, financial literacy, economic uncertainty, fiscal uncertainty, invest, gamble, economic
consequences, labor markets, why people save, isolation effect, social security, social safety net,
unemployment benefits, member checking and heuristics. Social science websites in general were
also searched, as were Google Scholar, Google, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance and CNNMoney.
The topic of blue-collar workers and their investment habits and behaviors was not
thoroughly discussed in the available journals, so anecdotal evidence in the mainstream media
that discussed these workers and environmental issues that could potentially affect their financial
decision-making choices were used to supplement peer-reviewed journal article findings.
However, even the mainstream media and local media outlets did not conclusively discuss the
topics this study covered. Further information regarding the use of both scholarly and social
media is covered later in the chapter.
A research inquiry will only be as good as its literature review, because in order for the
inquiry to be complete it must have a sound base in which the research is founded on (Goodman,
Gary, & Wood, 2014). Previous research that used these theories was incorporated to
demonstrate previous uses with other research inquiries to demonstrate how they might be useful
27
here. There were also alternate theories that were not used whose relevance was close to this case
study, but the prospect theory and regret theory was chosen based on a closer tie to personal
finance. The two theories that were used here were chosen based on their relevance on personal
investing.
Theoretical Foundation
The Blue-Collar Worker
Blue-collar workers have been underserved throughout the years by the research
community as a whole (Mcleod, Lavis, MacNab, & Hertzman, 2012; Nielsen & Abildgaard,
2012; Strandholm, Schatzel, & Callahan, 2013). At the time of the writing of this dissertation
there were no examples of the theories that are about to be explained that were based on work
done with the blue-collar worker community. Very few research attempts were made, as will be
explained later in more detail, which discussed the blue-collar workers and their retirement
decisions.
Blue-Collar Worker Severance Packages
One such example was the study (Strandholm et al, 2013) where the company would
attempt to offer four different severance packages to its blue-collar workers, based on a variety
of variables to include age and length of employment with the current company, in order to
determine which workers would pick a given package and their reasoning behind their choice.
The first choice was based on a retirement-eligibility incentive where the employee was offered a
bonus. The second option was based on a paid retirement furlough for those employees who
were within two years of retirement. The third option was a bit more specific and its detail. It
was offered to employees who were a minimum of fifty-five years or older with at least ten years
of credited service, whereby these employees were offered their accrued pension benefits along
28
with other temporary benefits that would be payable to them until the age of sixty-two. Since the
years of service were truncated, these individuals would not get their full retirement pensions as
part of the reduced benefit. The final option, which was extended to all employees, was a lump
sum payment in exchange for being terminated from the company.
Blue-Collar Worker Unemployment and Mortality Rates
Another example of research (Mcleod, Lavis, MacNab, & Hertzman, 2012) looked at the
unemployment rates and mortality rates of workers that in either the United States or Germany,
and one group of people that was part of the research were blue-collar workers that were
employed. The researchers examined the relationship between unemployment and morality in
Germany, which they considered to be a coordinated market economy, and the United States, in
which they viewed as a liberal market economy. They found that there was an unemployment
morality association among American employees but not among the German employees.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework for this study was based on Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979)
prospect theory and Loomes and Sugden’s (1982) regret theory. These two theories will be
explained in great detail later in this chapter, but the general notion of prospect theory is based
on the choice of two or more given options whereby the person views the outcome as something
that might happen versus what could actually happen as a result of the given choice (Kahneman
& Tversky, 1979). Regret theory is based on a person making or not making a choice between
two or more options based on a previous experience with respect to the outcome of a prior
decision (Loomes & Sugden, 1982).
29
Personal Finance
There are a variety of research inquiries (Xi, Scholer, & Higgins, 2014; Burman, Coe,
Pierce, & Liu, 2014; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan, & Verma, 2014) that
explore why people save in the first place, and this is likely to be one of the most important
aspects of the research. Regardless of which category of worker was researched, the chance of
making it through an economic downturn, or even the time from leaving one employer and
finding suitable employment elsewhere, is much higher if a person has adequate savings to meet
their obligations. Such obligations would normally include paying normal every day bills, such
as the utilities bill, water, car payments and any mortgage and/or rent payments that are due.
Maintaining the lifestyle that one had between jobs is arguably going to be more of a challenge
since the stress of the loss of earned income will make it more likely that a reasonable person
will have a hard time justifying things like going to a movie or eating out for dinner.
This in turn creates pent-up demand for the worker when they begin to earn an income
that was close to what they had previously earned. One way to begin understanding how an
individual might respond to the opportunity of putting themselves and a more financially secure
position is to understand how this has been accomplished in the past. Previous research
(Ülkümen & Cheema, 2011; Burman, Coe, Pierce, & Liu, 2014; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts,
Tin-Chi, Brennan, & Verma, 2014) has shown that when people save they feel more confident in
their future than those who do not save.
Since prospect theory and regret theory address ways people weigh monetary outcomes,
they have been used extensively in many aspects of personal finance. The case study approach,
in concurrence with the prospect theory and regret theory, was able to provide the details that
covered the facets that blue-collar workers felt were necessary to be in place before they
30
allocated funds for their retirement. This decision, or series of steps that led to a decision, was
based on their preferences for the diversification of their funds. Additional research and
application of the prospect theory and regret theory offered ways to determine how people made
decisions with imprecise information as part of the dissertation process (Özerol & Karasakal,
2008).
Why People Save
Personal Savings
In order to begin the literature review, it was appropriate to provide a better
understanding of why people save, it was important to understand that many of these reasons
overlap. One reason, which is not always on the forefront of the mind of someone who is
planning for the future, is to plan on paying for their children to go to college (Kim, Huang, &
Sherraden, 2014; Friedline & Rauktis, 2014). It would also be difficult to compartmentalize
them. Instead, each of these three primary topics was presented together. Saving money takes
many forms, and it did this for a variety of reasons (Xi, Scholer, & Higgins, 2014; Burman, Coe,
Pierce, & Liu, 2014; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan, & Verma, 2014). These
reasons were based on things such as the fulfillment of personal savings goals, the avoidance of
having to borrow money to pay for things in the event of an emergency, and even to prevent
financial hardships arising from the loss of income stemming from unemployment or retirement
(Soman & Cheema, 2011; Xi, Scholer, & Higgins, 2014; Burman, Coe, Pierce, & Liu, 2014;
Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan, & Verma, 2014).
According to Soman and Cheema (2011), who studied the effects of earmarking money
on savings by low-income consumers, creating a savings goal and posting it in a visible are
served as a positive visual reminder and increased the propensity for saving. Soman and Cheema
31
also found that people saved more when earmarked money was partitioned into two accounts
than when it is pooled into one account.
The way goals were framed also had an effect on how people saved, and according to
four studies conducted by Ülkümen and Cheema (2011) savings could be increased or decreased
merely by changing the way people think about their savings goals. This was accomplished by
either specifying or not specifying an exact amount to save, and savers would focus on either
how or why to save (Ülkümen & Cheema, 2011; Burman, Coe, Pierce, & Liu, 2014; Marucci-
Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan, & Verma, 2014). The levels of savings had also been on
the rise as part of the recovery of the Great Recession of 2007 through 2009 (Walden, 2012;
Burman, Coe, Pierce, & Liu, 2014; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan, & Verma,
2014), but there was limited evidence of this being a trend for blue-collar workers.
For blue-collar workers specifically, it was difficult to account for specific reasons for the
decisions to have a personal savings. One reason for this was the low wages that blue-collar
workers earn, which had continued to be reduced over time as their jobs were outsourced to
foreign competitors adding to a rise in wage difference between educated and non-educated
workers (Kosteas, 2008). Risk of losing a job or missing out on a promotion also plays a role in
how people save (Xi, Scholer, & Higgins, 2014; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan,
& Verma, 2014).
Retirement
According to apRoberts (2009), the retirement system in the United States was made up
of two main components, which was the federal Social Security system and a myriad of
occupational pension plans for employees. This did not account for individual broker accounts,
where people could buy individual stocks, bonds, and other investment products themselves
32
since apRoberts did not included them. Instead, previous research was more likely to discuss the
two more broad and well-known portions of the retirement system.
One such example was how occupational pension plans covered a large part of full-time
employees in the public sector, but these plans had dropped in coverage in the private sector. At
their height, pension plans covered forty percent of private sector employees, whereas, at the
time of the writing of this dissertation, the current amount was approximately twenty percent
(apRoberts, 2009). “It should be noted that, whereas only about 17 per cent of employees work
in the public sector, public sector pension plans provide practically as much retirement income as
private sector pension plans: 8.7 per cent of the total as compared to 8.8 per cent” (apRoberts,
2009, p.620). apRoberts also argued that pensions may dwindle as a result of potential cutbacks
in Social Security and the decline of occupational pensions.
This could lead to older people working more in order to maintain their retirement
incomes, but the recent financial crisis tends to discourage attempts to save more for their
retirement (apRoberts, 2009). Instead, it tends to promote people saving money in the event that
they lose their job. This money that was saved would be used to maintain a certain lifestyle and
pay for expenses, as previously mentioned earlier on. There is also another side effect of this. In
the event that the parent company was refraining from hiring new employees, existing employees
would have a higher workload since additional staff would likely not be brought on to assist with
taking care of those tasks. It would also likely hinder promotions that would normally be seen as
employees move from one company to another.
Social Safety Nets
As a result of the near depletion of the reserves allocated for Social Security in the 1980s,
and the potential future depletion of the reserves again around the year 2037 (apRoberts, 2009, p.
33
622), there is a growing concern about the health and safety of the ability of Social Security to be
an effective safety net (Brown, Coronado & Fullerton, 2009; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Tin-
Chi, Brennan, & Verma, 2014). There were also public concerns that future entitlement reforms
may reduce the amount of Social Security benefits that people would be eligible to receive, and
this causes concern among potential and existing recipients that they may not be able to avoid
such cuts (Etzioni, 2011).
One such explanation that was a basis for concern was that the Social Security system
was the largest government program in the United States (Brown et al, 2009, p. 37-8). It
accounted for about a quarter of all federal revenue, and it was a major tax on working
individuals. A progressive retirement benefit schedule replacing higher fractions of past earnings
for those with low earnings, it was the most important source of income for the elderly. This is
because, as it constituted approximately forty percent of all income going to individuals aged
sixty-five and over, and it was designed to essentially be part of the social safety net.
With the aforementioned topic presented, there was a reasonable argument that could be
made that people generally question whether or not Social Security would available for them at
retirement. This study, however, did not intend to cover this issue in its entirety. Instead the issue
of the safety net was necessary to raise the point that individuals may adjust their saving habits
over time with the intentions of supporting themselves through retirement. This topic did apply
to blue-collar workers, and it was presented later as evidence of existing literature with respect to
blue-collar workers entering retirement early. There was limited literature, if any (since none was
easily found), however, which suggested blue-collar workers retire early and subsequently draw
Social Security.
34
Unemployment benefits were also categorized as a social safety net (Bitler & Hoynes,
2010). Prior to the unprecedented increase of unemployment insurance benefits to ninety-nine
weeks, resulting from the 2007 through 2009 recession and economic downturn, an individual
would only expect to receive about twenty-six weeks of unemployment payments (Schwartz,
2013, p. 680). There were also lifetime limits to the individuals in the United States, where they
would only be able to expect prolonged unemployment benefits during periods of economic
downturn whereas other countries provide benefits that insure the unemployed for long periods
of time regardless of the economy (Schwartz, 2013, p. 700).
It was also difficult to determine whether or not blue-collar workers use unemployment
benefits since income was often misreported in household surveys, especially among the most
disadvantaged households, with only half of food stamp and welfare dollars being reported in
mainstream surveys (Bitler & Hoynes, 2010, p. 138). This also made it difficult to understand
rates and levels of savings by blue-collar workers.
Prospect Theory
Theoretical Propositions
Prospect theory was a behavioral economic theory forwarded by Daniel Kahneman and
Amos Tversky in 1979, and it described the choices made by individuals as ones that were
chosen based on the potential value of losses and gains rather than the final outcome (Kahneman
& Tversky, 1979). It was developed as a descriptive model of decision making under risk and
was created as an alternative model to expected utility theory, which was based partly on
lotteries and gambling.
Expected utility theory was alleged to have exhibited several pervasive effects that were
inconsistent with the choices made by risky prospects (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). People
35
would tend to underweight the outcomes that were probable in comparison to outcomes that
would be viewed as certain. This would result in what was known to be dubbed the certainty
effect, which contributed to risk aversion and choices that would had otherwise involve sure
gains into seeking risks and choices involving sure losses (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979).
Additionally, people would discharge components shared by all prospects under
consideration (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; McKinley, Latham, & Bruan, 2014). This would
result in an isolation effect, which led to inconsistency in preferences as the same choice was
presented in a variety of forms. In response to these inconsistencies, choices that had value were
assigned to gains and losses instead of final assets and probabilities were replaced by decision
weights (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979;McKinley, Latham, & Bruan, 2014).
Decision weights would be lower than the corresponding probabilities, with the exception
of a range of low probabilities, as an overweight of low probabilities could contribute to the
attractiveness of both insurance and gambling. Perhaps as a result of assigning weights to the
gambling, investors would soon assign the same weights to investing behaviors. This would deal
primarily with portfolio formation with respect to the adaptation of what would be dubbed
ordered weighted averaging algorithms that since had been used to select assets for investors
who had to narrow down the number of assets they wished to invest in (Singh, Sahu &
Bharadwaj, 2010, p. 75).
The isolation effect, and in essence the weights involved in the creation of the prospect
theory attempts to resolve isolation effects stemming from individuals inclination to often isolate
consecutive probabilities instead of treating them together, and this was in contrast to individuals
using expected utility theory where in the evaluation phase individuals behave as if they would
compute a value based on the potential outcomes and their respective probabilities and a choice
36
was made on the option with the highest utility (Abdellaoui, Bleichrodt, & Paraschiv, 2007).
This also meant that people did not focus on the parts of two choices that were similar in nature,
which could lead to inconsistent choice preferences because a set of decisions or prospects that
could be decomposed into similar parts in more than one way where the different compositions
sometimes led to different preferences thereby isolating the decision process between facets that
may or may not be ideally used in the overall decision-making process (Abdellaoui et al, 2007).
These inconsistent choice preferences, arguably, could produce inconsistent results under various
given sets of circumstances that were similar in nature (Abdellaoui et al, 2007).
Prospect Theory
Previous Research
There were a number of research inquiries completed within the last five years that
related to this study. They were broken down by the major topic of the study below. Each section
briefly described how prospect theory was used in the study. The literature often times used other
theories to describe the underlying basis of the study, and there were occurrences where prospect
theory was used as a minor portion of the study while other instances demonstrate a more
thorough use of it.
Capital Market Theories
According to Hodnett and Heng-Hsing (2012) capital market theories were developed
based on market efficiency, and this included the capital asset pricing model, the efficient market
hypothesis, the expectation theory, modern portfolio theory and its implications in the decisions
of asset allocations, and the development of the arbitrage pricing theory. The underlying premise
of the expectation theory was that investors were rational if they made their decisions based on
the probability concept of outcomes (Hodnett & Heng-Hsing, 2012). In behavioral finance, there
37
was a suggestion that investors were often irrational and influenced by psychological biases
when making decisions. The study also asserted that prospect theory brought forth arguments
against some of the underlying principles of the expectation theory (Hodnett & Heng-Hsing,
2012).
Hodnett and Heng-Hsing (2012) argued that behavioral biases led investors to violate
some of the basic underlying principles of traditional finance, which meant decisions were based
on heuristics versus the underlying fundamentals of a given financial instrument. Part of this
argument was the assertion that the expectation theory utilizes the function of diminishing
marginal utility emphasized the risk aversion by investors, whereas prospect theory showed
investors being risk averse for gains while exhibiting diminished marginal disutility for losses
(Hodnett & Heng-Hsing, 2012; Barton, Berns, & Brooks, 2014). Prospect theory also brought
forth the idea of loss avoidance, which was a suggestion that the extent of disutility resulting
from losses were greater than the utility derived from an equal amount of gains (Barton, Berns,
& Brooks, 2014).
Disposition Effect
Hens and Vlcek (2011) articulate the disposition effect as being based on the observation
that investors tend to realize more gains than they do losses, which they say was not easily
explained by traditional finance theories (Barton, Berns, & Brooks, 2014) that also seemingly
used prospect theory. Studies by both Hens and Vlcek (2011) and Kaustia (2010) found that
prospect theory was unlikely able to explain the disposition effect. One ordinary explanation for
the disposition effect was referenced to prospect theory, with respect to risk aversion, where
investors were risk-averse when faced with gains and risk-pursuing when faced with losses
(Hens & Vlcek, 2011).
38
Kaustia (2010) noted that patterns of realized returns did not often result from optimal
after-tax portfolio rebalancing, which was a belief in mean reverting returns, or investors acting
on target prices. Trading data from the study demonstrated the propensity to sell when a security
rises in price at a zero return, but it was generally constant over a broad range of losses and
increased, or was constant, over a wide range of gains (Kaustia, 2010). When combined with
exogenous liquidity shocks, prospect theory predicts that more gains were realized than losses:
however, it also predicts that the propensity to sell would decline as stock prices moved away in
either direction from the purchase price, which was a prediction that was rejected by the data
(Kaustia, 2010).
Employee Satisfaction and Turnover
A study by Dong, Mitchell, Lee, Holtom and Hinkin (2012) was conducted to examine
how relationships between employee job satisfaction trajectory and subsequent turnover may
change depending on employee unit (department) job satisfaction trajectory and its dispersion.
The analysis was composed of data collected from over five thousand employees and one
hundred and seventy-five business units of a hospitality company (Dong et al, 2012). Prospect
theory, in the context of the study, suggested that the further away a gain or loss was from a
person’s initial job satisfaction the more salient the change would be to that person.
The conservation of resources theory was also used in the study to determine that
individuals were motivated to conserve their critical resources and would generally react to a
decline in job satisfaction. The study alternately found that growth in an individual employee’s
job satisfaction was not likely to prevent him or her from leaving merely because job satisfaction
was uniformly decreasing in the workplace, which meant the employee was out of step with the
rest of the coworkers (Dong et al, 2012). The study also found that even if an employee did not
39
necessarily like the job they were doing, if the work place overall enjoys a uniform job
satisfaction, there was an increased possibility in which the unsatisfied employee would be in
step with coworkers over time (Dong et al, 2012). As a result, the job satisfaction based on the
unit-level workplace had an effect on the overall turnover rate within a given unit.
Preference Foundations
A study by Kothiyal, Spinu, and Wakker (2011) asserted that prior to prospect theory, the
common thought process had been built upon the notion that irrational behavior was too chaotic
to be modeled, which meant that models of rational choices were the best descriptive
approximation of irrational behavior. The study also posited that preference foundations
provided the necessary conditions for decision models, which was also known as the preference
relation (Kothiyal et al, 2011).
