Harnessing Green Taxation for Innovative Strategies towards boosting Circular Economy Performance in Nigeria

This study examines whether green taxation can be harnessed to advance innovative strategies, including resource efficiency, innovative product design, product life extension, and waste management, to boost the performance of the circular economy (CE) in Nigeria. It adopted a descriptive survey design, using a self-designed questionnaire administered on 400 randomly selected individuals online. Responses were analysed using descriptive statistics as well as inferential statistics. The study found that green taxation exerted a significant effect on increasing the performance of the CE. The findings of individual proxies of CE show that green taxation exerted significant effect of each of resource efficiency, innovative product designs, product life extension, and waste management. The findings are supported by earlier literature and validate the proposition of the Ecological Modernisation Theory in the developing economy context. Among others, the study recommends that green taxation should be established as a major fiscal policy instrument; that is green taxes be treated as dedicated taxes whereby revenue from such taxes as applied solely towards CE infrastructure. The mindset of the tax authority should be reoriented towards behavioural change, over revenue generation. There should be effective coordination between the environmental regulatory authorities and the tax authorities to align tax incentives and penalties with environmental norms.