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Environmental pollution policy of small businesses in Nigeria and Ghana: extent and impact

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Abstract

This study provides a comprehensive assessment of firms’ operation and environmental protection polices in Nigeria and Ghana, where there has been a rising industrial growth amidst low regulatory and institutional frameworks. We analyze the extents to which firms’ adoption of environmental protection policies affect their performances. We use firm-level data of 842 firms (447 for Nigeria and 395 for Ghana) distributed across different regions of both countries for our descriptive and econometric estimations. We find, among other things, that firms’ adoption of internal policies on environmental protection is dismally low in both Nigeria (32%) and Ghana (17%), with policies focused on reducing solid (38%, Nigeria; and 35%, Ghana), gaseous (22%, Nigeria; and 44%, Ghana), and liquid (24%, Nigeria; and 14%, Ghana) pollution. Training appears to be an important intervention that can help improve firms’ adoption of such policies. We also found that firms’ adoption and implementation of environmental protection policies significantly improve their performance.

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Notes

  1. A generic term used specifically in this paper to connote those enterprises that are not large.

  2. There are many factors that can be considered for such participation to be effective; however, this is not the focus of this study.

  3. The survey instrument was developed through a modification of the World Bank Enterprise Survey instrument.

  4. The effective exchange rates (1 USD to local currency unit) as at the period of the survey are 360 (for Nigeria) and 4.59 (for Ghana).

  5. We check the correlation of the instruments with the likely endogenous variable to understand whether the association is strong, then we perform the over-identification tests to check the validity of the instruments. These statistics are presented immediately after the econometric results on instrumental variable in the “Discussion” section.

  6. This was underreported in the survey, as respondents were unwilling to disclose this value.

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Acknowledgement

This paper is drawn from the comprehensive report on green industrialization in Nigeria and Ghana, which is a funded project by the Institute of African Leadership for Sustainable Development (UONGOZI Institute), Tanzania. We are grateful to the UONGOZI institute for the grant to undertake this project, and for the UONGOZI institute’s scientific committee for their comments on the first draft. Comments from participant at the DIE conference on green transformation and competitive advantage are also acknowledged. Finally, the constructive comments from the two anonymous reviewers are also well appreciated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria

    Uchenna Efobi, Opeyemi Akinyemi & Ibukun Beecroft

  2. Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Yaoundé, Cameroon

    Tanankem Belmondo

  3. North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa

    Emmanuel Orkoh

  4. World Trade Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

    Emmanuel Orkoh

  5. Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria

    Scholastica Ngozi Atata

Authors
  1. Uchenna Efobi
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  2. Tanankem Belmondo
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  3. Emmanuel Orkoh
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  4. Scholastica Ngozi Atata
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  5. Opeyemi Akinyemi
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  6. Ibukun Beecroft
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Uchenna Efobi.

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Responsible editor: Nicholas Apergis

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Table 7 Instrumental variable regression
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Efobi, U., Belmondo, T., Orkoh, E. et al. Environmental pollution policy of small businesses in Nigeria and Ghana: extent and impact. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 2882–2897 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3817-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3817-x

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