Abstract:
This paper investigates empirically the choice of cooking fuels and the factors
that are associated with the adoption of modern cooking fuels. Exploiting the
2015 Benin Living Standard Measurement Survey data of 19,705 households, a
multinomial probit model is estimated to identify the factors that are associated with the adoption of the three categories of cooking fuels (traditional,
transition, and modern). Overall, the findings reveal that the most used
cooking fuels are traditional in general, that is, firewood (68.28%), followed by
transition fuels (27.25%), and modern fuels (4.47%), with disparities across
rural and urban areas. The estimation results indicate that having a female
household head, having a household head with at least secondary formal
education level, per capita expenditures, remittances, access to electricity, and
economic shocks are positively associated with the adoption of modern
cooking fuels, while not living in the main city of the country hinders their
adoption.