Kothiyal et al (2011) pointed to three problems with prospect theory that would be
discussed in the study. “First, there were some theoretical problems in the way it implemented
non-additive probabilities. Second, it deals only with risk (known probabilities). Third, within
risk it deals only with a limited set of prospects (only two nonzero outcomes)” (Kothiyal et al,
2011, p. 196). Prospect theory was used in the context of the study to examine complex
prospects in normal and lognormal distributions. In summation of the study, preference
foundations for special cases of prospect theory required countable additivity (Kothiyal et al,
2011, p. 196). The paper also supported applications of prospect theory for the use of complex
uncertainties, as seen in applications in finance and health, and it demonstrated methods that
could be used to assign weights under such uncertainties (Kothiyal et al, 2011, p. 196).
40
Student Academic Decision-Making Choices
A study by Mowrer and Davidson (2011) used experiments to apply prospect theory to
decision-making in academic situations while focusing on risk-seeking portions of a fourfold
pattern. “The fourfold pattern predicts that people were risk-seeking over low probability gains,
risk-averse over high probability gains, risk-averse over low probability losses, and risk-seeking
over high probability losses” (Mowrer & Davidson, 2011, p. 298-9). The study asserted that
there was a continuous interplay in higher educational settings of courses in school policies and
student preferences and decisions. Mowrer and Davidson also posited that prospect theory could
be used in the application of events that take place in higher education enabling administrators,
professors, and students to operate more effectively by considering subjective valuations that
influence student decisions.
Another similar study by Zhengyi (2013) used prospect theory to determine whether or
not academic experience in economics would result in reduced risk aversion and irrationality.
The study used expected utility theory to measure rationality based on behavioral deviations
posited by the theory, and it used prospect theory to measure adherence to cognitive limitations.
“A gambling experiment survey with monetary incentives was conducted to elicit risk profile
and adherence to PT [prospect theory] from Occidental College students with various training
levels in economics. Economics majors were found to be less risk averse, and this is due to self-
selection, rather than learning in economics. Learning effect, however, was observed among non-
economics students” (Zhengyi, 2013, p. 13). It was also noted that the learning effect among
non-economics majors could be biased due to their abilities to switch majors or chose economics
classes.
41
Regret Theory
Theoretical Propositions
Based on two fundamental assumptions, regret theory was created by Graham Loomes
and Robert Sugden, and it was introduced as an alternative to prospect theory in the December of
1982 edition of The Economic Journal as an explanation of gambling choices (Loomes &
Sugden, 1982). The first assumption was based on the notion that many people experienced
sensations of regret and rejoice, and the second one was based on the notion that when people
made decisions that they were not certain about, they tried to anticipate and take account of those
sensations (Loomes & Sugden, 1982, p. 820).
Loomes and Sugden also had deep-seated arguments for the reasoning behind these
assertions that would be the underlying basis for the construction of their theory (Loomes &
Sugden, 1982, p. 820). In relation to the first assumption, it seemed to us that psychological
experiences of regret and rejoicing could not properly be described in terms of the concept of
rationality. A choice may be rational or irrational, but an experience was just an experience. As
far as the second assumption was concerned, if an individual did experience such feelings, they
could not see how he could be deemed irrational for consistently taking those feelings into
account. The theory had also been used in the decision sciences to understand how choices were
made with respect to avoiding a wrong decision or regretting the failure to take an action after an
occurrence had transpired (Tsalatsanis, Hozo, Vickers & Djulbegovic, 2010).
Regret Theory
Previous Research
There were a number of research inquiries completed within the last five years that
related to this study. They were broken down by the major topic of the study below. Each section
42
below briefly describes how regret theory was used in the study. The literature often times uses
other theories to describe the underlying basis of the study, and there were occurrences where
regret theory was used as a minor portion of the study while other instances demonstrate a more
thorough use of it.
Perceived Unfairness
A study by Tang and Jianmin (2008) used regret theory to discover that consumers who
realize they had been involved in a transaction that they later felt to be unfair, such as a
perceived unfair pricing practice, could be an experience filled with shock and regret, and such
an experience could drive this given customer to refrain from any further transactions with the
company. Tang and Jianmin also argued that both fairness and regret involve a comparison
standard, and that perceived unfairness may lead to regret independent of the outcome or a
discrepancy in the outcome. Regret can also come from comparison with either an imagined or
forgone outcome, while fairness typically comes from comparison with a socially comparable
outcome (Tang & Jianmin, 2008, p. 750).
Tang and Jianmin (2008) emphasized more than just the notion that the relationship of
regret and unfairness as being both outcome dependent and outcome discrepancy dependent.
They also argue that, “In addition, it questions the assumption that regret is experienced only
when a foregone outcome is better than that of the chosen option. The data also suggested that
the influences of social comparison on satisfaction and repurchase intention were fully mediated
by fairness and regret. Satisfaction is mainly driven by perceived fairness; repurchase intention is
mainly driven by experienced regret” (Tang & Jianmin, 2008, p. 750).
43
Return Shipping Policies of Online Retailers
Bower and Maxham (2012) conducted two field studies over a period of four years that
used two surveys and actual consumer spending data. They found that some online retailers
would attempt to limit costs associated with product returns by instituting return policies that
required customers to pay to return products if a retailer determined that the customer was at
fault, but if the retailer was deemed to be at fault then the retailer would pay for the return
shipping.
The findings indicated that if customers had to pay for their own return shipping after
making an online purchase, they decreased their spending with the retailer by seventy-five to one
hundred percent over a period of two years (Bower & Maxham, 2012, p. 110). However, it was
also found that customers who did not have to pay for return shipping spent one hundred and
fifty-eight to four hundred and fifty-seven percent more than they did prior to the return (Bower
& Maxham, 2012, p. 110). Bower and Maxham also suggested that online retailers should
consider instituting a policy of free returns or at least examine consumer data to determine
consumer response to fee-based returns.
Decision Curve Analysis
One study (Tsalatsanis et al, 2010) researched the effects of physicians using regret
theory as an alternative to the decision curve analysis in their daily medical practices. The
decision curve analysis is used in the medical field as an alternative method for the evaluation of
diagnostic testing, prediction models, and molecular markets (Tsalatsanis et al, 2010, p. 1).
However, the decision curve analysis is primarily based on expected utility theory and was often
violated by decision makers (Tsalatsanis et al, 2010). The study also concluded that decision-
making was governed by analysis and intuition, which was part of a deliberative process, which
44
meant that rational decision-making should reflect both of these facets (Tsalatsanis et al, 2010).
As a result of the study, a dual visual analog scale was developed to (a) describe the relationship
between regret associated with failing to treat a patient versus treating a patient unnecessarily
and (b) develop the decision maker’s preferences as expressed in terms of threshold probability
(Tsalatsanis et al, 2010).
Reason-Based Choices
Connolly and Reb (2012) examined the moderating role of regret aversion in the reason-
based choice decision process based on regret theory. As part of the introduction to their
research, they introduced an event where individuals had ownership of a given stock (Connolly
& Reb, 2012, p. 36). One group of people began the study owning the stock of one company
(Stock A), and the other group owned a different company (Stock B), who then sold it and
bought Stock A. As part of the study, each group owning Stock A would lose money. Each of the
two groups were questioned to see which group felt more regret, and it was discovered that the
group of people who had switched over to the stock, from Stock B to Stock A, were the ones
who felt the higher levels of regret (Connolly & Reb, 2012).
The study also concluded that, based on the common decision justification, reason-based
choice effects were associated to regret aversion. Manipulation of regret salience had the
possibility to reduce the decoy effect, which was a well-known reason-based choice effect and
the effect of regret salience had a tendency to vary in theory relevant to ways from one reason-
based choice effect to another (Connolly & Reb, 2012). In psychology, the research on regret
theory had a heavy reliance on self-report measures of expected emotional reactions to
hypothetical events (Connolly & Reb, 2012, p. 36).
45
Following the Heart
Crotty and Thompson (2009) explored decision-making implications of regrets of the
heart versus regrets of the head in economic decision-making in three studies. The overall
findings from the studies demonstrated that people who were asked to recall a time in which they
regretted not following their heart were more likely to recall circumstances where they
experienced a loss or a missed opportunity compared to the people who recalled a time when
they regretted not following their head (Crotty & Thompson, 2009, p. 315). The study found that
there was no overriding maximum that pervaded lay psychological wisdom when it came to
following one’s heart or head, because people impulsively used one or the other as their inner
guide depending on the circumstances of a given situation (Crotty & Thompson, 2009, p. 316).
Crotty and Thompson (2009) found that when considering regret with respect to matters
of the heart, the implication was built on the notion that if an individual had followed their heart
a chance might not had been lost. With matters of the head, the person might recall a time where
an action resulted in a bad outcome perhaps because of a failure to restrain allowed inner voice
or intuition (Crotty & Thompson, 2009).
The study also found that in the negotiation context sellers could be more cautious and
less aggressive during the negotiation process if they felt they were going to lose the item they
were selling if they made errors, and this lack of self interest could manifest itself into lower
profits (Crotty & Thompson, 2009). A focus on emotions also had the capability to prompt them
to pay more attention to the other party’s outcomes, perhaps with the inclusion of seeking more
equal allocation of resources, which could had again reduced their profit margin.
46
Post-Purchase Regret
Das and Kerr (2010) conducted a study on a television commercial that was alleged to
use using regret theory. The study asserted that if people understand what exactly they regretted
when they experienced the emotion, then it would be possible for them to control their feelings
when they started to arise. “Campbell Soup Company ran an advertisement for its V8 vegetable
soup stating, ‘WOW, I could have had a V8.’ In doing so, the company probably tried to make
their consumers realize that their decision to buy another brand would result in an unfavorable
experience compared to the V8 brand” (Das & Kerr, 2010, p. 178). The point of the advertising
was to convey a notion to the consumer that had they chosen the Campbell’s product, then a
better product would have been purchased (Das & Kerr, 2010).
The objective of the research was to introduce the perception of regret that comes from
two different sources of the decision sources, and these two were made up of the actual decision-
making process adopted and the product chosen as they result of this process along with the
possibility that individuals may misattribute the source of regret if the sources of regret were
measured (Das & Kerr, 2010).
Rationale for the Choice of Theories
Relevance
The rationale for choosing prospect theory was based on the notion that some people
viewed investing as a gamble (Chapman & Getzen, 2011), but there was also tendency for some
people to invest based on simple heuristics (Benartzi & Thaler, 2007). These heuristics, or rules
that people used in their judgments to made decisions, could be accurate but could also lead to
systematic biases (Benartzi & Thaler, 2007). “Saving for retirement is a difficult problem, and
most employees had little training upon which to draw in making the relevant decisions. Perhaps
47
as a result, investors were relatively passive. They were slow to join advantageous plans; they
made infrequent changes; and they adopt naive diversification strategies” (Benartzi & Thaler,
2007, p. 102).
The basis for using regret theory was based on its assertion that people experienced regret
if they invest in something and they were later unhappy with the investment due to a variety of
reasons, such as buying the stock of a company and it subsequently dropped sharply in price
(Kwak & Park, 2012). The opposite was true if a given person was given information about a
stock and they did not purchase shares of it and it subsequently rose in price (Kwak & Park,
2012).
The economic environment in which one lives and could also be a factored that
influences the investment decision-making. Some people exhibited strong tendencies to save
money in a pessimistic environment, whereas in an opportunistic environment more money
would likely be used for investment (Xiao, Wang & Liu, 2009, p. 1302). Investors who were
neutral may show less willingness to invest in the event of an economic crisis or severe downturn
(Xiao et al, 2009).
Relationship with the Study
Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and regret theory (Loomes & Sugden,
1982) were used as the theoretical basis for the research for reasons that overlap one another.
Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), in short, had the relationship of a potential
investor seeking an opportunity to invest in a given asset class based on what he or she thinks
would happen with price movement relative to the entry point. One could argue that this
investor, perhaps a blue-collar worker, may have been in a position where he or she felt
48
comfortable investing. With an idea in mind of how much could make in the end, they may
decide to go ahead and invest in either a singular asset or a group of assets (Xiao et al, 2009).
This person might have even approached someone that they know who had recently
invested, and this person may have provided them with advice on which asset class to chose or
perhaps even a specific company. The investor could now encounter a scenario in which they
had a decision to make that could cause feelings of regret later, which was where regret theory
came into play (Loomes & Sugden, 1982). In the event that the investor took the investment
advice of their friend, they could have found that the asset or assets that they bought
subsequently dropped in value that led them to regret both listening to their friend and acquiring
the asset (Loomes & Sugden, 1982). However, in the event that that person did not listen to their
friend and the asset gained value, there could be a feeling of regret for not acting on the advice
(Loomes & Sugden, 1982).
Relationship of the Research Questions
The research questions were meant to build on the existing prospect and regret theories
with respect to blue-collar workers and their investment behaviors, and they were also based
partially on the existing literature in some cases. The central focus of the research was based on
discovering the factors that contributed to their decision-making process on whether or not
investing was appropriate for them, along with their choices to diversify their portfolio in the
event they do chose to invest. In order to add depth to the topic, there were several aspects of
these decisions that needed to be explored. As described in Chapter 1, and in the literature review
above, the amount of financial education that an individual had could be a determining factor in
whether or not they invest and how much they do invest in the event they chose to (Ryack,
49
2011). It was also possible that a person’s level of academic education could affect their
investing habits as well (Ryack, 2011).
There were additional questions that were considered that were not necessarily found in
the current research: (a) How much financial education did blue-collar workers feel they needed
before investing?, (b) In what ways did a blue-collar worker’s level of academic education affect
their levels of investing?, (c) In what ways did economic conditions in the local area where blue-
collar workers were employed cause them to create their overall investment strategy?, (d) In
what ways did a blue-collar worker’s age and gender affect their retirement planning?, and (e)
What were the different categories, and how much of each category, of investments blue-collar
workers allocated their money to? The reason that these questions were asked was because one
could argue that in an economy that had contracted, was in the middle of contracting, or the
economy was recovering from a severe recession, a given person may not have felt comfortable
investing because they may had fears relating to the strength of their job security (such as
whether or not they may lose their job).
A person might have had different investing behaviors depending on their age, because
the older a person gets the less risk tolerant they may become and vice versa (Tannahill, 2012),
but that did not necessarily guarantee that everyone had similar investment behaviors just
because they were of a certain age or gender.
Gaps in the Literature
In order to achieve the appropriate levels of depth, there was a need to fill gaps in the
literature in several places that one could argue was seemingly difficult to fill. One such gap that
was difficult to fill in literature was based on the opinions of a group of people, because it was
difficult to generalize the opinions of people in one portion of the United States with the opinions
50
of someone else in a different part of the country. One reason for this was based on the
possibility of an uneven recovery since some parts of the country tried to recover from the
recession in a way that allowed for blue-collar workers to feel comfortable doing things such as
investing, buying a house, and perhaps even buying a new car.
In other parts of the country, blue-collar workers might have still been unemployed
because the recovery in their area was weak or potentially even non-existent because it had not
started yet. In order to develop credible findings, a researcher should go directly to the source
and ask. There was also a need to fill the gap in the literature that involves the saving habits of
blue-collar workers, because there was literature (Soman & Cheema, 2011; Borsch-Supan &
Ludwig, 2009) that covered the saving habits of people in general. It did not, however,
specifically cover blue-collar workers. There was only one study (Goetzmann & Kumar, 2008)
found that spoke specifically to blue-collar worker investment portfolio diversification, and they
found that blue-collar workers were in the category possessing the least-diversified portfolio.
Literature Review Related to Key Variables
Studies Related to the Constructs of Interest Methodology
This section addressed studies that had covered regret theory, prospect theory, and blue-
collar workers investing their money. At the time of this writing, the working class individuals
had been relatively ignored in past research compared to individuals from higher socioeconomic
statuses (Fouad et al, 2012, p. 287). There was an attempt made to work around this issue to find
literature that closely relates to the aforementioned studies. Although I was unable to find any
case studies that these three broad topics simultaneously, I was able to find various studies that
covered how each topic was studied.
51
Several studies in the academic literature (Wiltermuth & Gino, 2013; Bower & Maxham,
2012; Tang & Jianmin, 2008; Lankton & Luft, 2008) seemed to support the notion that when
researchers want to study regret theory, they want results that were based on both consumer
behavior and empirical data, because the majority of the studies in existence did not seem to use
the case study approach or qualitative inquiry in general. One might also have gone as far as to
argue that researchers might have been doing studies on regret theory with the intentions on
being able to solidify their findings in quantitative data in order for it to be more credible, which
would also seemingly made it easier for another researcher to take the findings from the research
and replicate it in order to expand on it.
However, societal issues such as the ones incorporated in this study could allow
researchers to view similar problems through a different set of spectacles. It was also the
intention of this study to fill the gap in the literature between the findings of quantitative studies
and the very few studies based on blue-collar workers investment behaviors using qualitative
methodologies.
A study conducted by Liao, Liu, C., Liu, Y., To and Lin (2011) that was relative to the
field of finance was designed to determine customer regret in an e-commerce environment. It
examined the roles that information quality, system quality, and service quality played in
determining customer regret and satisfaction. Using regret theory, the study found that poor
evaluations of website quality could influence buyer regret, which meant that the success of the
website largely depended on the value of the information. If consumers were dissatisfied with the
content, they would leave the site and abandon the actions they were undertaking or turn to other
websites (Liao et al, 2011). This study also found that business-to-business relationships were an
important aspect of the website performance with respect to delivering product and service
52
information, because if products were not delivered as promised it could place a strain on the
relationships between the parent company, the vendors and the consumers. A powerful search
engine was also important, because if customers could not easily search the website they were
likely to leave (Liao et al, 2011).
A case study using prospect theory was conducted by Wood (2009) in response to the
chronic excess capacity in the small competitive industry of clay brick manufacturing. The study
found that exit barriers produced a free-rider problem, where only smaller and lower quality
brick plants were shut when the efficient solution demanded major closures (Wood, 2009, p. 25).
It was found that in order to reduce the sheer volume of manufacturers, mergers and acquisitions
between large companies and smaller companies would end up having to take place, which
resulted in the parent firm cutting sizable portions in capacity mainly in the acquired plants in
order to increase efficiency and reduce costs (Wood, 2009, p. 41). The reason for this taking
place was based on a period of low demand. Most of this would happen three full years after the
collapse of the market, and it would be highly-condensed over a period of six months (Wood,
2009, p. 41).
Two case studies (Boris, 2010; Sanders & McCready, 2009) regarding blue-collar
workers were found to be relevant to not only addressing the overall study, but to addressed age
and gender sub questions that was covered later in the study. There were a number of issues that
faced blue-collar workers when it came to gaining suitable employment, making a decision on
whether or not to allocated funds for their retirement, and how they would diversify these funds.
One such issue was the concern about equal treatment (Boris, 2010). Unlike government
employees who were less likely to be arbitrarily fired for being a lesbian, gay, bisexual, or
transgender (LGBT), private companies did not always extend the same protections (Boris, 2010,
53
p. 158). However, the study concluded with the United Auto Workers Union, who represent
Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, receiving praise for taking steps to ensure that language in
the contracts, at all levels of the hiring process, protects employees by making sure they were
treated fairly and equally regardless of sexual orientation. This included pay, medical benefits,
and other benefits, as well as the other contracts throughout the employees’ career (Boris, 2010,
p. 175).
Sanders and McCready’s (2009) study addressed by which two older blue-collar workers
adapted to their physically demanding jobs without ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)
accommodations or changes to their job descriptions despite having endured medical conditions
commonly associated with older age. Although the study concluded by recommending that older
workers do more intellectually-based jobs, such as ones that led project teams, the ultimate take-
away from the study was the assertion of a concept that was based directly on this study, and this
included comments made by interviewees:
The process of bringing personal concerns and medical issues into the workplace is not
unique to older workers. However, the thought of retirement, which constantly looms over
them, was core to their work and broader life focus. Steve was quick to say that retirement
benefits and medical insurance were the primarily reasons that he worked. “I gotta make a
living and get benefits. I made 17.63/hour. . . It’s a job, I’m not happy with it. . . I look
forward to retirement”. Steve planned on working part-time for his daughter’s deli “to keep
busy . . . to talk to people. . . to do different things”. Tony, however, described retirement as
“scary.” It’s a difficult situation. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Most of us didn’t make
enough to retire. I had 100k – that won’t last long. I wanted at least 5 good years of
retirement before. . . you know. But I can’t pay for medical. I don’t know where I’ll live.
54
What happens when you want to retire? No one tells you what to do. I don’t know how it will
happen and it’s scary. (Sanders & McCready, 2009, p. 118).
Approaches to the Problem
Previous Attempts, Strengths and Weaknesses
As noted previously, little research had been conducted in the field of finance to discuss
all three of the major concepts of this study, which were built upon regret theory, prospect
theory, and blue-collar workers. However, there were two studies conducted within the past five
years that were the closest to this study with respect to relevance. The closest research that could
be found was conducted by Sanders and McCready (2009), and the strengths of the study were
based on the approach which enabled an in-depth examination of how the context of the work
environment, job position, and life stage influenced older workers’ perceptions of the job.
The limitations of the study were based on the inherent nature of case study research,
which present outcomes that were difficult to generalize from one population to another since
case samples were small and selected for specific attributes (Sanders & McCready, 2009, p.
121). The strength of the research was based on addressing financial concerns that were brought
forward by the participants, which alluded to the notion that blue-collar workers may not have
had higher levels of financial education.
The second-closest study was conducted by Boris (2010) and it addressed LGBT issues,
including equal benefits, but did not include all three of the primary issues that this case study
addressed. The reason this one was not as close as the Sanders and McCready (2009) study was
because it lacked documented interviews with blue-collar workers being produced in the
literature.
55
One strength of the study, however, was based on the work that the union had done for
the workers of the big three automotive companies, but one of the limitations of the study was
that it was very difficult for the researcher to do meaningful interviews because many UAW
leaders refuse to be interviewed. The study also pointed out the long-term successes employees
had in recent years in obtaining fair and equal pay and benefits, which included medical and
retirement benefits, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender.
Justification for Selection of Variables
It was appropriate to restate an important point presented earlier regarding the
justification for the selection of variables used in the study. As of the time of this writing,
working class individuals had been relatively ignored in past research compared to individuals
from higher socioeconomic statuses (Fouad et al, 2012, p. 287). So it was very difficult to find
articles that specifically, or even adequately, discussed the point of understanding the
contributing factors that led to the level of investment for retirement and portfolio diversification
by blue-collar workers since very little literature existed in this area, and it was the attempt of the
study to close some of those gaps in the literature. There was anecdotal evidence in the
mainstream media that discussed these workers and current environmental issues that potentially
had an effect on their financial decision-making choices. However, even the mainstream media
and local media outlets did not conclusively discuss the topics this study covered.
Review and Synthesis of Key Concepts
Bloomberg news reporters Nash and Church (2012) discussed a finance issue in San
Bernardino, California, which had a population of about two hundred thousand residents, and its
court-imposed deadline for an austerity budget known as a pendency plan. This blue-collar
community was under the watchful eye of a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge that was determining
56
whether or not the city should remain under bankruptcy protection. The article presented the
position of the city, with respect to making progress on the pendency plan, in order to stay in
bankruptcy using the temporary court-ordered budget. This included a procedural debate over
whether a council committee needed to consider bankruptcy related cuts to police and fire
services. The article also reported that tax revenue fell by approximately $12 million, which was
a 9 percent reduction between the years of 2007 to 2011. Pensions were forecast to consume
fifteen percent of the city’s budget in 2015, which was up from 9 percent in 2007. This came as a
result of the city lowering retirement ages to boost pensions for police and firefighters.
Bloomberg news reporters Braun and Selway (2012) discussed the City of Chelmsford,
Massachusetts, who outsourced their facility-management duties to Aramark Corporation, which
was based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for a fee of $841,000 annually, which was
$400,000 less than the custodians’ union would previously cost. After the transition, union
workers were offered their jobs back at $8.25 to $8.75 an hour, when they were previously
making twenty dollars an hour.
Massachusetts and thirty-six other state and local retirement funds committed over $5
billion to the four private equity investment pools that acquired Aramark in 2007 (Braun &
Selway, 2012). The beneficiaries of this pension system had reaped returns of as much as fifteen
percent annually from the funds at the expense of other public employees who had lost their jobs
to Aramark (Braun & Selway, 2012). The article also reported that less attention had been given
to key backers of the private equity industry, which were public employee pension funds (Braun
& Selway, 2012). Deals like the one seen with Aramark were also used to pay benefits for
workers retiring in coming decades (Braun & Selway, 2012).
57
Bloomberg news reporters Shenn, Gullo, and Gittelsohn (2013) completed a report on
Richmond, California, which had a population of about a hundred and six thousand residents
situated north of San Francisco and was largely a blue-collar city. The city considered the
enactment of eminent domain, which was the right of the government to take private property for
the public good while providing fair compensation to the owner, except some of these homes
were worth far less than the mortgage on them (Shenn et al, 2013). The initiative had targeted
mostly loans by borrowers who were current on their payments. Other communities, such as El
Monte, California, North Las Vegas, Nevada, and Irvington, New Jersey, had considered this in
the past, and after consideration they decided against the plan. It was not clear how this move by
local governments would affect the members of its community, nor was it clear how it would
affect blue-collar workers. What was clear was that in the event eminent domain were to proceed
in a predominantly blue-collar community, there could likely be negative effects to blue-collar
residents who happen to live in a house that had a higher-priced mortgage than the value of the
house.
StarTribune news reporter Belz (2013) completed a report on local blue-collar workers,
mainly on pipefitters, oil workers, roofers, factory workers, and concrete workers, in the local
economy of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The report (Belz, 2013) discussed how blue-collar
Americans could use extra income, but as they got older many of them were forced into
retirement, some were forced into early retirement, and end up collecting a significantly smaller
pension than they would had otherwise collected had they remained in the workforce. One
concrete worker was forced into retirement because of his physical disabilities at the age of fifty-
four. Many of these local blue-collar workers enroll early for Social Security, or they shift to
58
lower-paying work or stop working altogether. Several of these workers that were interviewed
were also physically unable to work, and they lived on a fixed income.
What Remains to be Studied
There was a gap in the literature that did not completely discuss the contributing factors
that led to the level of investment for retirement and portfolio diversification by blue-collar
workers that used both prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and regret theory (Loomes
& Sugden, 1982) as the underpinnings of a case study. So far this literature review has shown
relevant studies (Sanders & McCready, 2009; Boris, 2010) that had come close, but many of the
underlying factors that still needed to be studied were not covered in the literature conclusively.
These factors included whether or not blue-collar workers in a financial position to invest, how
much money they allocated if they could invest, how they diversify their portfolio, and if they
had an emergency fund established so they did not have to withdraw their retirement funds.
This information was not found in the literature, and in order to obtain higher levels of
accurate information this information should be gathered directly from the study participants.
The reason there was a need for this to be gathered from research participants was because it
may have been controversial to speculate on what the individual circumstances would be prior to
the study, and it could have also been controversial to assume that blue-collar respondents from
other studies (Sanders & McCready, 2009; Boris, 2010) speak for all of the other participants
who would be in this study.
Studies Related to the Research Questions
The amount of financial education that an individual had could be a determining factor in
whether or not they invest and how much they do invest in the event they chose to (Ryack,
2011). It was also possible that a person’s level of academic education could affect their
59
investing habits as well (Ryack, 2011). A study by Hadar, Sood and Fox (2013) proposed that
attempts to increase consumers’ objective knowledge of financial instruments could deter
willingness to invest when these attempts diminish their subjective knowledge.
This study (Hadar et al, 2013) also addresses the sub questions this case study, with
respect to financial education and literacy. Some of the most important decisions that consumers
made involved financial products, and these ranged from the choice of a retirement savings
portfolio to buying a home or leasing or purchasing a vehicle (Hadar et al, 2013). Over time an
increased amount of new and complex financial products had been made available to consumers,
and unfortunately many consumers lack the financial literacy to evaluate these products
adequately and chose among them the ones they were interested in (Hadar et al, 2013).
As part of the research by Hadar et al (2013), four studies were conducted using different
subjective knowledge manipulations and investment products to show that investment decisions
were influenced by subjective knowledge. The study had four major findings: (a) participant
willingness to pursue a risky investment increased when subjective knowledge levels were
higher, (b) participants willingness to enroll in their retirement savings program was enhanced by
asking consumers an easy question about finance, which also increased their subjective
knowledge, (c) technically elaborating on information about mutual funds diminished subjective
knowledge regarding that investment and decreased the choice of that fund, and (d) consumers
invested less money in funds when missing information was made salient (Hadar et al, 2013, p.
303).
For questions of the study that pertained to a respondent’s age, with respect to how it
affected their retirement planning, a study by Kornrich and Furstenberg (2013) found that age
was not always closely related to investment horizons, because these proxies for investment and
60
financial sophistication were significant for stockholding. A study by Dow (2009) found that
investors who had children would invest in them throughout their lifetime, and the outcomes of
the investments were based on monetary inputs over time. Higher income parents who had
children were at a greater advantage because these parents spend more on child care, preschool,
and the growing costs of post secondary education (Dow, 2009, p. 21). Parents also had been
found to invest equally in their children in recent times, whereas this was not always the case in
the past (Dow, 2009, p. 5).
Wang (2011) also asserted that younger generations also face challenges stemming from
economic circumstances, such as the housing bubble and the rapid changing demographics in the
United States. The study concluded that gender, income, knowledge, and experience emerged as
important personal and social influences on younger generations’ investing behaviors (Wang,
2011, p. 21). So one could argue that a given investor could chose to hold stocks later in their
life, and the amount of stocks that they do hold could depend on their income and number of
children, which could affect the levels of their investment in the event that they chose to invest.
For questions of this study concerning the gender of an investor, there were studies
(Mittal & Vyas, 2011; Nofsinger & Varma, 2009) positing women were more risk averse than
men were, while other research (Wang, 2011) would demonstrate inconclusive findings
regarding the correlation between gender and financial behavior. However, men and women did
not differ in their information processing and accumulation styles when it came to deciding on
their investment behaviors (Mittal & Vyas, 2011, p. 45). One reason for this may have been
because women had learned from their mothers’ generation about the financial difficulties
arising from sudden widowhood or divorce (Mittal & Vyas, 2011, p. 57). Kathuria and Singhania
(2012) also conducted a study which regarded the differences in gender with respect to investing
61
and where individual investors got their information, and they found that both male and females
used magazines, the Internet, and television as the three most important sources of awareness.
Qualitative inquiry that was used the case study method had the ability to provide
meaningful results, because there were a number of gaps in the literature and one could argue
that society as a whole could gain from in the event that these holes were at least partially closed.
Positive social change comes in many forms, and the blue-collar worker was arguably one of the
major categories of workers that made up the backbone of the United States. Merely reviewing
quantitative-based data would not be appropriate in this case because, in many circumstances, as
we had seen above, questions could only be answered by communicating directly with individual
study participants in a way that allowed them to provide their own personal in-depth responses to
open-ended questions, which was not typical of quantitative research.
Summary and Conclusions
Saving money took many forms, and it did this for a variety of reasons. These reasons
were based on things such as the fulfillment of personal savings goals, the avoidance of having
to borrow money to pay for things in the event of an emergency, and even to prevent financial
hardships arising from the loss of income stemming from unemployment or retirement (Soman
& Cheema, 2011). The way goals were framed also had an effect on how people save, and
according to four studies conducted by Ülkümen and Cheema (2011) savings could be increased
or decreased merely by changing the way people think about their savings goals.
According to apRoberts (2009), the retirement system in the United States was made up
of two main components, which was the federal Social Security system and a myriad of
occupational pension plans for employees. As a result of the near depletion of the reserves
allocated for Social Security in the 1980s, and the potential future depletion of the reserves again
62
around the year 2037 (apRoberts, 2009, p. 622), there was a growing concern about the health
and safety of the ability of Social Security to be an effective safety net (Brown et al, 2009).
There were also public concerns that entitlement reforms may reduce the amount of Social
Security benefits that people would be eligible to receive, and this caused concern among
potential and existing recipients that they may not be able to avoid such cuts (Etzioni, 2011).
Unemployment benefits were also categorized as a social safety net (Bitler & Hoynes,
2010). Prior to the unprecedented increase of unemployment insurance benefits to ninety-nine
weeks, resulting from the 2007 through 2009 recession and economic downturn, an individual
would only expect to receive about twenty-six weeks of unemployment payments (Schwartz,
2013, p. 680).
Prospect theory was a behavioral economic theory created by Daniel Kahneman and
Amos Tversky that debuted in the academic journal Econometrica in March of 1979, and it
described the choices made by individuals as ones that were chosen on the potential value of
losses and gains rather than final outcome (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). The rationale for
choosing prospect theory was based on the notion that some people viewed investing as a gamble
(Chapman & Getzen, 2011), but there was also tendency for some people to invest based on
simple heuristics (Benartzi & Thaler, 2007). These heuristics, or rules that people use in their
judgments to make decisions, could be accurate but could also lead to systematic biases
(Benartzi & Thaler, 2007). According to Hodnett and Heng-Hsing (2012) capital market theories
were developed based on market efficiency, and this included the capital asset pricing model, the
efficient market hypothesis, the expectation theory, modern portfolio theory and its implications
in the decisions of asset allocations, and the development of the arbitrage pricing theory.
63
In behavioral finance, there was a suggestion that investors were often irrational and
influenced by psychological biases when decisions were made (Hodnett & Heng-Hsing, 2012).
Prospect theory also brought forth the idea of loss avoidance, which was a suggestion that the
extent of disutility resulting from losses was greater than the utility derived from an equal
amount of gains. Hens and Vlcek (2011) articulated the disposition effect as being based on the
observation that investors tend to realize more gains than they do losses, which the authors assert
was not easily explained by traditional finance theories.
Employees of companies were also affected by economic occurrences. A study by Dong,
Mitchell, Lee, Holtom, and Hinkin (2012) was conducted to examine how relationships between
employee job satisfaction trajectory and subsequent turnover may change depending on the
employee’s unit job satisfaction trajectory and its dispersion. Prospect theory, in the context of
the study, suggested that the further a gain or loss was from a person’s initial job satisfaction the
more salient the change was to that person (Dong et al, 2012).
Based on two fundamental assumptions, regret theory was created by Graham Loomes
and Robert Sugden, and it was introduced as an alternative to prospect theory in the December of
1982 edition of The Economic Journal as an explanation of gambling choices (Loomes &
Sugden, 1982). The first assumption was based on the notion that many people experienced
sensations of regret and rejoice, and the second one was based on the notion that when people
made decisions that they were not certain about, they tried to anticipate and take account of those
sensations (Loomes & Sugden, 1982, p. 820). The rationale for regret theory was based on its
assertion that people experienced regret if they invested in something and were later unhappy
with the investment due to a variety of reasons, such as buying the stock of a company and it
subsequently dropped sharply in price (Kwak & Park, 2012).
64
Tang and Jianmin (2008) used regret theory to find that consumers who realized they had
been involved in a transaction they later felt to be unfair, that it could be an experience filled
with shock and regret, and such an experience could drive this given customer to refrain from
any further transactions with such a company. Through the use of regret theory, Bower and
Maxham (2012) found that some online retailers would attempt to limit costs associated with
product returns by instituting return policies that would require customers to pay to return
products if a retailer determined that the customer was at fault, but if the retailer was deemed to
be at fault then the retailer would pay for the return shipping. Finally, Tsalatsanis, Hozo, Vickers,
and Djulbegovic (2010) researched the effects of physicians using regret theory as an alternative
to the decision curve analysis in their daily medical practices.
This literature review had shown relevant studies (Sanders & McCready, 2009; Boris,
2010) that had come close, but many of the underlying factors that still needed to be studied were
not covered in the literature conclusively. These factors included whether or not blue-collar
workers were in a financial position to invest, how much money they allocated if they could
invest, how they diversified their portfolio, and if they had an emergency fund established so
they did not have to withdraw money from their retirement funds. These were the gaps in the
literature that this study closed. This information was not found in the literature, and in order to
obtain higher levels of accurate information this information was gathered directly from the
study participants.
The reason this information was gathered from research participants was because it could
have been controversial to speculate on what the individual circumstances would have been prior
to the study, and it could have also been controversial to assume that blue-collar respondents
from other studies (Sanders & McCready, 2009; Boris, 2010) speak for all of the other
65
participants who would be in this study. In order to articulate the process by which this study
took place, Chapter 3 covered how qualitative inquiry was used in conjunction with the proposed
case study method.
66
Chapter 3: Research Method
Research Design and Rationale
These were the central research questions that were used in the study:
1. What factors contributed to the decision by blue-collar workers to invest or not invest for
retirement?
2. How did blue-collar workers diversify their portfolio if they chose to invest?
These were the sub-questions that were used in the study:
1. How much financial education did blue-collar workers feel they needed before investing?
2. In what ways did a blue-collar worker’s level of academic education affect their levels of
investing?
3. In what ways did economic conditions in the local area blue-collar workers were
employed cause them to create their overall investment strategy?
4. In what ways did a blue-collar worker’s age and gender affect their retirement planning?
5. What were the different categories, and how much of each category of investments, did
blue-collar workers allocate their money?
