How do People in Rural India Perceive Improved Stoves and Clean Fuel? Evidence from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Vasundhara Bhojvaid²  Marc Jeuland⁴  Abhishek Kar¹  Jessica J. Lewis⁶  Subhrendu K. Pattanayak⁴  Nithya Ramanathan⁵  Veerabhadran Ramanathan³ 

[1] The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi 110003, India; E-Mails:;Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, Delhi 110007, India;Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California—San Diego, San Diego, CA 92037, USA; E-Mail:;Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, P.O. Box 90239, Durham, NC 27708, USA; E-Mail:;Nexleaf Analytics, Los Angeles, CA 90064, USA; E-Mail:;Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: improved cook stoves;    air pollution;    India;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph110201341

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Improved cook stoves (ICS) have been widely touted for their potential to deliver the triple benefits of improved household health and time savings, reduced deforestation and local environmental degradation, and reduced emissions of black carbon, a significant short-term contributor to global climate change. Yet diffusion of ICS technologies among potential users in many low-income settings, including India, remains slow, despite decades of promotion. This paper explores the variation in perceptions of and preferences for ICS in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, as revealed through a series of semi-structured focus groups and interviews from 11 rural villages or hamlets. We find cautious interest in new ICS technologies, and observe that preferences for ICS are positively related to perceptions of health and time savings. Other respondent and community characteristics, e.g., gender, education, prior experience with clean stoves and institutions promoting similar technologies, and social norms as perceived through the actions of neighbours, also appear important. Though they cannot be considered representative, our results suggest that efforts to increase adoption and use of ICS in rural India will likely require a combination of supply-chain improvements and carefully designed social marketing and promotion campaigns, and possibly incentives, to reduce the up-front cost of stoves.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.