Abstract: Studying Local people’s (psychometric characteristics) awareness, perceptions and attitudes on Yankari game reserve is a predisposition in evaluating their activities around the conserve area. This is because such psychometric concepts cannot be observed directly but rather elicited based on individual socio-demographic characteristics and psychometric responses on the design questions. YGR being a famous biodiversity, ecological, hydrological, education and research hotspot in Nigeria, the reserve hosted over 20,000 tourists from over 100 countries making it one of the most popular visited tourist destination in Nigeria. If the reserve is properly managed and maintained, it may become a major source of the tourism and revenue generation source to Nigeria. The objective of this finding is to assess the relationship of awareness, perception and attitude of the adjourning local peoples of YGR on the conservation of the reserve. Face to face questionnaire interview was administered to 422 respondents from adjourning communities of the reserve and the result finding indicates that showed that the correlation matrix of the relationships between the independent variable, “awareness and perception” and the dependent variable “attitude”. Structural Equation Modeling was used to examine the influence of predictor variables entered into the Structural Equation Modeling in relation to the outcome variable the result shows the following Goodness-of-Fit indices of the model; Chi – Square 2 (CMIN) = 730.540 (df = 223), Relative 2 (CMIN/df) = 3.276, p = .000, AGFI = .933, GFI = .965, CFI = .928, IFI = .929, NFI = .871, TLI = .904, RMSEA = .064. Also the finding depicts that the factor influencing to attitude are awareness and perception, therefore, the Structural Model consist of two predicting constructs in relation to two criterion construct. This entails that, the independent variables of (awareness and perception) are significant when regressed against the dependent variables (attitude). The model revealed that awareness and perception are significant predictors of attitude of the respondents on the conservation of YGR.
Keywords: Attitudes, Awareness, Biodiversity, Conservation, Perceptions, Structural Equation Model, Yankari game reserve.
Title: Survey of Adjoining Communities Awareness, Perception and Attitude on Conservation of Yankari Game Reserve, Bauchi State Nigeria, Using Structural Equation Modeling
Author: Muhammad Sanusi Ibrahim, Mohd Rusli Yacob, Zaiton Samdin, Mohd Yusoff Ishak, Mohammed Bashir Saidu, Faruk Aliyu
International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research and Innovations
ISSN 2348-1218 (print), ISSN 2348-1226 (online)
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