IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v88y2025i2d10.1007_s10640-024-00939-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Behavioural Drivers of Cooking Energy Choice in Benin

Author

Listed:
  • Nassibou Bassongui

    (Université d’Abomey-Calavi)

  • Albert N’lédji Honlonkou

    (Université d’Abomey-Calavi)

Abstract

This paper explores the behavioural drivers of households’ cooking energy decision-making. We empirically examine the effect of time and spatial discounting on cooking energy choices using Generalised Structural Equation Modelling. We rely on the nationally representative household dataset from Benin’s Harmonised Survey on Living Conditions of Households in 2019. The findings highlight that households’ tendencies towards temporal discounting have detrimental effects on cleaner cooking energies, while spatial discounting promotes the adoption of cleaner cooking energy sources. Furthermore, we discern that the influence of time and spatial discounting varies across rural and urban areas, yielding heterogeneous effects. These findings have implications for a better understanding of the non-economic constraints that hinder the promotion of cleaner cooking energies in developing countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Nassibou Bassongui & Albert N’lédji Honlonkou, 2025. "Behavioural Drivers of Cooking Energy Choice in Benin," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 88(2), pages 533-552, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:88:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s10640-024-00939-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-024-00939-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-024-00939-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10640-024-00939-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Johnston & Elena Y. Besedin & Benedict M. Holland, 2019. "Modeling Distance Decay Within Valuation Meta-Analysis," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 72(3), pages 657-690, March.
    2. Hosier, Richard H. & Dowd, Jeffrey, 1987. "Household fuel choice in Zimbabwe : An empirical test of the energy ladder hypothesis," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 347-361, December.
    3. Lydia Lawless & Andreas Drichoutis & Rodolfo Nayga, 2013. "Time preferences and health behaviour: a review," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-19, December.
    4. Hwang, In Do, 2024. "Behavioral aspects of household portfolio choice: Effects of loss aversion on life insurance uptake and savings," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 1029-1053.
    5. Kelsall, Claudia & Quaas, Martin F. & Quérou, Nicolas, 2023. "Risk aversion in renewable resource harvesting," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    6. LaFave, Daniel & Beyene, Abebe Damte & Bluffstone, Randall & Dissanayake, Sahan T.M. & Gebreegziabher, Zenebe & Mekonnen, Alemu & Toman, Michael, 2021. "Impacts of improved biomass cookstoves on child and adult health: Experimental evidence from rural Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    7. Benjamin Volland, 2018. "Après nous le déluge? Perceived distance of climate change impacts and pro-environmental behaviour," IRENE Working Papers 18-05, IRENE Institute of Economic Research.
    8. Philbert Mperejekumana & Huan Li & Rucong Wu & Jiaxin Lu & Obid Tursunov & Hussien Elshareef & Mohamed S. Gaballah & Nsengiyumva Jean Nepo & Yuguang Zhou & Renjie Dong, 2021. "Determinants of Household Energy Choice for Cooking in Northern Sudan: A Multinomial Logit Estimation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(21), pages 1-14, October.
    9. Sandra Rousseau & Marieke Franck & Simon De Jaeger, 2020. "The Impact of Spatial Patterns in Road Traffic Externalities on Willingness-to-Pay Estimates," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 75(2), pages 271-295, February.
    10. Jaffe, Adam B. & Stavins, Robert N., 1994. "The energy paradox and the diffusion of conservation technology," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 91-122, May.
    11. Heltberg, Rasmus, 2004. "Fuel switching: evidence from eight developing countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 869-887, September.
    12. Khwaja, Ahmed & Silverman, Dan & Sloan, Frank, 2007. "Time preference, time discounting, and smoking decisions," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 927-949, September.
    13. Schleich, Joachim & Gassmann, Xavier & Faure, Corinne & Meissner, Thomas, 2016. "Making the implicit explicit: A look inside the implicit discount rate," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 321-331.
    14. Ronald J. Sutherland, 1991. "Market Barriers to Energy-Efficiency Investments," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 15-34.
    15. Gelo, Dambala & Kollamparambil, Umakrishnan & Jeuland, Marc, 2023. "The causal effect of income on household energy transition: Evidence from old age pension eligibility in South Africa," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    16. Perros, T. & Allison, A.L. & Tomei, J. & Aketch, V. & Parikh, P., 2023. "Cleaning up the stack: Evaluating a clean cooking fuel stacking intervention in urban Kenya," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    17. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    18. Oyeniran, Ishola Wasiu & Isola, Wakeel Atanda, 2023. "Patterns and determinants of household cooking fuel choice in Nigeria," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(PA).
