Assessment of Occupant Compliance with Landscape Design in Lekki Business School

Occupant compliance with campus landscapes remains a critical concern in higher education because the long-term performance of designed outdoor spaces depends not only on their physical quality but also on how users understand, respect, and sustain them. This study assessed the extent of occupant compliance with landscape design at Lekki Business School (LBS), Lagos State, with emphasis on desire-line formation, user-group variations, and institutional drivers of non-compliance. A convergent mixed-methods design was adopted using a pre-tested structured questionnaire administered to 265 respondents, systematic direct observation across eight landscaped zones, and semi-structured interviews with five key informants. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, thematic analysis, and a Compliance Index derived from mean Likert-scale scores. The findings indicate a moderate overall compliance level (mean index = 3.30/5.00), with passive compliance behaviours scoring higher than active stewardship behaviours. Academic staff recorded the highest compliance index, while visitors recorded the lowest, suggesting that institutional familiarity and place attachment influence compliance behaviour. Weak enforcement, inadequate signage, poor pathway alignment, and insufficient environmental orientation emerged as the major drivers of non-compliance. The study concludes that landscape non-compliance at LBS is driven more by institutional and design deficiencies than by deliberate occupant misconduct. It recommends design rectification, stronger communication systems, formal policy enforcement, participatory stewardship, and periodic post-occupancy evaluation. The Compliance Index advanced in this study also offers a practical and replicable tool for similar assessments in Nigerian and West African higher education institutions.