Investigating University Students’ Environmental Knowledge And Waste Disposal Behaviour In Enugu State, Nigeria: a Critical Analysis

Abstract

This study investigated university students’ environmental knowledge and prevailing waste disposal behaviour in Enugu State, Nigeria. Fundamentally, environmental knowledge refers to as the amount of knowledge a person has regarding environmental issues. The main objective of this study is to empirically investigate university students’ environmental knowledge and waste disposal behave our in Enugu State, Nigeria.  In order to achieve this stated objective, survey research design was adopted and the population of this study comprises undergraduates students of five selected universities in Enugu State, Nigeria.  A sample size of 400 respondents was statistically drawn out from the population of 69,091 students using Slovin’s formula. Questionnaire was the major instrument for primary data collection and stratified random sampling was adopted. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to check reliabi]ity of the research instrument with respect to internal consistency. Tables and percentages were used to answer research questions while structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesis at .05 margin of error.  Statistical package for social science SPSS version 23.0 software was used for analysis.  It was found that there was no positive relationship between environmental knowledge and waste disposal behaviour of university students. We conclude that there was no positive relationship between environmental knowledge and waste disposal behaviour of university students. We recommend among others that environmental education programmes be infused into the academic curriculum for university students to enable them “walk the talk”.