    19. Ronald J. Sutherland, 1991. "Market Barriers to Energy-Efficiency Investments," The Energy Journal, , vol. 12(3), pages 15-34, July.
    20. Masera, Omar R. & Saatkamp, Barbara D. & Kammen, Daniel M., 2000. "From Linear Fuel Switching to Multiple Cooking Strategies: A Critique and Alternative to the Energy Ladder Model," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 2083-2103, December.
    21. Hannon, Bruce, 1994. "Sense of place: geographic discounting by people, animals and plants," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 157-174, July.
    22. Jihyo Kim & Suhyeon Nam, 2021. "Do Household Time, Risk, and Social Preferences Affect Home Energy Retrofit Decisions in Korea?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-18, April.
    23. Dastan Bamwesigye & Petr Kupec & Georges Chekuimo & Jindrich Pavlis & Obed Asamoah & Samuel Antwi Darkwah & Petra Hlaváčková, 2020. "Charcoal and Wood Biomass Utilization in Uganda: The Socioeconomic and Environmental Dynamics and Implications," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-18, October.
    24. Charles Perrings & Bruce Hannon, 2001. "An Introduction to Spatial Discounting," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 23-38, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yamaguchi, Rintaro & Shah, Payal, 2020. "Spatial discounting of ecosystem services," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    2. van der Kroon, Bianca & Brouwer, Roy & van Beukering, Pieter J.H., 2013. "The energy ladder: Theoretical myth or empirical truth? Results from a meta-analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 504-513.
    3. van der Kroon, Bianca & Brouwer, Roy & van Beukering, Pieter J.H., 2014. "The impact of the household decision environment on fuel choice behavior," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 236-247.
    4. Gupta, Ridhima & Pelli, Martino, 2021. "Electrification and cooking fuel choice in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    5. Cheng, Chao-yo & Urpelainen, Johannes, 2014. "Fuel stacking in India: Changes in the cooking and lighting mix, 1987–2010," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 306-317.
    6. Kojo Sarfo Gyamfi & Elena Gaura & James Brusey & Alessandro Bezerra Trindade & Nandor Verba, 2020. "Understanding Household Fuel Choice Behaviour in the Amazonas State, Brazil: Effects of Validation and Feature Selection," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-21, July.
    7. Wassie, Yibeltal T. & Rannestad, Meley M. & Adaramola, Muyiwa S., 2021. "Determinants of household energy choices in rural sub-Saharan Africa: An example from southern Ethiopia," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    8. Hannah Goozee, 2017. "Energy, poverty and development: a primer for the Sustainable Development Goals," Working Papers 156, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    9. Jack Gregory & David I. Stern, 2012. "Fuel Choices in Rural Maharashtra," CCEP Working Papers 1207, Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    10. Koech Cheruiyot & Ezekiel Lengaram & Mncedisi Siteleki, 2024. "South Africa’s Energy Landscape Amidst the Crisis: Unpacking Energy Sources and Drivers with 2022 South African Census Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-20, January.
    11. Christophe Muller & Huijie Yan, 2018. "Household Fuel Use in Rural China," AMSE Working Papers 1808, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    12. Muller, Christophe & Yan, Huijie, 2018. "Household fuel use in developing countries: Review of theory and evidence," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 429-439.
    13. Adusah-Poku, Frank & Takeuchi, Kenji, 2019. "Household energy expenditure in Ghana: A double-hurdle model approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 266-277.
    14. Strulik, Holger & Trimborn, Timo, 2018. "Hyperbolic discounting can be good for your health," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 44-57.
    15. Todd D. Gerarden & Richard G. Newell & Robert N. Stavins, 2017. "Assessing the Energy-Efficiency Gap," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1486-1525, December.
    16. Vahlne, Niklas, 2017. "On LPG usage in rural Vietnamese households," Development Engineering, Elsevier, vol. 2(C), pages 1-11.
    17. Strulik, Holger & Werner, Katharina, 2021. "Time-inconsistent health behavior and its impact on aging and longevity," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    18. Ren, Junqiushi & Xiong, Deyin, 2023. "Do social assistance programs promote the use of clean cooking fuels? Evidence from China's new rural pension scheme," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    19. Takama, Takeshi & Tsephel, Stanzin & Johnson, Francis X., 2012. "Evaluating the relative strength of product-specific factors in fuel switching and stove choice decisions in Ethiopia. A discrete choice model of household preferences for clean cooking alternatives," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1763-1773.
    20. Zhang, Xiao-Bing & Hassen, Sied, 2014. "Household fuel choice in urban China: A random effect generalized probit analysis," Working Papers in Economics 595, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Energy choice; Behavioural economics; Time discounting; Spatial discounting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:88:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s10640-024-00939-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.