MEDIATING EFFECT OF CONFLICT HANDLING BEHAVIOUR ON ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ANDCONFLICT OUTCOMEAMONG THE NIGER DELTA COMMUNITY LEADERS INNIGERIA

Abstract

Environmental information management practices and conflict outcome are the dispositions for environmental decision making at the community level. However, reports have shown that Niger Delta community leaders have poor environmental information management practices and conflict outcome. Previous studies have concentrated on the political and economic perspectives in resolving negative conflict outcomes, while little attention has been paid to environmental information management and the mediating role of the conflict handling behaviour exhibited by community leaders to resolve the conflicts. This study, therefore, was carried out to investigate the mediating effect of Conflict Handling Behaviour (CHB) on Environmental Information Management Practices (EIMP)-(information creation, capture, organisation, storage, retrieval, dissemination, use and disposal) and Conflict Outcome (CO) among the Niger Delta community leaders.

Information Utility, Information Richness, and Conflict Transformation theories were used as the framework, while the survey design was adopted. Purposive sampling technique was used to select two states, (Rivers and Delta) with high incidence of oil induced environmental challenges out of the six Niger Delta states. Three local government areas each from the two states were randomly selected. Thirty communities (15 from each in the states) were randomly selected. Three hundred and sixty community leaders were also randomly selected. The instruments used were Environmental Information Management-Information Creation (α=0.92), Capture (α=0.93), Organisation (r=0.66), Storage (α=0.81), Retrieval (α=0.90), Dissemination (α=0.92), Use (α=0.92) and Disposal (α=0.90), Conflict Handling Behaviour, (α=0.93), Conflict Outcome (α=0.96) scales. These were complemented with in-depth interviews. Quantitative data were subjected to descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product moment correlation and hierarchical regression analysis at 0.05 level of significance, while the qualitative data were content-analysed.

The respondents’ age was 53.41±4.32 years, and 71.7% were males. There were significant relationships between EIMP (creation: r=0.31; capture: r=0.27; organising: r=0.31; storage: r=0.23; retrieval r=0.25; dissemination: r=0.21; use: r=0.22; disposition: r=0.22) and CO of the respondents. There was significant relationship between CHB (r=0.45) and CO. The EIMP (creation: r=0.15; capture r=0.25; organisation: r=0.14; storage: r=0.27; retrieval: r=0.28; dissemination: r=0.40; use: r=0.49; disposition: r=0.29) had significant relationships with CO. The EIMP (β=0.57, Adj.R2=0.28, F(7;257)=12.00) and CHB (β=0.32, Adj.R2=0.30, F(4;254)=8.98) had significant effects on CO, while EIMP and CHB had significant interaction effect on CO (β=0.407, Adj.R2=0.38, F(28;230)=7.97). The CHB mediated the effect of EIMP and CO. Community leaders interviewed largely agreed that improved conflict handling behaviour and better managed environmental information among community leaders would enhance peaceful conflict outcome.

Environmental information management practices enhanced conflict outcome through conflict handling behaviour among the Niger Delta community leaders in Nigeria. Therefore, community leaders should adopt these variables for managing the prevalent environmental information challenges in the communities to mitigate negative conflict outcome.