Household cooking fuel choice:Evidence from the Republic of Benin

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.