Major Constrains to Choice of Waste Management Strategies among the Poor and Non-Poor Households in South-west Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined the factors influencing Households' choice of waste management strategies in Lagos State, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select respondents for the study. In the first stage, two states (Lagos state and Ogun state) were purposefully selected based on their well-organized waste management systems, relatively advanced waste management arrangements, and close proximity. In the second stage, three LGAs were purposely selected from the Lagos state, while three LGAs were selected in Ogun state, considering well-organized waste management systems. In the third stage, a stratified sampling technique was used to select four communities from each LGA into two different strata: high-income and low-income. In the fourth stage, fifteen respondents were selected using a systematic sampling technique. In all, 360 respondents were used for the study.
Primary and secondary data collected from 360 respondents were analyzed using descriptive statistics, multi-dimensional poverty index, multinomial logit, and regression model. The average age of the household head was 47 years, which implies that the respondents were mostly middle-aged people who were still within their economically active age group. This is expected to positively influence the respondents' decision-making as they would be making sound decisions regarding waste management since they are likely to be more exposed to different health-related information. The income distribution revealed that the household head earned an average income of N109, 211.00. It was also revealed that the respondents earned a minimum of N10, 000.00 and a maximum of N3, 500,000.00. The result revealed that the majority of the household heads earned more than the N33,000.00 monthly minimum wage approved by the Federal Government of Nigeria, which indicates that they are average-income earners and will consequently enable the household heads to make rational decisions on their choice of waste management. It was revealed that about 52.6% and 35.9% of the respondents in Lagos and Ogun States, respectively, who are below the poverty line, used PSP, while about 28.9% and 34.1% of those who are non-poor or above the poverty line used the PSP. Years spent in schools, waste disposal cost, and disposal frequency were the major factors influencing households' choice of waste management strategies in south-west Nigeria. This policy should promote new healthy waste disposal methods like PSP, which the poor can afford, while phasing out the old and unhealthy methods like open dumping and burning, which still predominates in the study area and most parts of the developing countries.