How do people in rural India perceive improved stoves and clean fuel? Evidence from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Improved cook stoves (ICS) have been widely touted for their potential to deliver the triple benefits of improved household health and time savings, reduced deforestation and local environmental degradation, and reduced emissions of black carbon, a significant short-term contributor to global climate change. Yet diffusion of ICS technologies among potential users in many low-income settings, including India, remains slow, despite decades of promotion. This paper explores the variation in perceptions of and preferences for ICS in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as revealed through a series of semi-structured focus groups and interviews from 11 rural villages or hamlets. We find cautious interest in new ICS technologies, and observe that preferences for ICS are positively related to perceptions of health and time savings. Other respondent and community characteristics, e.g., gender, education, prior experience with clean stoves and institutions promoting similar technologies, and social norms as perceived through the actions of neighbours, also appear important. Though they cannot be considered representative, our results suggest that efforts to increase adoption and use of ICS in rural India will likely require a combination of supply-chain improvements and carefully designed social marketing and promotion campaigns, and possibly incentives, to reduce the up-front cost of stoves.
Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, Delhi 110007, India.
Vasundhara
V
Bhojvaid
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, P.O. Box 90239, Durham, NC 27708, USA. marc.jeuland@duke.edu.
Marc
M
Jeuland
The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi 110003, India. akar@teri.res.in.
Abhishek
A
Kar
Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA. jessica.lewis@duke.edu.
Jessica J
JJ
Lewis
Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, P.O. Box 90239, Durham, NC 27708, USA. jessica.lewis@duke.edu.
Subhrendu K
SK
Pattanayak
Nexleaf Analytics, Los Angeles, CA 90064, USA. nithya@nexleaf.org.
Nithya
N
Ramanathan
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California-San Diego, San Diego, CA 92037, USA. vramanathan@ucsd.edu.
Veerabhadran
V
Ramanathan
The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi 110003, India. ihrehman@teri.res.in.
Ibrahim H
IH
Rehman
D003296:Cooking / Q000191:economics / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000592:standards; D003657:Decision Making; D004736:Energy-Generating Resources; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008297:Male; D011639:Public Opinion; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors