Contribution of corporate capital structure on compliance to forestry law in Cameroon

Abstract

The need to understand the persistence of unsustainable forest logging within existing titles can provide ample knowledge on this practice, hence setting a reference base required to design appropriate strategy to counter illegal logging practices. The main objective of this research was to model algorithms to determine the overall effect of corporate capital structure on the compliance to forestry law by quoted logging companies in Cameroon. Primary and secondary data used for the research was collected directly from 40 logging companies found in the Lom and Djerem, Ocean and Upper Sanaga Divisions. Data collected from secured documents on species logged and volume, corporate data on debt rates, equity, company age and size were all obtained during interviews with responsible personnel. Information on logging offenses and their frequency of occurrence was btained from both the centralized and decentralized services of the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife. Other existing research documents from other stakeholders were exploited. Collected data was entered into an Excel spreadsheet and analyzed using R. Capital structure is observed to significantly influence sustainable forest management performance in the Cameroonian forest logging industry at a 0.01 level of significance.