Socio-economic Aspects Influencing Rural Household Adoption of Improved Clean Cook Stoves Case Study: Rwanda

Abstract

The major causes of deforestation worldwide from human activities is the reliance of world population on the biomass fuel for domestic energy consumption through cooking, water boiling, heating and lighting, the usage of biomass in inefficient way increase the fuel demand for the household. Despite of multiple social economic, health and environmental benefit of improved cook stove program, the program failed to capture the recognition worldwide and a set of sociocultural, economic, institutional barriers and cook stove and fuel characteristics contribute to the slow adoption of this program. This paper provides an evidence of household driving factors that play a crucial role in the uptake of improved cook stove empirically in Rwanda. The study was based on fifth integrated household living standards survey (EICV-5) carried by National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. Using binary logistic regression analysis, the study shows that homeownership, age of household head, household location and household size are the main significant household factors influencing the adoption of improved cook stove while value of cook stove, amount spent on cooking fuel and time spend on cooking fuels are the most significant stove and fuel factors determining the adoption of usage of improved cook stove. The study revealed that for substantially improved rate of adoption they should be consistent and focused cooperation of government and non -governmental organizations to work in parallel for developing energy policy frameworks like dissemination of improved cook stoves.