Refill, Don't Refuse: Designing and Evaluating a 6-Week Campus PR Campaign to Cut Single-Use Plastic in Hostels

Refill, Don't Refuse is an advanced MJMC PR & Advertising dissertation that does two things most campaign projects keep separate: it designs and runs a real six-week PR campaign, and it evaluates the campaign's effect with a quasi-experimental design instead of reporting likes and impressions.

The campaign targets residents of one university hostel and aims to reduce the use of single-use plastic — bottled water, disposable cups, carry bags and food-delivery containers — by promoting refill stations, steel tumblers in the mess and a "bring your own box" habit for food orders. Planning follows Marston's RACE model (Research, Action, Communication, Evaluation), and channels are planned with the PESO model: owned (hostel notice boards, an Instagram page, a newsletter designed in InDesign), shared (student ambassadors, reels edited in Premiere Pro), earned (campus newspaper and a local press release) and a very small paid component (printing).

Effectiveness is measured against a comparison hostel that receives no campaign. Both hostels complete a pre and post questionnaire built on Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and intention), plus awareness items. The behavioural outcome is objective: a seven-day weighed audit of single-use plastic waste from each hostel's bins before and after the campaign, expressed as grams per resident per day. Analysis in SPSS uses paired and independent-samples t-tests on change scores.

The bundle includes the campaign plan, message strategy, creative workflow, evaluation design, instruments, analysis plan, chapter scheme, PPT outline and viva bank.

Abstract

University hostels generate large volumes of single-use plastic from packaged water, disposable cups and food-delivery packaging. Awareness campaigns on campuses are common but are rarely evaluated beyond reach and attendance. This study designs a six-week public-relations campaign using the RACE and PESO models to reduce single-use plastic in one hostel and evaluates it through a non-equivalent control-group pre-test/post-test design. Outcomes include awareness, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and behavioural intention (Theory of Planned Behaviour) and the weight of single-use plastic waste measured in a seven-day audit. Paired and independent t-tests on change scores compare the campaign hostel with a comparison hostel.

Introduction

Public relations is often judged by outputs — posters printed, posts published, events held. Professional evaluation frameworks ask instead for outcomes: did knowledge, attitudes or behaviour change? A campus sustainability campaign is a good test case, because the desired behaviour is visible and measurable in the hostel's own waste.

Literature gap

Studies of pro-environmental behaviour frequently use the Theory of Planned Behaviour to predict intentions, and waste-audit methods are well established in environmental studies. Student PR campaigns in Indian media schools, however, seldom link the two. Most report outputs only and lack a comparison group. This project combines a theory-based questionnaire, an objective behavioural measure and a comparison hostel to produce a defensible estimate of campaign effect.

Hypotheses

• H1: Residents of the campaign hostel will show a greater increase in intention to avoid single-use plastic than residents of the comparison hostel.
• H2: Attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control will increase more in the campaign hostel.
• H3: Single-use plastic waste per resident per day will fall more in the campaign hostel than in the comparison hostel.
• H4: Post-campaign attitude, norm and control will predict intention in the campaign hostel.

Feasibility

Two hostels of similar size (about 150 residents each) are available with wardens' approval; the estates office provides a weighing scale; housekeeping staff agree to keep bin bags separate during audit weeks. Printing costs are about ₹4,000, and the full cycle fits in 24 weeks.

Hostels on Indian university campuses produce a steady stream of single-use plastic — packaged water bottles, disposable tea cups, carry bags and food-delivery containers — despite the national ban on identified single-use plastic items and campus "green" pledges. Awareness drives are held every year, but their effect is judged by attendance and social-media reach, so no one knows whether they change what residents actually throw away.

This study addresses that gap for PR practice. It designs a six-week, theory-based PR campaign for one hostel and tests its effectiveness against a comparison hostel using both psychological outcomes (awareness, attitude, norms, perceived control and intention) and a behavioural outcome (weighed single-use plastic waste). The result is a campaign that is both creatively produced and rigorously evaluated, and a model for evaluating campus PR campaigns by outcomes rather than outputs.

In scope

• Two university hostels of similar size and composition: one campaign hostel and one comparison hostel.
• A six-week campaign with owned, shared, earned and minimal paid media.
• Pre/post questionnaires (TPB constructs, awareness) and two seven-day waste audits per hostel.
• Statistical comparison of change scores and a written dissertation.

Out of scope

• Other waste streams (food waste, e-waste) except where mixed in bins.
• Long-term follow-up beyond two weeks after the campaign.
• Random assignment of students — hostels are intact groups, so the design is quasi-experimental.
• Policy changes by the administration (the campaign may recommend them but does not depend on them).

Research design

Non-equivalent control-group pre-test/post-test design (quasi-experimental), with the campaign as the intervention.

Formative research (weeks 1–5) — the R in RACE

Two focus groups with residents, an interview with the warden and mess contractor, and bin observation to identify the main plastic items and barriers (no refill point on some floors, habit of ordering food in plastic containers).

Campaign plan — Action and Communication

• Objectives: raise awareness of refill points to 80%; increase intention scores; reduce single-use plastic waste by 25% per resident per day.
• Key message: "Refill, don't refuse" — the easy alternative, not the guilt.
• PESO mix: Owned — posters and floor notices, fortnightly newsletter in InDesign, hostel Instagram page. Shared — 10 student ambassadors, reels in Premiere Pro, a "steel tumbler selfie" challenge. Earned — campus newspaper story, press release to a local daily. Paid — printing only.
• Enablers: refill-station map, steel-tumbler counter with the mess contractor, "bring your own box" sticker for food-delivery orders.

Instruments

• TPB questionnaire (built following Ajzen's construction guidelines): attitude (4 items, semantic differential), subjective norm (3), perceived behavioural control (3), intention (3), all 7-point; plus 6 awareness items and demographics. Pilot on 20 residents of a third hostel; Cronbach's α reported for each construct.
• Waste audit: single-use plastic separated from hostel bins for seven consecutive days, weighed daily on a digital scale (±10 g), logged with date, floor and item category; expressed as g/resident/day.

Analysis (SPSS)

Paired t-tests within each hostel; independent-samples t-test on change scores between hostels (the key test for H1–H3); multiple regression of intention on post-campaign attitude, norm and control (H4); Cohen's d for effect sizes. Audit data compared descriptively and with a t-test on daily per-resident values.

Timeline (24 weeks)

Review and formative research (1–5) · baseline (6–7) · campaign (8–13) · post-test (14–15) · analysis (16–18) · writing and revision (19–23) · submission (24).