Socio-economic determinants for household uptake of modern energy technologies:Evidence from Rwanda panel data

Abstract

The world population has continued to use biomass fuel for domestic energy consumption through cooking, water boiling, heating, and lighting. The usage of biomass in an inefficient way increase the fuel demand for the households. Despite the multiple social economic, health and environmental benefits of improved cook stove programs, they 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 study provides an evidence of household driving factors that play a crucial role in the uptake modern energy technologies in Rwanda. The study is based on panel dataset built from third, fourth and fifth integrated household living standards survey (EICV 5) of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. Using binary logistic regression analysis, the study shows that type of habitant, age of household head, household location 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 modern energy technologies.