Knowledge and Attitude of a Group of Nigerian Undergraduates Towards Enviromentalism

Environmentalism is gradually becoming sine qua none for human survival and education is an important tool of achieving same. So, knowledge of and attitudes towards environmentalism were investigated among undergraduates, a group expected to champion the course of environmentalism. Close-ended questionnaires were self administered to 1000 undergraduates of the University of Ibadan, 927 of which were finally analyzed. Results indicated a low level of environmentalism knowledge and attitude with 68.7 and 54.2% scoring below the mean, respectively. The relationship between knowledge of and attitudes towards environmentalism as assessed with Pearson’s r is .282 (p < 0.05). Significant differences were recorded across gender (p < 0.05) and field of study (p < 0.05) subgroups as regards knowledge of environmentalism and religion sub groups (p < 0.05) as regards attitude towards environmentalism. It is therefore concluded that dynamics in the tertiary vicinity should be made more sensitive to environmental concerns in order to improve knowledge and consequently attitudes towards environmentalism.