Socioeconomic determinants of household cooking fuel choice in West Africa: emphasizing the role of gender, education and wealth
- Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy , 20
Résumé
ABSTRACT The choice of cooking fuel source in West African households is influenced by a multitude of socio-economic factors. This article analyses the role of socio-economic factors such as gender, education and wealth in the choice of improved cooking energy sources by households in West African countries. The analysis focuses on four countries namely Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana and Nigeria and uses a database of 28,444 USAID observations from 2017. The results from the estimation of the fitted logit model, using the maximum likelihood method show that the main factors influencing household choice are gender, wealth level, education level, age of household head, country and area of residence. Indeed, gender has a significant and negative effect on the choice of cooking fuel. Compared to women, men are 0.778 times less likely to choose wood substitutes. Similarly, the level of education of the head of household has a positive influence on the household’s choice of wood substitutes, with each additional year of education associated with a 0.1% increase in the probability of choosing wood substitutes for cooking. The results also indicate that wealth level positively and significantly influences the choice of cooking fuel sources in the households studied. These results suggest that governments should strengthen their national gender policy, implement a policy of wealth creation through income-generating activities, or subsidize the cost of access to clean cooking fuels. Also, awareness-raising campaigns on the environmental effects of household use of clean fuels are also essential.
Mots-clés
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