Adoption of Biogas for Household Energy and Factors Affecting Livelihood of the Users in Rural Bangladesh

Domestic energy insecurity is a major threat to sustainable development in a developing country like Bangladesh. The present study aimed at estimating the factors that affect adoption of biogas plant and analysing the factors responsible for the improvement of livelihoods of the biogas users. The study was based on primary data collected from randomly chosen 50 biogas user households and 30 non users in Ghatail and Fulbaria upazilas (sub district) of Tangail and Mymensingh district respectively. Required data were collected adopting direct farm survey method during January to February, 2015. Binary logistic regression model was used to analyse the data. The findings of the study reveal that education, income, farm size, number of cattle and cost of fuel were positively associated with the adoption of biogas technology. The major findings of the logistic regression showed that respondents having education over 8 years had 20.78 times more possibility of adopting biogas technology than those who had education less than 8 years of schooling. The probability of adopting biogas plant by a household owning land above 0.60 hactare was 7.31 times higher than those households owning land less than 0.60 hactare. The results of the logistic regression model fitted for livelihood improvement revealed that a biogas user who supplied gas to other consumer is 11.66 times more likely to achieve moderate improvement in livelihood than the user who could not supply gas to other consumer. The findings also showed that environmental and econmic factors were the two vital factors influencing the adoption of biogas. This study highlighted on the strategies such as organizing training, publicity program, motivational activities on biogas technology; encourage more educated people to adopt biogas technology and expanding subsidy and loan provision, extending period of loan repayment to increase the likelihood of adopting biogas plants.