Socio-economic appraisal of agitations by local oil communities: Evidence from Nigeria

This paper examines socio-economic drivers of agitations in local oil communities. It applies marginal willingness to accept pay as a quantitative approach to measure tendency of local communities to agitate against environmental degradation. This approach was used to estimate drivers of agitations among indigenous people of Ogoni community in Rivers State, Nigeria. The analyses involved a cross sectional survey with 326 households selected in the community through a stratified random sample. Ordinal logistic (Ologit) models were estimated using the collected data. The paper presents evidence that poverty level and perception are the major socioeconomic drivers of agitations against environmental degradation in the community (P < 0.05). In addition, it recommends marginal willingness to accept payment as an alternative quantitative approach for estimating tendency to agitate against social or environmental changes.