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Research article2016Peer reviewed

Who Adopts LPG as the Main Cooking Fuel and Why? Empirical Evidence on Ghana Based on National Survey

Karimu, Amin; Mensah, Justice Tei; Adu, George

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that influence the probability of adopting LPG as the main cooking fuel in Ghana using household level data gleaned from last two nationwide household surveys (GLSS 5 & GLSS 6). Using a flexible semi parametric specification, the following were uncovered. First, we find socioeconomic and demographic factors such as income, education, access to urban infrastructure, and location of household, as key drivers of households' choice of LPG as main cooking energy source. Again the influences of these factors are stable across time, and with a strong price effect. The evidence shows that urban households with better socioeconomic and demographic factors are likely to adopt LPG as the main cooking fuel relative to households in rural areas and also urban households with poor socioeconomic and demographic factors. Finally, we observe that the imposition of fully parametric structure (functional form) prior to estimation on factors such as age of household head, income, and household size as done in the literature is inappropriate, at least in the case of Ghana and tend to bias the marginal effects. There is strong evidence of variations in the response rate of LPG adoption over the domains of income, household size, and the age of the household head. The results suggest a policy dichotomy between rural and urban dwellers for it to be effective. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

fuels; cooking; households; development; energy poverty; Ghana

Published in

World Development
2016, Volume: 85, pages: 43–57

      SLU Authors

      Sustainable Development Goals

      Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
      Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

      UKÄ Subject classification

      Economics

      Publication identifier

      DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.05.004

      Permanent link to this page (URI)

      https://res.slu.se/id/publ/81346