The theoretical framework for this study was based on Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979)
prospect theory and Loomes and Sugden’s (1982) regret theory. Since prospect theory and regret
theory addressed ways people weigh monetary outcomes, they had been used extensively in
many aspects of personal finance. The case study approach, in concurrence with the prospect
theory and regret theory, was able to provide the details that covered the facets blue-collar
workers felt were necessary to be in place before they allocated funds for their retirement. This
decision, or series of steps that led to a decision, was based on their preferences for the
diversification of their funds. Additional research and application of the prospect theory and
67
regret theory offered ways to determine ways people made decisions with imprecise information
as part of the dissertation process (Özerol & Karasakal, 2008). Chapter 2 covered these theories
and their uses in the study in more detail.
As previously mentioned, little research had been conducted in the field of finance to
discuss all three of the major concepts of this study, which were built upon regret theory,
prospect theory, and blue-collar workers. This was one of the reasons why this case study was
conducted in the first place, and it was also why these two theories were chosen. However, there
were two studies conducted within the past five years that were the closest to this study with
respect to relevance. The closest research that could be found was conducted by Sanders and
McCready (2009), and the strengths of the study were based on the approach which enabled an
in-depth examination of how the context of the work environment, job position, and life stage
influenced older workers’ perceptions of the job.
The limitations of the study were based on the inherent nature of case study research,
which present outcomes that were difficult to generalize from one population to another since
case samples were small and selected for specific attributes (Sanders & McCready, 2009, p.
121). The strength of the research was based on addressing financial concerns that were brought
forward by the participants, which alluded to the notion that blue-collar workers may not have
had higher levels of financial education.
The second-closest study was conducted by Boris (2010) and it addressed LGBT issues,
including equal benefits, but did not include all three of the primary issues that this case study
addressed. The reason this one was not as close as the Sanders and McCready (2009) study was
because it lacked documented interviews with blue-collar workers being produced in the
literature.
68
One strength of the study, however, was based on the work that the union had done for
the workers of the big three automotive companies, but one of the limitations of the study was
that it was very difficult for the researcher to do meaningful interviews because many UAW
leaders refuse to be interviewed. The study also pointed out the long-term successes employees
had in recent years in obtaining fair and equal pay and benefits, which included medical and
retirement benefits, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender.
In accordance with the tradition of qualitative inquiry, this study was based on a single
instrumental case study method. Instrumental case studies allow for the study of a single case,
within the site of the location of the research (Creswell, 2013), and focus on the blue-collar
workers with respect to whether or not they invest their money and how they spread it around
within their portfolio. Qualitative research was consistent with understanding how blue-collar
workers factored in the different facets of the decision-making process of allocating funds for
their retirement in that it allowed for direct initial and follow-up communication with
respondents in a way that permitted them to provide open and in-depth responses to interview
questions asked in an interview conducted either at their place of business, over the phone or via
Skype.
The goal of this research was in part to apply formal procedures that would allow me to
make casual inferences in a manner that was analogous to what would have otherwise been
restricted to a qualitative inquiry, such as the case study method used here. In the event that the
participants, along with the data that would have otherwise been collected, would have been on a
much larger scale then I would not have to work with such limited information in which to draw
conclusions from. One such assumption that this study was based on was that if people had the
money to invest, then there would be a higher likelihood that they would invest.
69
As we will see later on in Chapter 4, this was simply not the case. However, this
assumption did not interfere with the way questions were asked nor did it interfere with the
original set of questions that were crafted. Perhaps in the future a phenomenological study could
be used to help understand why it is that the blue-collar workers essentially do not seem to invest
until they reach the age of thirty.
One assumption that could be made in advance would be that people in general do not
seem to be very interested in investing for their retirement until they realize that they are actually
becoming older or they realize that they are closer to retirement then they thought they were for
one reason or another. This could be the realization of an unforeseen medical condition, or it
could be an injury at work that prevents one from doing the kind of work that they used to do and
they find it difficult to work at all. This was also discussed in the literature review in Chapter 2.
Role of the Researcher
My role was to make contact with the leaders of the blue-collar community in which I
plan to conduct the case study, and if they were willing I would have had a person gather email
addresses of people who were willing to participate and provide them to me in an email. I took
the email addresses and email the questions to the potential participants, and if they were willing
to participate in the interview then I would schedule a time and a place to do it, or it was
conducted via Skype or on the phone. I also did not have any personal or professional
relationships with the participants other than working in the same geographical location as they
do. I had also never supervised any of the participants.
As a former blue-collar worker, and as someone who had blue-collar family members, I
was aware of the bias that is in place. The email contact was also brief, and I ensured that the
topics of conversation, if any arose, were strictly limited to the research. Due to the sensitive
70
nature of the participants that were going to be interviewed, I did not specifically identify who
they were and where they were located. They were not identified in any compromising way in
Chapters 4 or 5. As for other ethical issues, I did not experience any. If there was an issue that
could be perceived as an ethical violation, or could potentially create such a violation, I would
have notified my committee immediately and explained the circumstances of the issue(s) and I
would have requested guidance on how to handle such an issue.
It was also my role as the researcher to see what influences there were of a given blue-
collar worker’s decision to invest with respect to how they invest if they did invest. Part of the
findings of the study insinuated that a probabilistic approach was used in order to evaluate the
evidence for the two theoretical perspectives that were used throughout the study. This was done
in deterministic terms, whereby I attended to determine whether or not a participant’s age had
anything to do with it along with the other factors that were researched. One of the serious
problems that a person can realize in the social sciences is the ability to measure findings and
deal with measurement errors, especially with respect to conducting a case study with such a
limited group of people to work with. This can mean that it is possible that a given set of data
could deviate from a hypothesized pattern without a hypothesis being wrong, even though the
study did not use one. The reason for this is one would attempt to use deductive methods when
working with a hypothesis, whereas here I was using an inductive method which is completely
different. The inductive method that I attempted to use was meant to allow for the information
that would be necessary to understand what was going on in the data would be able to be shown
in such a way to where the evidence found would lead me to a conclusion. So it was my role to
allow that information to naturally show up on its own in a way that could be presented in a
71
logical manner. As a result, the findings of this study were rigorous enough even though there
was a smaller participant group used.
Methodology
Participant Selection Logic
The participants were blue-collar workers located in the Inland Northwest and Midwest
regions of the United States. In Chapter 4 I articulated which category of blue-collar workers,
specifically, that were included in the study and from which region or state in the U.S. that they
were located in. They came from a variety of blue-collar worker categories, including, but not
limited to, diesel mechanics, laborers, and truck drivers. There were also no people
recommended to participate in the study that did not fall into the blue-collar worker category.
This ensured that, even though there was such a small number of participants, the people who
participated would add the maximum amount of credibility to the study as possible.
The research size was difficult to specify since I was not sure exactly which agency
would ultimately allow me to complete my work. However, the goal was to interview at least 20
people or as many people as I could until the information being collected became redundant.
When it comes to qualitative inquiry, one would expect to see approximately 20 participants at a
minimum. However, this is not always feasible depending on the group that is targeted and
whether or not there are 20 participants available or willing to participate.
One reason for this is because initially there is an attempt to saturate the potential
participant group, with respect to gaining as many participants as possible for the research.
Normally an organization, or group of participants, would be sought out that could offer this
many participants. This was also the attempt of this research inquiry at the beginning, because
the three different organizations that I chose had an excess of 20 people in which to choose from.
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I would even argue that if I were allowed entry into these organizations that I would have ended
up with well over 20 participants, but that was not the case.
According to Patton (2002), there were no set-in-stone rules for sample size in qualitative
inquiry. Creswell (2013) also did not specify an exact number of participants that would be
needed for a case study. Patton also asserted that in some qualitative inquiry samples were not
used at all as part of purposeful selection, which was what this case study used. Qualitative
research has been known to draw casual inferences when there is little more than a handful of
people or organizations, sometimes even fewer, and they are compared with respect to the forces
that tend to drive societal outcomes such as the ones that are presented here in the study.
One metric I used, for the purposes of specificity of saturation and the purposeful non-
random sample size that was used, was this: when the information being collected from
participants became redundant, then it would be fair to say that enough participants had
participated. Ultimately I wanted no fewer than ten participants to participate in the study, and I
did my best to ensure maximum participation. The intention was to get more than ten
participants. It should also be known that the point of this case study was not to generalize the
findings across a broader population, which would be seen in quantitative research (Maxwell,
2013). Instead, it was the intention of this inquiry to discover what responses could be retrieved
from participants in order to answer the research questions. The information that was found in a
qualitative case study, as part of a discovery process, could provide rich opportunities for further
research that could perhaps be completed using quantitative inquiry.
The criterion for selecting participants was based on whether or not the applicants fell
into the category of being a blue-collar worker. Blue-collar workers were generally defined as,
but not limited to, workers in construction crafts, machinists, manufacturing, production,
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laborers, transportation operatives, and material movers (Sum et al, 2010). Individuals were
identified locally by locating private companies or governmental agencies in the Inland
Northwestern and Midwestern region, and I made contact with either the owner of the business,
union representative or the senior ranking governmental official responsible for the workers, and
I asked permission to interview to the blue-collar employees who volunteered to be a part of the
study.
I initially tried to find workers from machinist’s workers, oil field workers or truck
drivers. If I could not get anyone from those categories I would have sought out other workers in
the blue-collar category. I used a formal letter that I crafted on my own, which included a copy
of the consent forms that were emailed to the participants. Thank-you notes were given to the
volunteers who participate in the study, and I paid for them myself.
Instrumentation
The data collection instrument that was used was Microsoft Word. I had a laptop
available during the interviews to take notes as the respondents answer questions during the
interview. The source of the questionnaire used in the interview was a combination of published
surveys and questions that I had created based on the academic literature in peer-reviewed
journals. No historical or legal documents were used as a source of data.
This study used parts of published data collection instruments. Two studies (Easaw &
Heravi, 2009; Castro-González, 2014) conducted on household personal finance were used for
the study. Easaw and Heravi (2009) conducted a personal finance household survey in Great
Britain, based in part by the survey data from the Survey Research Center at the University of
Michigan, and they argued that in order to understand the personal finances of the participants
there was a need to ask two questions (1) related to how people think they was financially in a
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year from the time of the survey and (2) whether or not they were better off than a year prior. For
the first question, “The respondent’s possible qualitative response is 1, 2 or 3, respectively”
(Easaw & Heravi, 2009, p. 669).
For the second question, “As before, the qualitative response is either better off (1),
worse off (2) or about the same (3)” (Easaw & Heravi, 2009, p. 669). The questions in the study
were not specific about what would be referred to when people were asked to forecast or assess,
ex post, their financial situation, and their personal finances would largely comprised their
annual total income (Easaw & Heravi, 2009). This also included investment income, pensions
and any other benefits (Easaw & Heravi, 2009). Easaw and Heravi (2009) also took age and
gender into the account of their forecasts. Slight modifications of the second question were
needed in order to avoid asking a question that would likely led a respondent to believe it was a
yes or no question.
The other study (Castro-González, 2014) asserted that there was a need to ask basic
questions about financial literacy and retirement matters as part of the research design to
determine whether or not there was a family budget in place, and this would be relevant for both
single workers and workers who had a significant other, partner or spouse. The location that
Castro- González (2014) used the questions was Puerto Rico, and there were five main groups of
employees separately target in the Puerto Rico retirement system, which were (a) employees of
the University of Puerto Rico, (b) teachers working for the Department of Education of Puerto
Rico, (c) employees working for the Justice Department, (d) employees working for the Electric
Energy Authority, and (e) the rest of the government employees (p. 88).
The specific questions asked to participants were not readily available in the article.
However, the article did generalize some of the questions that were asked. The specific question,
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relating to a family budget, was slightly modified to account for participants who were single
without an immediate spouse or partner. The question was relevant and necessary to determine
whether or not a budget had been put into place since Castro- González (2014) posited that it was
necessary to know whether or not a budget was in place to understand how the personal finances
of an individual or family invests.
As a matter of consideration for the participants who were taking part in the study, I did
not assume they were financially literate. Based on this notion, I had attempted to phrase
questions in such a way that the participants would know what I was talking about when I asked
specific questions throughout the questionnaire. Without an understanding of their financial
and/or academic education, it would be inappropriate to ask a question that had not been
explained. As part of the participation agreement that the respondents signed, there was some
clarifying information provided with respect retirement and portfolio diversification that the
questionnaire I used to conduct the interview was attempting to ask.
This study also used data collection instruments that I created myself. Questions
regarding diversification and why people saved money in the first place, such as what facets had
to be in place for someone to invest, were generated as a part of the necessity to understand the
piece of the study that covered what blue-collar workers invest in, with respect to portfolio
diversification, in the event that they were investing in something for their retirement. Without
that piece of data being collected, the questions in the study would not be completely answered
and could potentially leave a gap within the study itself.
There was also literature that suggested the relevance of these questions, which suggested
that there were reasons why people invested and perhaps what might have led to a certain level
of diversification. These reasons were based on things such as the fulfillment of personal savings
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goals, the avoidance of the need to borrow money to pay for things in the event of an emergency,
and even to prevent financial hardships which arose from the loss of income stemming from
unemployment or retirement (Soman & Cheema, 2011). According to Soman and Cheema
(2011), who studied the effects of earmarking money on savings by low-income consumers,
creating a savings goal and posting it in a visible area could serve as a positive visual reminder
and increased the propensity for saving. Soman and Cheema also found that people saved more
when earmarked money was partitioned into two accounts than when it was pooled into one
account.
There was only one study (Goetzmann & Kumar, 2008) found that spoke specifically to
blue-collar worker investment portfolio diversification, and they found that blue-collar workers
were in the category possessing the least-diversified portfolio. Another study (Hibbert, Lawrence
& Prakash, 2012) conducted focused on whether or not investors who had learned about
diversification by formal education were more likely to diversify within their equity portfolios,
except the study was conducted on finance and English professors. So it was the attempt of this
study to ask questions that attempt to assist in filling that gap in the literature.
Two case studies (Boris, 2010; Sanders & McCready, 2009) were found to be relevant to
not only addressed the overall study, but addressed age and gender sub questions that were
covered in the study. There were a number of issues that faced blue-collar workers when it came
to gaining suitable employment, making a decision on whether or not to allocating funds for their
retirement, and how they would diversify these funds. Another such issue was the concern about
equal treatment (Boris, 2010).
Questions in this case study that pertained to economic circumstances were covered by
research conducted by Sum (2013), which provided evidence for the questions of this study that
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involved economic uncertainties that caused investors to rethink their overall strategy. These
economic uncertainties perceived by consumers and investors had negative impacts on the
economic recovery and growth in the United States as it attempted to recover from the recession
of 2007 through 2009. Consumers and investors were hesitant to spend money and invest when
they sensed higher levels of uncertainty in the economy, which could ultimately result in firms
delaying potential investment projects and a noticeable freeze in hiring along with a potential
economic contraction (Sum, 2013). The same was true when there was uncertainty about future
taxes, spending levels, regulations, and health care reform because consumers and businesses
tended to delay investment and consumption in a higher interest rate environment (Sum, 2013, p.
98).
A person might have had different investing behaviors depending on their age, because
the older a person gets the less risk tolerant they may become and vice versa, but that did not
necessarily guarantee that everyone had similar investment behaviors just because they were of a
certain age or gender (Tannahill, 2012; Cohen & Kudryavtsev, 2012).
The content validity of the instrument was established based on the aforementioned
support of the literature. The sufficiency of data collection instruments to answer research
questions was established based on the overarching research questions that needed to be
answered and the relevant areas covered during the construction of the questions located within
the questionnaire.
Procedures for Recruitment, Participation, and Data Collection
I first attempted to made contact with blue-collar workers who were aerospace
machinists, oil field workers, tractor trailer drivers or mechanics. If I was unable to get
participants from these groups, then I would have attempted to get participants from other blue-
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collar categories. The specific category or categories that participants were a part of is discussed
in Chapter 4. Workers who volunteer to participate were given a copy of the consent form. The
data was recorded and/or transcribed during the interview. The data was transferred either from
Skype, a recording device, or a MS Word document into NVivo. If the recruitment process
resulted in too few participants, then I would have recruited additional blue-collar employees in
the Inland Northwest and the Midwest as previously mentioned. As part of the interview process,
it was explained to participants that they would not need to be debriefed upon completion.
Follow-up interviews may have been required as part of the study.
Data Analysis Plan
The questions located within the questionnaire were designed to answer the research sub
questions, and each response by a participant was categorized under each of the sub questions in
NVivo. These sub questions were designed to provide adequate answers to the two central
research questions, which were designed to discover the answers to the overall case study.
NVivo was initially going to be used to analyze the data, and it was also used to detect any
themes that arose from the data collected. Codes were also going to be created once the data had
been collected in order to reduce confusion during the coding and theme discovery process.
It was entirely possible that as the data was going to be analyzed, and that a series of
codes would be formed and then changed later into different categories of codes, so a list was
created of the codes that were generated and how they were changed throughout the process.
This information might or might not have been relevant to the study, but if it was not included in
the dissertation it was kept on file for five years. It should also be known that themes may or may
not emerge as a result of this study. If there were any discrepant pieces of data that emerge in the
research, they were presented in a section that separated this data from the other findings. They
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would have also been fully explained to the best of my ability, but they would not be removed
from the findings.
Once the research began, it was incredibly difficult to find organizations that would allow
me to come in and recruit participants for the research. So what ended up happening, once there
were three different organizations that had declined to allow the research to move forward, was
that an employee of one of those organizations agreed to work with me outside of his normal
duty hours. Along with the concurrence of the chair of this dissertation, and with the permission
of the university research reviewer, purposeful sampling was not used. Instead, the snowball
sampling technique was employed whereby this particular individual would end up providing me
references that would lead to a total of ten participants.
As previously discussed in the literature review, several studies in the academic literature
(Wiltermuth & Gino, 2013; Bower & Maxham, 2012; Tang & Jianmin, 2008; Lankton & Luft,
2008) seemed to support the notion that when researchers want to study regret theory, they want
results that were based on both consumer behavior and empirical data, because the majority of
the studies in existence did not seem to use the case study approach or qualitative inquiry in
general. One might also have gone as far as to argue that researchers might have been doing
studies on regret theory with the intentions on being able to solidify their findings in quantitative
data in order for it to be more credible, which would also seemingly made it easier for another
researcher to take the findings from the research and replicate it in order to expand on it.
However, societal issues such as the ones incorporated in this study could allow researchers to
view similar problems through a different set of spectacles. It was also the intention of this study
to fill the gap in the literature between the findings of quantitative studies and the very few
studies based on blue-collar workers investment behaviors using qualitative methodologies. It
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would be beyond the scope of this research to speculate why exactly there are not more
qualitative methodologies used in the existing literature; however, this ultimately ended up
leaving a very large gap in the research because very little inductive research has been used in
the past.
The intention with analyzing the data would be to break down the results by the
individual components (i.e. age, gender, academic education, financial education, et cetera) in a
way that would make sense and produce a logical flow of the results. Early on I did not know if
it would be appropriate to break down the results by whether or not a blue-collar worker was
investing and how they spread their investments around, or diversified their investments, because
I did not know what they’re answers would be. Once the interviews had been completed it would
be easier to do this.
