The Role of Leadership in Adoption of Waste-to-Energy (WtE) in Nigeria

• Main Author: Moghadam, Jahan
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University 2017
• Subjects: reasoned action; TRA; Waste-to-Energy; WtE; renewable energy; sustainable energy; pollution; attitudes; subjective norms; behavioral intention; leadership; leadership-led change; developing countries; Nigeria
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/bus_admin_diss/87; http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=bus_admin_diss

The use of Renewable Energy (RE) has considerably increased in the last several years. Innovative forms of sustainable alternative energy production, such as solar and wind, have now become recognized energy sources. Following suit, this paper has reviewed Waste-to-Energy (WtE), an innovative and evolving form of RE, and its possible adoption in Nigeria to address both the energy crisis and the pollution problem. The theoretical framework of this paper utilizes the genesis of Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975) theory of reasoned action (TRA), expanding on renewable energy studies using TRA such as Bang, Ellinger, Hadimarcou, and Traichal (2000) Mishra, Akman, & Mishra (2014), and the leadership-led change framework (Andrews, McConnell, & Wescott, 2010) in order to explain leaders’ behavior to adopt WtE in Nigeria. Four factors act as antecedents to the formation of attitudes and subjective norms about WtE, which then impact intentions to adopt WtE. Intentions then become a predictor of behavior for adopting WtE in Nigeria as a solution for energy and pollution issues. Combining these two theoretical frameworks allows us to study leader’s behavioral intentions and the behavior to adopt WtE in Nigeria. Leadership-led change was examined as a moderator in the relationship between intention and behavior to adopt WtE in Nigeria. Results showed that leadership-led construct did not have a statistically significant moderating effect. This led to a post-hoc analysis of leadership-led as a mediator, which showed leadership-led had a partial statistically significant mediating effect between leaders’ attitudes and intention to adopt WtE.