Community activist: If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping district healthy, it should prevent the opening of a huge SaveAll discount department store on the outskirts of Morganville. Records from other small towns show that whenever SaveAll has opened a store outside the central shopping district of a small town, within fi ve years the town has experienced the bankruptcies of more than a quarter of the stores in the shopping district.
The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the community activist's reasoning?