After the interviews were conducted, and after the answers given by the participants to
the questions I was asking, it made more sense to see if there were some sort of logical pattern
based on age with respect to whether or not a person regardless of their gender (or any of the
other variables) were investing or not. This was not immediately obvious to me once I was done
with the interviews, so the best way I could see a logical flow of information was to pick a
variable, input the information into a table starting with that variable, and then determine if any
logical sense was being made in a way that the reader could clearly understand the results. Once
I did this, the best logical direction to take in order to break down the results seemed to be to do
so by the central research question that was being answered. So there would in the up being two
different tables, one per central research question, that would present the information. The
information would be presented from the youngest participant to the oldest participant in order to
see if any patterns of behavior emerged regardless of the reasons given by the participant for
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investing or not investing. Then the reasons for investing or not investing would be presented
with in the table and explained after the table as appropriate.
More information about this is described in Chapters 4 and 5. Ultimately, not all
participants were comfortable with being recorded. This meant that verbatim answers were not
able to be processed through NVivo, and therefore codes and themes could not be created. This
is because the reliability of the findings would likely be compromised based on verbatim answers
not being included along with such a limited audience being found.
Issues of Trustworthiness
Credibility
In order to maintain the credibility of the study, I carefully implemented member
checking with the results. Member checking, as described by Carlson (2010) was a way to allow
participants of the study to review and approve particular aspects of the interpretation of the data
that they provided. This did not mean I took raw data, such as specific transcripts, back to the
participants. Instead, Creswell (2009) suggested taking the themes (if any become present) and
the case analysis back to the participants in the form of a polished product. This was done in the
form of a follow-up interview where I spoke with participants who were willing to meet with me
so they could see what their responses were.
If participants were unable or unwilling to meet back up with me after they had submitted
their responses, then I would have handled the situation through the peer review process of the
dissertation committee that had already been scheduled to take place. Except when I presented
the information to the committee, I would have explained what happened with the participants
and I would have annotated this in the findings section.
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Transferability
Transferability, according to Creswell (2009), was the ability for another researcher to
take the findings of one study and implement them in another similar setting. In order for this to
be insured an extremely detailed process of the case study was explained so that another
researcher could find blue-collar workers in another area and replicate the study. However, since
the study would not be able to generalize the entirety of the blue-collar community, it would not
be able to be used in an exact manner somewhere else.
A copy of the interview questions was also provided in the appendix so that future
researchers could have a higher chance of very close replication of the study. The findings of the
study were also explained at length in order for future researchers to have more information to
compare their results to as well, which would give them an idea of what their own findings might
be. One would not expect for the results to be the same in such a study that were found here.
However, it may be possible that a researcher in a different area that has a different economic
circumstance could potentially find his or her way into an organization, or even perhaps a few
different organizations, that would allow for more than ten participants to provide enough data
through their responses in such a way that would allow for more in-depth information to be
provided.
Perhaps a researcher could do a case study whereby there would be a few separate sub
case studies conducted on three different organizations that have a higher number of employees
so that the researcher could get may be 20+ participants to take part in the research. The
researcher might even go one step further and attempt to make contact with the unemployment
office that is located in area the area that the researcher resides to see if they can attempt to
recruit unemployed former blue-collar workers. This would allow for the researcher to get the
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perspective of both the employed and unemployed blue-collar community. Also, it should be
known that if a participant were able to answer the same questions that are presented here there
may potentially be some similarities with some of the responses to some of the questions.
However, I would not expect to see across the board similar responses to all of the questions.
Dependability
In order to ensure the dependability of the study, I maintained an explicit audit trail.
According to Patton (2002) an audit trail should be established to verify the rigor of the
fieldwork and confirmability of the data collected in order to minimize bias, maximize accuracy,
and report impartiality since inaccuracy and bias were unacceptable in any case study. In order to
achieve this, assumptions had been presented and biases had been elaborated upon. The
information that was collected was presented as it was received without my own personal
opinion being added to it. Essentially I allowed the data to speak for itself. This included an
analysis of how the instruments used were created, how instruments were actually used, the
research design itself, and processes undertaken to evaluate, manage, and describe the data. Any
change in conditions that occurred was presented in Chapter 4.
One can easily make the argument that the dependability of the study could be reduced if
another researcher could not come along and read the results and even potentially see how those
results made sense based on the study that was conducted. And since there were several
participants who declined to be recorded during the interviews, it is incredibly difficult for
another researcher to come along and read the transcript notes that I made based on the interview
and see with 100% certainty that the participant’s exact words were transcribed. Part of the
reason for this is because I was unable to transcribed verbatim every word that came out of the
participants mouth, because I did not want the participant to continue to repeat themselves
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throughout the conversation because that would cause an undue inconvenience to the participant
and it would also cause them to be stressed out and even potentially stop the interview before it
was even over. So what I did was I paraphrased what they said, and at the end of the interview I
made sure that the responses I wrote down is what the participant was intending to say.
Confirmability
Creswell (2009) posited that confirmability was paralleled with subjectivity whereby
another researcher should be able to read the contents in their entirety of a given study and arrive
at the same conclusion. Therefore, it was my primary objective to present the data as it was
found in order for someone else to come along and see the same exact thing that I saw and reach
a similar conclusion. This was where the presentation of the facts objectively came into play, and
this was done throughout the process of the data collection and presentation. This also meant
being as specific as possible when presenting the methodology that was used in the case study,
and every effort had been exhausted to ensure that was done here.
As mentioned earlier, the coding process would have taken place once the information
had already been gathered. According to Patton (2002) developing some manageable
classification or coding scheme was the first step of analysis. Based on the recommendations
from Patton, at the beginning of the research I did not feel that it was appropriate to begin to
identify codes prior to the beginning of the research. In order to avoid confusion with the
analysis, codes would have been presented in a separate appendix along with an explanation of
what each code meant. However, once the codes were to be created it could have been easier to
determine if any patterns, or themes, had emerged in the findings of the case study. NVivo would
have been helpful to find these patterns and develop the codes. I would have also explained in
the appendix that was created for the section how each pattern or code was recognized, and I
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would have also presented the data that I retrieved from NVivo. For areas of coding that were not
specifically mentioned here, and elaboration of the data and coding concerning the reliability of
the findings would have also been presented in Chapter 4.
It is important to reiterate that the coding process did not happen throughout the research.
This is because there were such a limited amount of participants that could be used for the
research. As previously mentioned, this is because once I had tried to make contact with three
different organizations and I had been told that I would not be allowed to use their organization
to recruit participants for the research. So the decision to move forward with the snowballing
technique was made and only ten participants could be found.
Ethical Procedures
Gaining access to the blue-collar workers in the Inland Northwest and the Midwest was
possible. In order to ensure the study was ethical, the Institutional Review Board (IRB) granted
permission to conduct the study and assigned the approval number of 06-30-14-0285622 and an
expiration date of June 29, 2015. I managed materials relevant to gaining the permission of the
participants to participate in the study, such as informed consent forms, and these documents
were stored in an electronically locked document folder that could only be accessed with a
password for a period of no less than five years.
Participants were permitted to participate in the study if they chose to, and they were also
informed through the consent form that they may withdraw from the study at any time. I also
asked them if I may record the session, and they were informed that the recording of the
interview can be stopped at any time. I did not foresee any ethical concerns during the proposal
phase. In the event that they arose, I would have explained to the participants that they did not
have to participate in the study if they did not wish to. I would have also explained to the
86
participants that they would not be looked at negatively at work for participating in the study, not
participating in the study or for deciding to no longer participate. I emailed a copy of the
informed consent form to participants, and I asked them to reply to the email and give me their
consent to participate in the study. Participants were encouraged to review the informed consent
form at any time that they liked throughout the study.
I provided protection of the participants throughout the study and thereafter. Participants
were allowed to participate as much or as little as they wished, and they were also be allowed to
withdraw from the study at any time without fear of reprisal or harm of any kind. I also informed
participants that there may be minor anxiety or stress that would be experienced outside of the
normal daily pursuit of their lives and work as a result from answering the questions in the
interview. I notified the participants that there will not be any risk to their safety or well being as
a result of participating in the study.
No additional IRB approval number was necessary other than the initial approval for the
study. There were no ethical concerns related to recruitment materials and processes. There were
also no predictable adverse events that led me to believe that participants would withdraw early
from the study or refuse to answer any questions. In the event that a participant withdrew early
from the study or refused to participate, they will still receive a thank you card for their
participation and they will still be treated with dignity and respect. I also sought out additional
participants by asking for more people to participate within the initial organization that was
originally approached. If more people could not be gathered I would have approached another
organization that fell into the same blue-collar worker category in the Inland Northwest, Midwest
or other region within the Continental United States in order to gain a sufficient amount of
participants.
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Data collected was both anonymous and confidential, and there was no archival data used
in this study. The interview responses were anonymous in order to protect the participants and
their answers to questions. Recorded responses to answers asked in interviews were saved in a
password-protected file on my computer that will be kept for a period of no less than five years.
The confidential information, which included names and email addresses of participants, was
scanned and kept in the same aforementioned password-protected file.
The original paper copies were shredded. Any other forms or documentation used
throughout the course of the study were scanned and uploaded into the password-protected file,
and the paper copies were shredded. There were no additional ethical issues that were applicable
since I would not be doing the study in my own work environment, there was no conflict of
interest or power differentials, and there were no incentives that were going to be used other than
the thank you card that I was purchasing with my own money. Respondents would not receive
any money or other monetary-equivalent benefits from the study.
Summary
The purpose of this case study was to discover the factors that contributed to the decision
by blue-collar workers to allocate funds for retirement. This also included the levels of funding
should they decide to invest. The theoretical framework for this study was based on Kahneman
and Tversky’s (1979) prospect theory and Loomes and Sugden’s (1982) regret theory. Since
prospect theory and regret theory addressed ways people weighed monetary outcomes, they had
been used extensively in many aspects of personal finance. The case study approach, in
concurrence with the prospect theory and regret theory, was able to provide the details that
covered the facets that blue-collar workers felt were necessary to be in place before they
allocated funds for their retirement.
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In accordance with the tradition of qualitative inquiry, this study was based on a single
instrumental case study method. Instrumental case studies allow for the study of a single case,
within the site of the location of the research (Creswell, 2013), and focus on the blue-collar
workers with respect to whether or not they invested their money and how they spread it around
within their portfolio. My role was to make contact with the leaders of the blue-collar community
in which I planned to conduct the case study, and if they were willing I would have had a person
gather email addresses of people who were willing to participate and provide them to me in an
email. The participants were blue-collar workers located in the Inland Northwest and Midwest
region of the United States. The sample size was difficult to specify exactly. However, the
intention was to conduct a singular case study and get at least twenty-five to fifty percent
participation.
The study used both researcher-constructed data collection instruments and published
data collection instruments. The data was collected during the interview using a recording device
or MS Word. The questions located within the questionnaire were designed to answer the
research sub questions, and each response by a participant was categorized under each of the sub
questions in NVivo. In order to maintain the credibility of the study, I carefully implemented
member checking with the results.
Transferability, according to Creswell (2009), was the ability for another researcher to
take the findings of one study and implement them in another similar setting. Creswell (2009)
posited that confirmability was paralleled with subjectivity whereby another researcher should
have been able to read the contents in their entirety of a given study and arrive at the same
conclusion. Therefore, it was my primary objective to present the data as it was found in order
for someone else to come along and see the same exact thing that I saw and reach a similar
89
conclusion. As mentioned earlier, the coding process began to take place once the information
had already been gathered.
Gaining access to the blue-collar workers in the Inland Northwest and Midwest was
possible. Participants were permitted to participate in the study if they chose to, and they were
also informed through the consent form that they may withdraw from the study at any time. I did
not foresee any ethical concerns prior to the beginning of the research process. I provided
protection of the participants throughout the study and thereafter. Participants were allowed to
participate as much or as little as they wished, and they were also be allowed to withdraw from
the study at any time without fear of reprisal or harm of any kind. Data collected was both
anonymous and confidential, and there was no archival data used in this study. The data
collected during the case study was presented as findings in Chapter 4, and conclusions and
recommendations for further research are presented in Chapter 5.
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Chapter 4: Results
The purpose of this case study was to discover the factors that contributed to the decision
by blue-collar workers to allocate funds for retirement. This also included the levels of funding
should they decide to invest. Since these workers fell into various employment circumstances,
and as a result of the economic downturn and slow recovery, there were a wide variety of reasons
that were unknown for making or not making these investments (Sum et al, 2010).
This study used prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and regret theory (Loomes
& Sugden, 1982) as a theoretical basis for the research to uncover these reasons. Prospect theory
is a theory based on behavioral economics describing ways people made choices based on losses
and gains versus the final outcome, and it asserted that people evaluated losses and gains using
heuristics (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Regret theory implies that if people made a wrong
choice, they remembered this choice the next time they made another decision under a similar set
of circumstances (Loomes & Sugden, 1982). These theories were covered in detail in Chapter 2.
The responses by the blue-collar workers did not seem to be overwhelmingly different
than one might expect to see from people with in a different research category. The factors that
contributed to the decision by blue-collar workers to invest or not invest for retirement was based
on a couple of contribute in factors, including employer-provided retirement accounts, the fear of
running out of money later in life during retirement, and the addition of new family members. In
the event that blue-collar workers chose to invest for their retirement, one of the most popular
investment products was the U.S. Treasury Bonds. Other popular investments were mutual
funds, 401(k)s, and IRAs. The breakdown of these was indicated in the table above. An in-depth
presentation of the interpretation of the findings of the study, along with the implications to
positive social change, will be presented in Chapter 5.
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Below the research questions are restated, where the two central research questions are
listed first (questions one and two) followed by the sub-questions (three through seven):
1. What factors contributed to the decision by blue-collar workers to invest or not invest for
retirement?
2. How did blue-collar workers diversify their portfolio if they chose to invest?
3. How much financial education did blue-collar did blue-collar workers feel they needed
before investing?
4. In what ways did a blue-collar worker’s level of academic education affect their levels of
investing?
5. In what ways did economic conditions in the local area where blue-collar workers were
employed cause them to create their overall investment strategy?
6. In what ways did a blue-collar worker’s age and gender affect their retirement planning?
7. What were the different categories, and how much of each category, of investments blue-
collar workers allocate their money to?
Research Setting
As I started to make contact with the three different organizations that I initially spoke
with, there was no indication as I spoke with the representatives that there were any personal or
organizational conditions that would have influenced the employees of their organizations.
However, I was not able to be granted permission to speak with individual participants within the
confines of these businesses and organizations. This will be discussed again later in the
limitations section.
The participants of the study also did not mention any organizational conditions to me
that influenced them in any way, or their experience with me, at the time of the study. For
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example, there were no changes in personnel, budget cuts or any other trauma that would
influence the interpretation of the study results experienced by the participants. As of the time of
the writing of this dissertation, I do not perceive any negative organizational influence that
would have caused any issues of the interpretation of the study results since none were presented
to me.
If there had been any organizational influences, which were presented to me, I would
have brought them to the chair of the dissertation committee for guidance on how to move
forward. This would have happened because I would not want to cause any undue influence on
the participants in any way, and I would not have wanted to cause any additional stress to them
within their workplace in the event that a company would have allowed me to conduct research.
However, since there were no organizations that were willing to allow me to conduct research
within their place of business, this did not end up becoming an issue one way or another.
The chapter is organized overall based on the research questions that were asked to
participants and their answers to these questions. This includes a brief introduction to the
research, the central research questions and sub questions, the setting, research participant
demographics, the changes to the data analysis and research methodology, evidence of
trustworthiness, results and finally the summary.
Demographics
Blue-collar workers, as referred to in Chapter 1, were generally defined consist primarily
of four groups of occupations: construction and extraction occupations; installation/maintenance
and repair crafts (electrical and electronic technicians, heating and air conditioning mechanics,
auto repair technicians); production workers (machine operators, fabricators, assemblers); and
transportation operatives, including truck and bus drivers and material movers (Sum et al, 2010,
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p. 9). Participants that were included in this category, which was not all-inclusive, were allowed
to take place in the research. Other factors, such as race, religion, veteran status, age, or
employment status were not considered during the member checking portion.
The only thing I was concerned about was whether or not a particular person fell into the
blue-collar category. The ten participants all fell into the blue-collar category in a variety of
different ways. Nine out of ten of them were located in the Midwest. Four of the participants
were employed in the state of North Dakota. Five of the participants were employed in state of
South Dakota, and one participant had recently moved from South Dakota to Seattle,
Washington. This fell in line with the proposed areas of participant selection of the Midwest and
the Inland Northwest.
The participants from the state of North Dakota included three diesel mechanics and one
oil field worker. The participants from South Dakota included five employees who worked at an
ice distribution company, where one of them was a diesel mechanic, and the remaining four were
loaders (loading ice on and off the truck) and drivers of the trucks. The employee who moved
from South Dakota to Washington State was a diesel mechanic. There were three female
participants and seven male participants, for a total of ten.
Data Collection
Prior to collecting the data, a letter of consent was crafted in order to allow the potential
participants know what their rights were as a participant in study. This included, but was not
limited to, letting the participants know that they could stop participating at any time, let them
know that there would be the inconvenience of spending about ten minutes with me answering
questions, and that their responses would be helpful for future researchers who would be doing
research on the blue-collar worker community as a whole.
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Each participant that agreed to participate in the research provided a phone number in
which they could be contacted at, and they also provided some acceptable times in which I could
give them a call that would not provide further inconvenience. I also asked each one of them if I
could record the conversation so that I would not misinterpret any of the answers that they had
given me at a later date as I attempted to transcribe their answers and process the data that they
provided to me. I also explained to the participants that it was completely acceptable if they
chose to be recorded at the beginning of the research and then changed their mind to no longer be
recorded as the research progressed. During the research, none of the participants that agreed to
be recorded asked for the interview to stop being recorded.
The data was recorded by using an audio recorder that was built into the HP computer
that I was using during the interviews that were allowed to be recorded. After the interviews
were conducted, transcripts were formed based on the responses given. Some of the participants
did not feel comfortable being recorded. In this case, I informed the participants that I would be
taking notes. I did this by using Microsoft Word on my laptop. I would ask a question to the
participant, and when the answer was provided I would type their answer. This would be done by
typing their general response, and not a word-for-word response. I would then ensure that the
answer they had given me was the answer they wanted me to have by reading back the notes that
I had taken down. In the event that information needed to either be added or removed, it was
done so and then read back to the participant before the interview would proceed.
