NWOKOCHA Chiwetara Gloria
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Administration and Management
Rivers State University Port Harcourt
ADIELE Kenneth C.
Department of Marketing, Faculty of Administration and Management
Rivers State University Port Harcourt.
Abstract
This study examined effect of political canvassing on citizen participation in party politics in Nigeria. The study used political canvassing unidimensionally, and used voting, party membership and campaign involvement to represent citizen participation. The study adopted an explanatory research design. The population of the study comprised 93, 469, 008 registered voters in Nigeria. The proportionate sampling procedure was used to generate a sample size of 384 voters from the six geopolitical zones across Nigeria.
The study collected primary data using questionnaire whose validity and reliability was ascertained via the exploratory factor analysis and Cronbach’s Alpha test of reliability respectively. The study tested three hypotheses where using simple regression with the help of statistical package for social sciences version 22.0. The study found that political canvassing has positive and significant influence on measures of citizen participation (voting, party membership and campaign involvement). Thus, the study concluded that political canvassing significantly influence citizen participation in party politics in Nigeria; and recommends that political parties and electoral bodies in Nigeria should adopt political canvassing to encourage citizen participation by voting, becoming a party member and been involved in campaign process.
Keywords: Campaign involvement, citizen participation, party membership, political canvassing, voting.