ABSTRACT

This study examined implications of Visitors’ Perception, Reaction on the management of zoological gardens; a case study of University of Ilorin zoo, Nigeria. Structured questionnaire was designed to elicit relevant information on the socio-economic characteristics of respondents, perception and motivation of visitors to the zoological garden, visitors experience and how the zoo has changed their mindset. The study was qualitative and quantitative as it had to analyze the behavior and perception of visitors about zoological gardens. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data.

The findings revealed that 41.5% were between the ages of 25-34 and 51.2% of the respondents are male. Most of the respondents (64.6%) are resident in Ilorin central. A high percentage (85.4%) of the respondents are educated and they had tertiary education while 47.6% are students.  There were factors that accounted for motivation to visit the zoo and the most significant are to learn about endangered species / education (3.4390), to educate my children about endangered species (3.3415) and just for fun( The importance of some factors relative to their zoo experience are evidence of a contribution to conservation ranked first with a (), appropriate enclosures /exhibits(. It was revealed that 79.3% of the respondents indicated that they were not involved in any conservation projects.

Results from the inferential statistics revealed that there was a significant relationship (p