As previously described in Chapter 3, the intention was to make contact with a person
who worked at an organization that employs blue-collar workers in order to obtain permission to
make contact with the employees who might be interested in taking part in the study. This was
done with three separate organizations that fell into the blue-collar worker category. As part of
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the proposal, and the IRB application, it was also noted that a search for blue-collar workers who
would like to be part of the research in the event that I was unable to gain permission through a
company to work with its employees. As previously mentioned, there was an attempt made to
contact three separate companies, and after being denied access to advertise the research within
their business establishment, there was an unusual incident that occurred. There were some blue-
collar workers who indicated interest in participating in the research outside of their normal place
of business. They had also been talking about the study amongst themselves outside of work and
they wanted to know if it was possible to conduct the study outside of the confines of their
employer.
After careful consideration on how to move forward, a decision was made to both use the
snowball technique and to pay participants who participated in the study $10 for their
participation. I began by asking potential participants for recommendations on who might be
suited for participation in the research (Patton, 2002). Also, as was the case in this study, this
type of approach diverged initially as many possible sources that were recommended started to
participate and then there was a convergence as a few key names were mentioned over and over
with no new names being recommended.
Data Analysis
The questions located within the questionnaire were designed to answer the research sub
questions, and each response by a participant was categorized under each of the sub questions in
NVivo. These sub questions were designed to provide adequate answers to the two central
research questions, which were designed to discover the answers to the overall case study.
NVivo was initially going to be used to analyze the data, and it was also used to detect any
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themes that arose from the data collected. Codes were also going to be created once the data had
been collected in order to reduce confusion during the coding and theme discovery process.
It was entirely possible that as the data was going to be analyzed, and that a series of
codes would be formed and then changed later into different categories of codes, so a list was
created of the codes that were generated and how they were changed throughout the process.
This information might or might not have been relevant to the study, but if it was not included in
the dissertation it was kept on file for five years. It should also be known that themes may or may
not emerge as a result of this study. If there were any discrepant pieces of data that emerge in the
research, they were presented in a section that separated this data from the other findings. They
would have also been fully explained to the best of my ability, but they would not be removed
from the findings.
Once the research began, it was incredibly difficult to find organizations that would allow
me to come in and recruit participants for the research. So what ended up happening, once there
were three different organizations that had declined to allow the research to move forward, was
that an employee of one of those organizations agreed to work with me outside of his normal
duty hours. Along with the concurrence of the chair of this dissertation, and with the permission
of the university research reviewer, purposeful sampling was not used. Instead, the snowball
sampling technique was employed whereby this particular individual would end up providing me
references that would lead to a total of ten participants.
As previously discussed in the literature review, several studies in the academic literature
(Wiltermuth & Gino, 2013; Bower & Maxham, 2012; Tang & Jianmin, 2008; Lankton & Luft,
2008) seemed to support the notion that when researchers want to study regret theory, they want
results that were based on both consumer behavior and empirical data, because the majority of
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the studies in existence did not seem to use the case study approach or qualitative inquiry in
general. One might also have gone as far as to argue that researchers might have been doing
studies on regret theory with the intentions on being able to solidify their findings in quantitative
data in order for it to be more credible, which would also seemingly made it easier for another
researcher to take the findings from the research and replicate it in order to expand on it.
However, societal issues such as the ones incorporated in this study could allow
researchers to view similar problems through a different set of spectacles. It was also the
intention of this study to fill the gap in the literature between the findings of quantitative studies
and the very few studies based on blue-collar workers investment behaviors using qualitative
methodologies. It would be beyond the scope of this research to speculate why exactly there are
not more qualitative methodologies used in the existing literature; however, this ultimately ended
up leaving a very large gap in the research because very little inductive research has been used in
the past.
The intention with analyzing the data would be to break down the results by the
individual components (i.e. age, gender, academic education, financial education, et cetera) in a
way that would make sense and produce a logical flow of the results. Early on I did not know if
it would be appropriate to break down the results by whether or not a blue-collar worker was
investing and how they spread their investments around, or diversified their investments, because
I did not know what they’re answers would be. Once the interviews had been completed it would
be easier to do this.
After the interviews were conducted, and after the answers given by the participants to
the questions I was asking, it made more sense to see if there were some sort of logical pattern
based on age with respect to whether or not a person regardless of their gender (or any of the
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other variables) were investing or not. This was not immediately obvious to me once I was done
with the interviews, so the best way I could see a logical flow of information was to pick a
variable, input the information into a table starting with that variable, and then determine if any
logical sense was being made in a way that the reader could clearly understand the results.
Once I did this, the best logical direction to take in order to break down the results
seemed to be to do so by the central research question that was being answered. So there would
in the up being two different tables, one per central research question, that would present the
information. The information would be presented from the youngest participant to the oldest
participant in order to see if any patterns of behavior emerged regardless of the reasons given by
the participant for investing or not investing. Then the reasons for investing or not investing
would be presented with in the table and explained after the table as appropriate.
Coding did not take place as part of processing the results of the study for a few reasons,
and the ultimate reason was that because only four out of ten people allowed me to record the
results there was the potential for the coding to be unreliable since the exact wording of the
participants were not always used as notes were taken. In an example provided by Patton (2002),
one such use of codes was used when there were 15 general categories and subcategories of
codes, and they were generated based on lengthy interviews with 60 project officers, evaluators,
and federal decision makers (p. 464). Patton also noted that coding would not be used for small-
scale formative evaluation or action research projects.
While this research project does not exactly mirror the intent of the Patton, it is very close
within the scope of the guidance Patton provided. However, the notes taken were verified with
the participants at a later date whereby they agreed that the notes taken were in fact the answers
they were intending to provide. Also, because of the varied responses from responses it would be
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unlikely that adequate codes could have been generated. A solid overall theme was also not
noted throughout the results since the responses from the participants were not always recorded,
which would have allowed for a possible theme to emerge through the coding process. Since
patterns and themes were not consistent enough to present on their own, results are presented
based on each individual central research question.
After all ten participants were interviewed, I began by transcribing all of the answers
from the participants that allowed me to record them. The participants who did not wish to be
recorded were already taken care of, with respect to me taking notes throughout the phone call is
concerned. Those answers were verified with the participants to make sure that I wrote down the
correct answers. The participants who allowed me to record them did not need to go through that
additional process, because I was able to come back later on and listen to what they had to say
and I made sure that I understood what they were trying to tell me with respect to their responses
as the interview went along. None of the questions that were asked to the interviewees were very
different overall. The only subtle changes that may have taken place were based on me
explaining what a given question met. This did not happen very often, and most of the
participants knew exactly what I was asking for throughout the interview.
I contemplated the best way to present the data that was found, and the best way to
present it seemed to be based on age and the central research question in which I was trying to
answer. This would mean that two different tables would be created, with one table per central
research question, and it would allow for any trends that will emerge based on the answers given
by the participants to show through in the data as it was presented. The goal was to present the
data in a way that was completely free of bias.
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There were no significant discrepant cases since the participant group was only made up
of ten people. Overall financial education did not end up playing as big of a role as one may have
thought that it would have. Only three people indicated that they had formal financial education.
Some of the participants felt that financial education would not preclude them from investing in
their retirement. Some of the participants also wanted to make it known that because of where
they live that, based on the fact that their city is a popular tourist travel destination, they tend to
be financially secure throughout the year. This includes even those times where the tourist
season was over and/or had slowed down. It also seemed that the people who invested were not
as concerned with the diversification of their portfolio. Instead they felt that the investment
product that they bought, such as a 401(k) or an IRA, would provide the necessary
diversification on its own.
Evidence of Trustworthiness
Credibility
In order to maintain the credibility of the study, I carefully implemented member
checking with the results. Member checking, as described by Carlson (2010) was a way to allow
participants of the study to review and approve particular aspects of the interpretation of the data
that they provided. This did not mean I took raw data, such as specific transcripts, back to the
participants. Instead, Creswell (2009) suggested taking the themes (if any become present) and
the case analysis back to the participants in the form of a polished product. This was done in the
form of a follow-up interview where I spoke with participants who were willing to meet with me
so they could see what their responses were.
If participants were unable or unwilling to meet back up with me after they had submitted
their responses, then I would have handled the situation through the peer review process of the
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dissertation committee that had already been scheduled to take place. Except when I presented
the information to the committee, I would have explained what happened with the participants
and I would have annotated this in the findings section.
The change of sampling method, along with the change to move from processing codes
and looking for themes through NVivo, added to the limitations of the study but did not affect
the overall credibility of the findings. These limitations were explained throughout the
dissertation, especially under the appropriate limitations section heading. If I had taken a mixture
of generalized responses that I had gotten from the participants who did not want to be recorded
and compiled them with the exact responses that I get from the recorded participants, then this
could have called into question the credibility of the findings. Also, it was not appropriate to try
to find themes and create codes with such a small number of participants as mentioned earlier.
Transferability
Transferability, according to Creswell (2009), was the ability for another researcher to
take the findings of one study and implement them in another similar setting. In order for this to
be insured an extremely detailed process of the case study was explained so that another
researcher could find blue-collar workers in another area and replicate the study. However, since
the study would not be able to generalize the entirety of the blue-collar community, it would not
be able to be used in an exact manner somewhere else.
A copy of the interview questions was also provided in the appendix so that future
researchers could have a higher chance of very close replication of the study. The findings of the
study were also explained at length in order for future researchers to have more information to
compare their results to as well, which would give them an idea of what their own findings might
be. One would not expect for the results to be the same in such a study that were found here.
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However, it may be possible that a researcher in a different area that has a different economic
circumstance could potentially find his or her way into an organization, or even perhaps a few
different organizations, that would allow for more than ten participants to provide enough data
through their responses in such a way that would allow for more in-depth information to be
provided.
Perhaps a researcher could do a case study whereby there would be a few separate sub
case studies conducted on three different organizations that have a higher number of employees
so that the researcher could get may be 20+ participants to take part in the research. The
researcher might even go one step further and attempt to make contact with the unemployment
office that is located in area the area that the researcher resides to see if they can attempt to
recruit unemployed former blue-collar workers. This would allow for the researcher to get the
perspective of both the employed and unemployed blue-collar community. Also, it should be
known that if a participant were able to answer the same questions that are presented here there
may potentially be some similarities with some of the responses to some of the questions.
However, I would not expect to see across the board similar responses to all of the questions.
Dependability
In order to ensure the dependability of the study, I maintained an explicit audit trail.
According to Patton (2002) an audit trail should be established to verify the rigor of the
fieldwork and confirmability of the data collected in order to minimize bias, maximize accuracy,
and report impartiality since inaccuracy and bias are unacceptable in any case study. In order to
achieve this, assumptions have been presented and biases have been elaborated on. The
information that was collected was presented as it was received without my own personal
opinion being added to it. Essentially I allowed the data to speak for itself. This also included an
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analysis of how the instruments used were created, how instruments were used, the research
design itself, and processes undertaken to evaluate, manage, and describe the data. Every attempt
to ensure that bias did not make its way into the findings of the study was made, and the research
committee also took time through proofreading to ensure this as well. Data can only be as
dependable as the researcher who presents it, so the intention here was to allow the data to speak
for itself without any biased interference.
One can easily make the argument that the dependability of the study could be reduced if
another researcher could not come along and read the results and even potentially see how those
results made sense based on the study that was conducted. And since there were several
participants who declined to be recorded during the interviews, it is incredibly difficult for
another researcher to come along and read the transcript notes that I made based on the interview
and see with 100% certainty that the participant’s exact words were transcribed. Part of the
reason for this is because I was unable to transcribed verbatim every word that came out of the
participants mouth, because I did not want the participant to continue to repeat themselves
throughout the conversation because that would cause an undue inconvenience to the participant
and it would also cause them to be stressed out and even potentially stop the interview before it
was even over. So what I did was I paraphrased what they said, and at the end of the interview I
made sure that the responses I wrote down is what the participant was intending to say.
Confirmability
Creswell (2009) posits that confirmability is parallel with subjectivity whereby another
researcher should be able to read the contents in their entirety of a given study and arrive at the
same conclusion. Therefore, it will be my primary objective to present the data as it is found in
order for someone else to come along and see the same exact thing that I saw and reach a similar
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conclusion. This was where presenting the facts objectively came into play, and this was done
throughout the process of the data collection and presentation. This also meant being as specific
as possible when presenting the methodology that was used in the case study, and every effort
was been exhausted to ensure that was done here.
One may argue that the findings of a given research can only be done with a high
confidence level that would be seen through quantitative inquiry. It is also known, as will be
explained later, that one limitation of qualitative inquiry is that the results cannot be tested
against a larger population. However, the answers provided by the participants were recorded
when they were allowed to be and the unrecorded responses were written down and verified with
the participants in order to ensure that only the responses given were the ones that were
presented here in the findings of the study.
As mentioned earlier, the coding process would have taken place once the information
had already been gathered. According to Patton (2002) developing some manageable
classification or coding scheme was the first step of analysis. Based on the recommendations
from Patton, at the beginning of the research I did not feel that it was appropriate to begin to
identify codes prior to the beginning of the research. In order to avoid confusion with the
analysis, codes would have been presented in a separate appendix along with an explanation of
what each code meant. However, once the codes were to be created it could have been easier to
determine if any patterns, or themes, had emerged in the findings of the case study. NVivo would
have been helpful to find these patterns and develop the codes. I would have also explained in
the appendix that was created for the section how each pattern or code was recognized, and I
would have also presented the data that I retrieved from NVivo. For areas of coding that were not
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specifically mentioned here, and elaboration of the data and coding concerning the reliability of
the findings would have also been presented in this chapter.
It is important to reiterate that the coding process did not happen throughout the research.
This is because there were such a limited amount of participants that could be used for the
research. As previously mentioned, this is because once I had tried to make contact with three
different organizations and I had been told that I would not be allowed to use their organization
to recruit participants for the research. So the decision to move forward with the snowballing
technique was made and only ten participants could be found.
Study Results
The first central research question was: What factors contributed to the decision by blue-
collar workers to invest or not invest for retirement? There were 15 questions that were asked to
participants based on this central research question. Where applicable, the results are pooled into
Table 1 with further explanation located below the questions presented here:
x What is your age?
x What is your gender?
x How would you describe your financial education? Please explain.
x Describe the amount of financial education you would have to obtain before you would
consider investing your money for your retirement. Please explain.
x What is your highest level of academic education? Please explain.
x Do you, or your family, have a budget? Please explain.
x What general occurrence(s) has to happen in your life, or did happen, for you to invest for
your retirement? Please explain.
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x Regardless of whether or not you are an investor in the stock market, in what ways do
you feel that your academic education would affect your choice to invest for your
retirement? Please explain.
x What is your opinion of individual stocks of United States (U.S.) companies in the U.S.
stock market? Please explain.
x What is your opinion of individual stocks of non-U.S. companies in the U.S. stock
market? Please explain.
x In what ways does your opinion of the current U.S. economy affect your decision of
whether to invest for your retirement? Please explain.
x In what ways does the current state of the U.S. economy affect your family budget?
Please explain.
x In what ways does the economy in your local area affect your decision of whether to
invest for your retirement? Please explain.
x Looking ahead, how do you think you will be financially a year from now, will you be
better off, worse off, or about the same? Please explain.
x Looking back, would you say that you are financially better off, worse off or about the
same as you were a year ago? Please explain.
Explained in further detail below in Table 1, the age ranges of the participants were from
20 to 52, and there were three female participants and seven male participants. Three people, all
male participants, said that they had formal financial education. This included three people who
had taken a financial budgeting and planning course in high school, and one person had taken a
financial investing seminar. The remaining participants indicated that they had no formal
financial education; however, one person who did not fall had no formal financial education said,
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“I have no formal financial education, however I do have a good grasp on finance” (Respondent
9, personal communication, September 7, 2014).
Only four people indicated that financial education would not be necessary prior to
making a decision to invest for their retirement. None of those respondents were females, and
one female respondent, Respondent 6, indicated that she would not invest unless she was
guaranteed to make money. Respondent 9 indicated that he did not think it was necessary to have
formal financial education. Instead, it was only necessary to trust the people who were managing
the money, whereas Respondent 5 stated that he did not trust anyone with his money because he
had known too many people who had lost money in the stock market in the past. Finally,
Respondent 8 was afraid of running out of money in retirement so he felt that he had no other
choice but to invest.
The highest levels of academic education indicated by the respondents ranged from high
school to one participant who just finished his bachelor’s degree. All of the participants had
completed high school, and none indicated that they had earned a General Education
Development diploma. Three respondents had trade school education. Six respondents, including
three female participants and three male participants, said that they have budgets. The other
respondents said that they either did not have a budget or they tried to follow one but were
frequently unsuccessful. As shown below, the responses were varied between participants when
asked whether they were better off, worse off, or about the same from a year ago. The responses
were also varied when asked the same question with the exception of how they believe they
would fare in a year from now.
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Table 1
Blue-Collar Worker Responses
Age
Gender
Has a
Budget
Highest Level
of Academic
Education
Has Financial
Education
Better off (1),
Worse off
(2), or about
the same (3)
from 1 year
ago
Better off (1),
Worse off
(2), or about
the same (3)
1 year from
now
20
Male
No
High School
Yes
1
2
23
Male
Yes
Some College
Yes
1
1
24
Female
Yes
Some College
Yes
3
1
26
Male
No
Bachelor’s
Degree
Yes
1
1
29
Male
No
Trade School
No
1
3
30
Female
Yes
Trade School
No
3
1
38
Female
No
Some College
No
1
1
47
Male
Yes
High School
No
3
3
52
Male
Yes
Trade School
No
3
1
52
Male
Yes
Some College
Yes
3
1
When asked about the general occurrence(s) that had to happen, or did happen, for the
decision to be made to start investing for retirement, there were a variety of reasons given.
Participant 10 stated that he and his wife realized that they needed to start saving for their
retirement after they had their first child. Respondent 1 indicated that he would have to be more
educated about finance, along with securing a higher-paying job, before he would invest. Three
participants indicated that they did not want to run out of money in retirement, and Respondent 3
said she was afraid to be like a family member that she saw die poor. Two participants indicated
that they started investing because their employer offered 401(k) matches. The remaining
participants did not want to invest because they did not trust the stock markets.
When asked how academic education affects the choice to invest for retirement, four
participants indicated that it did have an effect on their decision to invest. Some of the reasons
cited included the fact that academic education made them more comfortable understanding
finance based on the courses in finance and economics that were taken (Participant 10, personal
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communication, September 5, 2014; Participant 4, personal communication, September 5, 2014),
the ability to speak to students and professors about their opinions on the markets and companies
(Participant 4, personal communication, September 5, 2014), one participant (Participant 1,
personal communication, September 7, 2014) indicated that it affected it a lot but could not
articulate why.
It seemed that he was generally uncomfortable investing based on his other answers
throughout the interview. Finally, another participant (Participant 6, personal communication,
September 8, 2014), indicated that she would not be comfortable investing because she does not
know much about stocks and the stock markets. The remaining six participants indicated that
they needed to invest, for a variety of reasons (mainly to fund retirement), so they would/did
invest anyways.
Participants were asked to provide their opinions about the individual stocks of both U.S.
and non-U.S. companies in the U.S. stock market. Nine out of 10 participants indicated that they
did not know enough about the stock market itself, or the individual companies listed for sale
there, to answer the question. One participant stated that even though he did not know much
about the U.S. and non-U.S. companies he would still invest with the help of a financial planner.
The participant who did offer an opinion on the two categories of stocks said this of U.S.
stocks, “Some companies are safe and some are not. We must look at diversifying risk to
different sectors and type and sizes of companies” (Participant 10, personal communication,
September 5, 2014). When asked about non-U.S. stocks, he said, “I generally do not trust non-
U.S. companies, because of the volatility of exchange rates and general political instability of the
world” (Participant 10, personal communication, September 5, 2014).
110
When asked about how the current U.S. economy affects the decision of whether to
invest for retirement, all ten participants indicated that it made a significant impact on their
overall decision. One participant (Participant 2, personal communication, September 6, 2014)
indicated that he was worried that the U.S. may enter into a second recession, and as a result he
was trying to save more money so that in the event that he lost his job he would have cash on
hand to pay bills and buy groceries. Another participant felt he would lose more money this time
if he was still investing in the stock market and felt that he would be better off paying down debt,
while another participant (Participant 7, personal communication, September 6, 2014) felt that
she would not want to invest in this economy because it was too shaky and wants it to be more
stable. Finally, one participant felt that a person would have to be rich to invest in the current
economy.
When asked how the U.S. economy affects their budget, one participant said that she was
unable to save as much money as she would like because prices in her area for various items that
she purchases, including groceries, were going up. Two participants said it does not affect them
at all. Another participant said he was recovering from losing $50,000 on a house that he had to
sell, and he also said that he had a tough time finding a reasonably-paying job in his area. So he
had to take the job he has now working at an ice distribution company. The other participants
said that they were afraid of the economy crashing again so instead of spending money on things
that they would like to buy they find themselves holding off and saving the money.
Many of them said that they would likely start buying things and spending their money
again once the economy got better because they were not sure over the long term how long they
would get to keep their jobs. Some of the participants also reiterated that they are not good with
sticking to a budget regardless of what the economy is doing, while a couple of the participants
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reiterated that they do not have a budget in the first place. Finally, one participant indicated that
he cannot save money because he has too many medical bills to pay.
The general answers between the participants were the same when they were asked the
question regarding the local economy and its affect on their decision of whether to invest for
retirement. The ones that did not invest feel that the local economy did not necessarily have
anything to do with it, and the ones who were investing basically said the same thing except for a
few respondents that felt the local economy made them feel comfortable investing because they
live in a tourist town in South Dakota. As one respondent put it, “We are an anomaly because of
where we are located. We are very fortunate! So I make sure to invest as much and as often as I
can” (Participant 9, personal communication, September 7, 2014).
Participants were asked whether they would be better off, worse off, or about the same in
a year from now. They were also asked whether they would be better off, worse off, or about the
same from a year ago. Only one participant felt he would be worse off in a year from now, and
that was because he planned on going back to school and not working as much so that he could
focus his time and energy on his course work.
A couple of participants felt they would be better off in the future because they planned
on relocating to another place where they felt they either had better job opportunities or would
like the area better. One trend that was noted was that those who reported they went to college or
had a degree thought they would be better off in a year from the time of the interview. Only three
people, two male participants and one female participant, reported that they would be better off
in the future and that they were better off than they were in the past.
The second central research question was: How did blue-collar workers diversify their
portfolio if they chose to invest? There were four questions that were asked to participants based
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on this central research question. Where applicable, the results are pooled into Table 2 with
further explanation located below the questions presented here:
x Do you currently invest for your retirement? Please explain.
x If you currently invest for your retirement, what do you invest in? Please explain.
x What other types of investment products (i.e. United States Treasury Bonds, Mutual
Funds or perhaps other investments), if any, have you invested in for your retirement?
x What percentage, if any, would you say you have in each investment product? Please
explain.
Participants were asked if they invest or not, what they invest in, and how much they
invest with respect to the percentage of the amount invested per investment product. Out of the
participants who are not currently investing, the main investment product they have either
purchased (i.e. invested in) was a U.S. Treasury Bond. One participant indicated that he only
buys U.S. Treasury Bonds but he wants to buy mutual funds in the future. Another participant
(Participant 3, personal communication, September 5, 2014) indicated that she invests $200 per
month into a mutual fund. When asked what other investment products they had invested in, they
all reiterated what they currently invest in because it is what they have chosen in the past or they
said that they had bought U.S. Treasury Bonds in the past or these bonds were given to them by
family members.
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Table 2
Blue-Collar Worker Investment Decisions
Age
Gender
Invests for
Retirement
Investment
Product of
Choice
Percentage
Allocated if
Known
20
Male
No
N/A
N/A
23
Male
Yes
U.S. Treasury
Bond
100%
24
Female
Yes
Mutual Fund
100%
26
Male
No
N/A
N/A
29
Male
No
N/A
N/A
30
Female
Yes
401(k)
100%
38
Female
No
N/A
N/A
47
Male
Yes
IRA and U.S.
Treasury Bonds
80%/20%
52
Male
Yes
401(k)
100%
52
Male
Yes
Mutual Fund,
IRA, 401(k)
70%/25%/5%
Overall, based on the answers provided by ten different research participants, who were
located in Washington State, North Dakota, and South Dakota, their particular investment
choices, opinions, and reasons for doing or not doing something or feeling a certain way were
overall non-confirming based on the given research conducted. This would mean that answers
were varied from question to question, but some consistencies, as described and presented above,
did arise in the findings. It also meant that the answers would not always be the same, or
redundant, as one might find in qualitative research. So the answers to the questions that could be
placed into a table were done so above in two different segments to illustrate the responses by
the participants.
Some things could not be illustrated in the tables. For example, one participant indicated
that she would not feel comfortable investing in something that does not guarantee a return.
However, even though she indicated she would not be comfortable investing, she later indicated
that she does actually invest because her company offers it and she can fit it in her budget. This
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also provides further proof that a given research would not be able to replicate the findings of the
study given the varied answers from one person to another.
One could also find the argument that if these same questions were asked of the same
participants in the future, perhaps in one year from the time of the interview, the answers could
likely change given the normal change of events in one’s life. For example, if economic
conditions were to improve throughout the U.S., then it may be possible to see more people
investing for their retirement. However, it seemed that if a person was interested in investing for
their retirement that they were going to do it. Based on the general answers to the questions that
participants were providing, the general sense I came away with seemed to me that the more a
person knew about finances the more likely they may be to invest. I say this because the tone of a
participant’s voice would be almost more indicative of fear of the unknown when we would
speak about investing for their retirement if they did not have financial education.
Summary
The purpose of this case study was to discover the factors that contributed to the decision
by blue-collar workers to allocate funds for retirement. This also included the levels of funding
should they decide to invest. Since these workers fell into various employment circumstances,
and as a result of the economic downturn and slow recovery, there were a wide variety of reasons
that were unknown for making or not making these investments (Sum et al, 2010). This study
used prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and regret theory (Loomes & Sugden, 1982)
as a theoretical basis for the research to uncover these reasons.
Prospect theory is a theory based on behavioral economics describing ways people made
choices based on losses and gains versus the final outcome, and it asserted that people evaluated
losses and gains using heuristics (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Regret theory implies that if
115
people made a wrong choice, they remembered this choice the next time they made another
decision under a similar set of circumstances (Loomes & Sugden, 1982). These theories were
covered in detail in Chapter 2.
The responses by the blue-collar workers did not seem to be overwhelmingly different
than one might expect to see from people with in a different research category. The factors that
contributed to the decision by blue-collar workers to invest or not invest for retirement was based
on a couple of contribute in factors, including employer-provided retirement accounts, the fear of
running out of money later in life during retirement, and the addition of new family members. In
the event that blue-collar workers chose to invest for their retirement, one of the most popular
investment products was the U.S. Treasury Bonds. Other popular investments were mutual
funds, 401(k)s, and IRAs. The breakdown of these was indicated in the table above. An in-depth
presentation of the interpretation of the findings of the study, along with the implications to
positive social change, will be presented in Chapter 5.
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Chapter 5: Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations
The purpose of this case study was to discover the factors that contribute to the decision
by blue-collar workers to allocate funds for retirement. This also included the levels of funding
should they decide to invest. Since these workers fell into various employment circumstances,
and as a result of the economic downturn and slow recovery, there were a wide variety of reasons
that were previously unknown for making or not making these investments (Sum et al, 2010).
This study used prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979) and regret theory (Loomes &
Sugden, 1982) as a theoretical basis for the research to uncover these reasons. Prospect theory
was a theory based on behavioral economics that described the ways people made choices based
on losses and gains versus the final outcome, and it also asserted that people evaluated losses and
gains through the use of heuristics (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). Regret theory implied that if
people made a wrong choice, they remembered this choice the next time they made another
decision under a similar set of circumstances (Loomes & Sugden, 1982).
The nature of this study was based on qualitative inquiry with a focus on the case study
method. The case study allowed for the study of the a single case, within the site of the location
of the research, and focus on the decisions made by blue-collar workers as they chose whether or
not to invest and their levels of investment should they choose to invest. Qualitative research was
consistent with understanding how blue-collar workers factored in the different facets of the
decision-making process of allocating funds for their retirement in that it allowed for direct
initial and follow-up communication with respondents in a way that permits them to provide
open and in-depth responses to questions.
The necessity of the study stemmed from the need to understand the circumstances
surrounding the decision of blue-collar workers to determine their level of investment for their
117
retirement, and with that information in hand society as a whole could have a more in-depth
understanding of an under-studied aspect of the life of these workers.
As previously mentioned in Chapter 4, the factors that contributed to the decision by
blue-collar workers to invest or not invest for retirement was based on a couple of contribute in
factors, including employer-provided retirement accounts, the fear of running out of money later
in life during retirement, and the addition of new family members. In the event that blue-collar
workers chose to invest for their retirement, one of the most popular investment products was the
U.S. Treasury Bonds. Other popular investments were mutual funds, 401(k)s, and IRAs.
The breakdown of these was indicated in the table in Chapter 4. The amount of financial
and academic education that a blue-collar worker had did not necessarily preclude them from
investing. There was a mixed response, with some blue-collar workers feeling it was necessary in
some feeling that it was not. There was no evidence provided that would indicate that a blue-
collar worker would have an overall investment strategy, with respect to specific asset classes
chosen based on the location in which they resided. Instead, the majority of the participants felt
that the local area in which they lived in did not necessarily prevent them from investing.
If they chose to invest, or not to invest, the over arcing reason given was not based on the
local economy. It was mainly based on whether or not they trusted someone to invest their
money for them, the necessity to have adequate funding throughout retirement, and the need to
be able to provide food and shelter in their retirement. One participant even went so far as to say
that she did not want to be like a recently deceased family member who passed away with very
little resources available to them. Four out of seven male participants were investing for their
retirement, and two out of three female participants were investing for their retirement. Based on
the data collected, once a person turned thirty years of age they were more likely to invest.
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Interpretation of Findings
In order to provide an adequate interpretation of the findings of this case study, it is both
relevant and important to first have a review of what the ten individual participants said. The age
ranges of the participants were from 20 to 52, and there were three female participants and seven
male participants. Three people, all male participants, said that they had formal financial
education. This included three people who had taken a financial budgeting and planning course
in high school, and one person had taken a financial investing seminar. The remaining
participants indicated that they had no formal financial education; however, one person who did
not fall had no formal financial education said, “I have no formal financial education, however I
do have a good grasp on finance” (Respondent 9, personal communication, September 7, 2014).
In Chapter 2, the literature review discussed a variety of reasons of why people save.
Saving money takes many forms, and it did this for a variety of reasons (Xi, Scholer, & Higgins,
2014; Burman, Coe, Pierce, & Liu, 2014; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan, &
Verma, 2014). These reasons were based on things such as the fulfillment of personal savings
goals, the avoidance of having to borrow money to pay for things in the event of an emergency,
and even to prevent financial hardships arising from the loss of income stemming from
unemployment or retirement (Soman & Cheema, 2011; Xi, Scholer, & Higgins, 2014; Burman,
Coe, Pierce, & Liu, 2014; Marucci-Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan, & Verma, 2014).
Based on the interviews, I would say that the interviewees did not always save in the same way
that other people do with respect to having an adequate retirement. However, they did plan on
emergencies and many of them indicated that they have money in the event that something
happens to them (i.e. loss of a job or moving from one location to another).
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Only four people indicated that financial education would not be necessary prior to
making a decision to invest for their retirement. None of those respondents were females, and
one female respondent, Respondent 6, indicated that she would not invest unless she was
guaranteed to make money. Respondent 9 indicated that he did not think it was necessary to have
formal financial education. Instead, it was only necessary to trust the people who were managing
the money, whereas Respondent 5 stated that he did not trust anyone with his money because he
had known too many people who had lost money in the stock market in the past. Finally,
Respondent 8 was afraid of running out of money in retirement so he felt that he had no other
choice but to invest.
According to Soman and Cheema (2011), who studied the effects of earmarking money
on savings by low-income consumers, creating a savings goal and posting it in a visible are
served as a positive visual reminder and increased the propensity for saving. Soman and Cheema
also found that people saved more when earmarked money was partitioned into two accounts
than when it is pooled into one account. None of the participants indicated anything to me about
having more than one bank account, and I did not ask.
The highest levels of academic education indicated by the respondents ranged from high
school to one participant who just finished his bachelor’s degree. All of the participants had
completed high school, and none indicated that they had earned a General Education
Development diploma. Three respondents had trade school education. Six respondents, including
three female participants and three male participants, said that they have budgets. The other
respondents said that they either did not have a budget or they tried to follow one but were
frequently unsuccessful. As shown below, the responses were varied between participants when
asked whether they were better off, worse off, or about the same from a year ago. The responses
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were also varied when asked the same question with the exception of how they believe they
would fare in a year from now.
As mentioned in Chapter 2, for blue-collar workers specifically, it was difficult to
account for specific reasons for the decisions to have a personal savings. One reason for this was
the low wages that blue-collar workers earn, which had continued to be reduced over time as
their jobs were outsourced to foreign competitors adding to a rise in wage difference between
educated and non-educated workers (Kosteas, 2008). Risk of losing a job or missing out on a
promotion also plays a role in how people save (Xi, Scholer, & Higgins, 2014; Marucci-
Wellman, Willetts, Tin-Chi, Brennan, & Verma, 2014). None of the workers that I spoke with
were worried about their jobs being outsourced overseas.
When asked about the general occurrence(s) that had to happen, or did happen, for the
decision to be made to start investing for retirement, there were a variety of reasons given.
Participant 10 stated that he and his wife realized that they needed to start saving for their
retirement after they had their first child. Respondent 1 indicated that he would have to be more
educated about finance, along with securing a higher-paying job, before he would invest. Three
participants indicated that they did not want to run out of money in retirement, and Respondent 3
said she was afraid to be like a family member that she saw die poor. Two participants indicated
that they started investing because their employer offered 401(k) matches. The remaining
participants did not want to invest because they did not trust the stock markets.
When asked how academic education affects the choice to invest for retirement, four
participants indicated that it did have an effect on their decision to invest. Some of the reasons
cited included the fact that academic education made them more comfortable understanding
finance based on the courses in finance and economics that were taken (Participant 10, personal
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communication, September 5, 2014; Participant 4, personal communication, September 5, 2014),
the ability to speak to students and professors about their opinions on the markets and companies
(Participant 4, personal communication, September 5, 2014), one participant (Participant 1,
personal communication, September 7, 2014) indicated that it affected it a lot but could not
articulate why.
It seemed that he was generally uncomfortable investing based on his other answers
throughout the interview. Finally, another participant (Participant 6, personal communication,
September 8, 2014), indicated that she would not be comfortable investing because she does not
know much about stocks and the stock markets. The remaining six participants indicated that
they needed to invest, for a variety of reasons (mainly to fund retirement), so they would/did
invest anyways.
Participants were asked to provide their opinions about the individual stocks of both U.S.
and non-U.S. companies in the U.S. stock market. Nine out of 10 participants indicated that they
did not know enough about the stock market itself, or the individual companies listed for sale
there, to answer the question. One participant stated that even though he did not know much
about the U.S. and non-U.S. companies he would still invest with the help of a financial planner.
The participant who did offer an opinion on the two categories of stocks said this of U.S.
stocks, “Some companies are safe and some are not. We must look at diversifying risk to
different sectors and type and sizes of companies” (Participant 10, personal communication,
September 5, 2014). When asked about non-U.S. stocks, he said, “I generally do not trust non-
U.S. companies, because of the volatility of exchange rates and general political instability of the
world” (Participant 10, personal communication, September 5, 2014).
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When asked about how the current U.S. economy affects the decision of whether to
invest for retirement, all ten participants indicated that it made a significant impact on their
overall decision. One participant (Participant 2, personal communication, September 6, 2014)
indicated that he was worried that the U.S. may enter into a second recession, and as a result he
was trying to save more money so that in the event that he lost his job he would have cash on
hand to pay bills and buy groceries. Another participant felt he would lose more money this time
if he was still investing in the stock market and felt that he would be better off paying down debt,
while another participant (Participant 7, personal communication, September 6, 2014) felt that
she would not want to invest in this economy because it was too shaky and wants it to be more
stable. Finally, one participant felt that a person would have to be rich to invest in the current
economy.
When asked how the U.S. economy affects their budget, one participant said that she was
unable to save as much money as she would like because prices in her area for various items that
she purchases, including groceries, were going up. Two participants said it does not affect them
at all. Another participant said he was recovering from losing $50,000 on a house that he had to
sell, and he also said that he had a tough time finding a reasonably-paying job in his area. So he
had to take the job he has now working at an ice distribution company. The other participants
said that they were afraid of the economy crashing again so instead of spending money on things
that they would like to buy they find themselves holding off and saving the money.
Many of them said that they would likely start buying things and spending their money
again once the economy got better because they were not sure over the long term how long they
would get to keep their jobs. Some of the participants also reiterated that they are not good with
sticking to a budget regardless of what the economy is doing, while a couple of the participants
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reiterated that they do not have a budget in the first place. Finally, one participant indicated that
he cannot save money because he has too many medical bills to pay.
The general answers between the participants were the same when they were asked the
question regarding the local economy and its affect on their decision of whether to invest for
retirement. The ones that did not invest feel that the local economy did not necessarily have
anything to do with it, and the ones who were investing basically said the same thing except for a
few respondents that felt the local economy made them feel comfortable investing because they
live in a tourist town in South Dakota. As one respondent put it, “We are an anomaly because of
where we are located. We are very fortunate! So I make sure to invest as much and as often as I
can” (Participant 9, personal communication, September 7, 2014).
Participants were asked whether they would be better off, worse off, or about the same in
a year from now. They were also asked whether they would be better off, worse off, or about the
same from a year ago. Only one participant felt he would be worse off in a year from now, and
that was because he planned on going back to school and not working as much so that he could
focus his time and energy on his course work.
A couple of participants felt they would be better off in the future because they planned
on relocating to another place where they felt they either had better job opportunities or would
like the area better. One trend that was noted was that those who reported they went to college or
had a degree thought they would be better off in a year from the time of the interview. Only three
people, two male participants and one female participant, reported that they would be better off
in the future and that they were better off than they were in the past.
The participants in this study seemed to have similar investment decisions as other people
who were not blue-collar workers that were noted in the literature review in Chapter 2. Prior to
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the beginning of this study, the existing literature did not have many research articles that
focused on blue-collar workers, so it was hard to confirm or disconfirm knowledge in the
discipline of finance. At least one group of researchers (Fouad et al, 2012, p. 287) also echoed
this sentiment.
Some of the findings, however, seemed to be in line with the literature review conducted
in Chapter 2. For example, in the literature review there was a singular incident in which a blue-
collar worker indicated that he had to work as long as he could to maintain the benefits that he
was getting through his employer along with medical insurance (Sanders & McCready, 2009, p.
118). He was unsure of how long he was going to be able to make it through retirement and have
enough funding to pay for everything, including medical bills and a place to live. Many of the
participants in this study had near identical concerns.
The amount of financial and academic education that a blue-collar worker had did not
necessarily preclude them from investing. There was a mixed response, with some blue-collar
workers feeling it was necessary in some feeling that it was not. There was no evidence provided
that would indicate that a blue-collar worker would have an overall investment strategy, with
respect to specific asset classes chosen based on the location in which they resided. Instead, the
majority of the participants felt that the local area in which they lived in did not necessarily
prevent them from investing. If they chose to invest, or not to invest, the over arcing reason
given was not based on the local economy. It was mainly based on whether or not they trusted
someone to invest their money for them, the necessity to have adequate funding throughout
retirement, and the need to be able to provide food and shelter in their retirement.
One participant even went so far as to say that she did not want to be like a recently
deceased family member who passed away with very little resources available to her. Four out of
125
seven male participants were investing for their retirement, and two out of three female
participants were investing for their retirement. Based on the data collected, once a person turned
thirty years of age they were more likely to invest.
One thing that seemed to be a parent as the interviews were being conducted was that
people seemed to find reasons, or perhaps one could go so far as to say excuses, to invest or not
invest for their retirement. The location in which they lived in did not seem to play any major
role in whether or not they were going to invest. Instead, it seemed more like an issue of whether
or not a given participant was ready to do it. This interpretation is not something that would be
easily found by reading the transcripts or listening to the audio files. Instead, it seemed to be part
of a general decision-making process.
One could also potentially make the argument that someone might not do something
unless they are comfortable with it, but an even bigger argument might be made as to whether or
not a person is actually ready to make a decision based on whether that decision is right for them
or not. This is not something that is necessarily going to be very easy to quantify, measure, or
even easily incorporate into a case study. It is also arguable that what makes one person
comfortable will certainly not make another person comfortable, and that all decisions made by
different people would most likely be made for different reasons.
As previously mentioned, the data essentially shows that as a person gets older they are
more likely to invest. It also seemed that there was a fear of being closer to retirement, especially
as a person get older, that they would need to actually begin to start investing because in some
cases a couple of the participants had yet to begin investing. However, based on what we have
seen here the decision of whether or not to invest for retirement seemed to be more along the
126
lines of making a decision that will prevent something negative from happening at a later date. In
this case, it would be running out of resources, especially money, during retirement.
Limitations of the Study
At the beginning of the research I tried to obtain permission from three separate
organizations that employed blue-collar workers to allow me to enter into their place of business
and advertise my research and conduct interviews with participants who were willing to take part
in the study. After the all three attempts were unsuccessful I switched over to the snowball
technique after a blue-collar worker indicated that he was interested in working with me. So I
interviewed the first participant and then I asked if he knew of anyone else that might be
interested in participating. I then went from one participant to the next until the
recommendations either stopped or the same people kept being recommended. At the end of the
study, a total of 10 people participated in the study, which met the minimum goal of the research.
A case study researcher has to be able to decide the bounded system in which to study,
which would mean recognizing that several could have been possible candidates for selection
and the case itself, or several cases located within the overall study, could have been worthy of
study (Creswell, 2013). This included studying a single case or multiple cases. It was possible
that studying more than one case could dilute the findings of the overall analysis since the more
cases one studies meant a potential reduction in the depth of any single case.
Even with a singular case there could be the possibility of a reduction in the ability to
generalize the findings. One particular reason for this was because, unlike quantitative-based
research where variables can be tested, it may have been difficult for another researcher to take a
similar given set of circumstances and reproduce similar results since qualitative variables are
explained instead of being tested. In the event that this was a mixed method study, whereby
127
quantitative inquiry was used as a way to compare the answers from the small amount of
participants against the responses from a larger group of people, then the results would be
arguably more rigorous than they are now.
This was one of the limitations of doing a qualitative case study, because it is not possible
for a researcher to replicate the study and achieve very similar results. Instead, the basis of the
study was more centered and focused on discovering what has to be in place for a blue-collar
worker to invest, including their levels of diversification in the event they invest, which is rather
difficult to do and a quantitative setting. However, had the study focused on the investment
decisions of blue-collar workers and a more quantitative-based inquiry, then one can argue that
the findings would not have been as limited as they are here.
Since the study took place in the Inland Northwest and the Midwest, it would be difficult
to reproduce similar results in another part of the United States. The participants were also going
to be limited to employees located in that region. However, there was literature (Sum et al, 2010)
to support the notion that the findings may be generalized in other regions of the United States.
There were several major biases that I identified prior going into the study. One such bias was
my own personal experience with blue-collar workers.
I had several family members including myself who are, or were, blue-collar workers at
one point or another. Many of my family members worked at a factory on an assembly line. I
also had several family members who performed a variety of manual labor throughout their time
working, and this included several family members worked in the construction crafts as well as
other family members who were truck drivers. It would not be uncommon for them to work six
days a week, and during a given week they would normally work around sixty hours or more.
They usually only made about a few dollars an hour above minimum wage, so when an
128
economic downturn what happened they would quickly run out of money and be unable to pay
their bills. My first job was actually as a blue-collar worker where I worked at Midas helping the
mechanics as a parts-runner along with other duties in the shop. This bias towards blue-collar
workers was what led me to choose them for the study. The other biases are based on the
assumptions below.
Some of the reasonable steps that I took to address these biases included being objective
with the findings of the research, which meant removing my personal feelings and opinions from
the overall research process. There was little I could do about the limitation of the audience that
was used in the case study, but I made the best efforts to present the data here as efficiently and
effectively as possible in order to describe how it related to the findings in the previous literature
from Chapter 2. This was done by presenting information based on age so that a trend would be
allowed to present itself in a logical way, because based on the data that was collected it would
not make sense to categorize the data in another way. The tables were also crafted separately in
order to allow the reader to see how the responses were given based on the central research
question that was being answered.
Recommendations
Personal Finance
In order to discuss the recommendations for further research it is necessary to revisit the
original reason behind this particular case study. Very little research has ever been conducted on
the blue-collar working community. Since they are so underserved, many gaps in the research
exist. With respect to this study, it was incredibly difficult to discover existing research that
discussed the investment choices made by blue-collar workers. This also means that there is a
wide variety of personal financial issues that have been undiscovered.
129
This could be a great area for future research to be conducted in order to help determine
how these workers could comfortably invest in their future. One can also argue that it is difficult
to measure comfort, and this can seriously add to the credibility of a given research inquiry as it
will likely be limited by how it measures comfort. An exhaustive review of existing literature in
the field of psychology might provide insight on how to measure this. Even incorporating a
psychologist or psychiatrist to assist with the research could be very helpful and add to the
soundness and credibility of the findings.
This means that there was initially a gap in the existing academic literature that did not
completely discuss the contributing factors that leads to the level of investment for retirement
and portfolio diversification by blue-collar workers that used both prospect theory (Kahneman &
Tversky, 1979) and regret theory (Loomes & Sugden, 1982) as the underpinnings of a case
study. The previous literature review, as presented in Chapter 2, had shown relevant studies
(Sanders & McCready, 2009; Boris, 2010) that had come close. However, many of the
underlying factors that still needed to be studied were not covered in the literature conclusively
since there were very few resources upon which to draw relevant data. This also means that the
literature review, which is the base or foundation of the case study, is not as strong as it could be
because there is very little research that can be used to backup the findings. Instead, I am left to
believe that the blue-collar worker might have similar retirement investment choices that anyone
else might have based on their given age, gender, financial education and employment
circumstances.
These factors included whether or not blue-collar workers in a financial position to
invest, how much money they allocated if they could invest, how they diversify their portfolio,
and if they had an emergency fund established so they did not have to withdraw their retirement
130
funds. This information was not found in the literature, and in order to obtain higher levels of
accurate information this information should be gathered directly from the study participants.
The reason there was a need for this to be gathered from research participants was because it
may have been controversial to speculate on what the individual circumstances would be prior to
the study, and it could have also been controversial to assume that blue-collar respondents from
other studies (Sanders & McCready, 2009; Boris, 2010) speak for all of the other participants
who would be in this study.
Potential Mixed Method Research
Based on the strengths and limitations of the current study, as well as the literature
review, further research should be directed to other blue-collar communities throughout the
United States. This research could be quantitative-based, whereby larger groups of blue-collar
workers could participate in surveys that are generated in a similar fashion based on the
questions that were asked in this study. It could also be done as a mixed method study whereby,
much in the same manner in which it was conducted here, through a qualitative case study
approach using purposeful sampling and/or snowball sampling. Part of the study could take
surveys from blue-collar workers located within a geographic region of the state, such as the
southwestern region of the country or perhaps somewhere else, and then there could be
interviews done with participants where they are asked to answer similar questions where they
are allowed to offer in-depth responses.
The quantitative metric could be used to perhaps explain what might be said by the
participants in the interviews conducted during the qualitative case study. One could make the
argument that it would be worthy of research, especially if the research were conducted once the
economy has improved. One could also make the argument that the answers provided by blue-
131
collar workers could be drastically different in the event that they are located in an area where
employment is not difficult to gain.
Further research using surveys into a larger group of these workers, perhaps through the
use of quantitative inquiry in different states, could result in a clearer understanding of their
investment habits. Perhaps if more light is shed on more of the people in this category with
respect to the data that is collected would elaborate on the findings of this study, even though one
could make the argument that the results may end up being very similar. One could also argue
that the more that is known about this category of worker could be good for the academic
community as a whole as well as the blue-collar community.
Implications
Positive Social Change
There is a potential impact for positive social change at the individual level, and this
positive change could be based on the blue-collar worker community that participated in the
study learning about the vast existing financial education and literacy online companies that
provide their services absolutely free. There are also a wide variety of financial news outlets,
such as CNNMoney, Bloomberg and Fox News, which exist as well that provide free financial
education and retirement education as well. It may be possible that blue-collar workers are not
aware of these resources.
However, as part of the dissemination of the findings of this study participants were
informed of some of these outlets. They were also interested to hear about them, and a few of the
participants even indicated that they had either already heard of them or planned on doing their
own research in the future to enhance their financial education. One indirect way that the study
can positively affect social change is by the participants sharing the findings of the study with
132
one another and their friends and family. I will also be providing a copy of the dissertation to the
participants of the study once it has been approved by Walden for publication so that the
participants will have the opportunity to see the full study and its entirety in order to be more
well-informed.
Theoretically speaking, it would be possible for participants to take time and research the
various areas of investing through the aforementioned media outlets enough for them to
potentially feel comfortable enough investing for their retirement in the event that they are
already not investing. This is because they would not merely be looking at the prospects of
buying an investment product with the notion in mind that it may go up or down in value,
whereby they may regret later on having purchased something that went down in value or not
purchasing something that would later go up in value. Instead, it may be possible for them to
understand enough about the risks of investing in order to make a more educated decision.
The reason for sharing the entire dissertation with the participants is to allow them to see,
and a more transparent way, what initially drove the research as well as what needs to be
researched in the future. This will allow for them to have a better understanding of the
motivation behind choosing the blue-collar worker community in the first place, as well as the
potential for them to maybe pursue a PhD in their own time and conduct research on their own.
Or, they may choose to share the work with a friend or family member that is a researcher so that
that person might choose to look further into it on their behalf or potentially give them some
more insight behind the foundations of the study.
Conclusions
The reason this case study was chosen was because it involved a category of society that
was underserved. The purpose of this case study was to discover the factors that contributed to
133
the decision by blue-collar workers to allocate funds for retirement. This also included an
attempt to discover how the blue-collar workers would invest their money, to include what they
would buy and how much of it, in order to better understand their investment choices. Since
these workers fell into various employment circumstances, and as a result of the economic
downturn and slow recovery, there were a wide variety of reasons that were previously unknown
for making or not making these investments (Sum et al, 2010). However, in many cases the blue-
collar workers seemed to have had similar investment habits than people who did not fall into
that category. They also seemed to base their choices to invest or not invest based on how well
they did or did not understand what they were buying, even though the data collected seemed to
indicate that once they reach the age of thirty there was a higher likelihood that they would
invest anyway.
One item that was noted during the collection of the data was that when a participant did
make a choice to invest, they seemed to allocate funds in an area that most institutional investors
might consider to be a more safe investment and that was the investment in a US Treasury Bond.
One other item of note that seemed to be part of their overall responses, albeit a response not
shared by perhaps one or two participants, was the notion that a person would not invest in
something that they do not understand. I posit, based on my brief experience with these
participants, that knowledge can dispel fear. That is the more we know about something the less
we seem to be fearful of it. It seemed to me that the participants who had financial education at a
younger age seemed to be more willing to invest even if they were not currently doing it.
Based on the data collected one can make the argument that a participant would say they
were or were not investing for one reason or another, but a closer examination of the findings
seems to reveal that a given participant essentially starts to realize that the older they get the
134
closer to retirement that they are coming and the fear of running out of resources and retirement
starts to set in. This seemed to be a general tone with quite a few of the participants, although a
couple of the participants did seem to feel this way based on their responses as seen in Chapter 4,
most of them did not directly come out and say it.
Since the US economy is recovering from one of the deepest recessions in recent history,
there also seemed to be some concern expressed by the respondents about the future of the
overall US economy. Although they did not come out and say that the overall US economy
would prevent them for investing for their retirement, one could make the argument that if the
US economy had recovered in a more meaningful and consistent way, such as a strong and
steady rise in employment and hourly wages noted throughout the entire United States and not
just segments of it, then these respondents might have answered differently. Or perhaps they may
not have. One thing I would posit, based on my conversations with the participants, is that if they
understood more about what they were investing in and the US economy was stronger, more of
them would be investing. Not only that, but it might even entirely be possible that they would
allocate more money than they currently do as of the time of the writing of this dissertation in
late 2014.
135
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Appendix A: Interview Protocol and Questions
Project: A Case Study of the Contributing Factors That led to the Level of Investment for
Retirement and Portfolio Diversification by Blue-Collar Workers
Date:
The purpose of the study is to explore the contributing factors that led to people investing for
their retirement. This also included what they invest in, and the percentages of their money that
they invest if they chose to. In-depth responses were highly encouraged. The interview questions
were listed below.
Your participation in this study is completely voluntary. If you chose not to participate or to
withdraw from the test at any time, you can do so without penalty or loss of benefit to yourself.
There were no foreseeable risks to you from partaking in this study. Mark E. Griffin, Jr., the
researcher, will not included your responses in the research study and will keep your identity
confidential.
Definitions:
401 (k): A qualified plan established by employers to which eligible employees may made salary
deferral (salary reduction) contributions on a post-tax and/or pretax basis.
Broker: A party that arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller, such as the sale of stock,
and gets a commission when the deal is executed.
Diversification: Reducing risk by investing in a variety of assets.
Exchange Traded Fund (ETF): An investment vehicle traded on stock exchanges, much like
stocks do, and they hold assets like stocks or bonds. They were usually designed to track an
index, and they can combine the valuation feature of a mutual fund or a unit investment trust.
Mutual Fund
: A mutual fund is a type of investment company that pools money from many
investors and invests the money in stocks, bonds, money-market instruments, other securities, or
even cash.
Financial Risk Tolerance
: An investor's ability or willingness to accept declines in the prices
of investments while waiting for them to increase in value.
Security
: A security is a negotiable instrument representing financial value. Securities were
broadly categorized into debt securities (such as banknotes bonds and debentures) and equity
securities (common stocks). They also included derivative contracts, such
as forwards, futures, options and swaps. The company or other entity issuing the security is
called the issuer.
Stock Broker: A stock broker is a regulated professional broker who buys and sells shares and
other securities through market makers or Agency Only Firms on behalf of investors. A broker
may be employed by a brokerage firm.
Underemployment
: Individuals working part-time (under thirty-five hours per week) but desire
full-time jobs and were available to work full time. This could also included individuals who had
skill sets that their current employer is not using.
149
Questions:
1. What is your age?
2. What is your gender?
3. How would you describe your financial education? Please explain.
4. Describe the amount of financial education you would had to obtain before you would
consider investing your money for your retirement. Please explain.
5. What is your highest level of academic education? Please explain.
6. Do you, or your family, had a budget? Please explain.
7. Do you currently invest for your retirement? Please explain.
8. If you currently invest for your retirement, what do you invest in? Please explain.
9. What general occurrence(s) had to happen in your life, or did happen, for you to invest
for your retirement? Please explain.
10. Regardless of whether or not you were an investor in the stock market, in what ways do
you felt that your academic education would affect your choice to invest for your
retirement? Please explain.
11. What is your opinion of individual stocks of United States (U.S.) companies in the U.S.
stock market? Please explain.
12. What is your opinion of individual stocks of non-U.S. companies in the U.S. stock
market? Please explain.
13. What other types of investment products (i.e. United States Treasury Bonds, Mutual
Funds or perhaps other investments), if any, had you invested in for your retirement?
Please explain.
14. What percentage, if any, would you say you had in each investment product? Please
explain.
15. In what ways did your opinion of the current U.S. economy affect your decision of
whether to invest for your retirement? Please explain.
16. In what ways did the current state of the U.S. economy affect your family budget? Please
explain.
17. In what ways did the economy in your local are affect your decision of whether to invest
for your retirement? Please explain.
18. Looking ahead, how do you think you was financially a year from now, will you be better
off, worse off, or about the same? Please explain.
19. Looking back, would you say that you were financially better off, worse off or about the
same as you were a year ago? Please explain.
Thank you for your cooperation and participation in this study. The responses you provide was
beneficial in improving understanding of the facets that were necessary for people to invest for
their retirement. It will also help the academic community understand how people investors
invest their money if they do invest.
