Household cooking fuel choice and associated factors in a rural and peri-urban community in Western Kenya

Judith N. Mangeni, Diana Menya, James Mwitari, Matt Shupler, Rachel Anderson de Cuevas, Edna Sang, Eslaba Anabwani, Noel Sutton, Emily Nix, Sara Ronzi, Dan Pope, Elisa Puzzolo and Kwaku Poku Asante

Energy & Environment, 2025, vol. 36, issue 2, 870-887

Abstract: Polluting fuels such as biomass and kerosene are used for cooking by approximately 85% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) despite the well-known associated negative health effects. Many governments across SSA are aiming to scale up the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a cleaner-burning fuel in terms of black carbon and fine particulate matter emissions, to promote public health and protect the environment by reducing deforestation. In Kenya, the government has been promoting rapid scale-up of LPG as a household fuel by zero rating it. A census survey was administered to over 2000 households in a peri-urban and rural sub-county of Uasin Gishu County to determine cooking characteristics and factors associated with the primary cooking fuel (biomass versus LPG). We found that the majority 72% ( n  = 1619) of the households mainly use biomass as a primary fuel (86% wood, 12% charcoal, 1.5% wood chips, and 1% kerosene) while about 28% ( n  = 629) use clean fuels (86.8% LPG, 12.9% biogas/solar, and 0.3% electricity). Peri-urban residents had up to 2.5 times increased odds of using LPG compared to those in the rural sub-county. Supply factors such as easy access to refills affect the number of days the LPG is used per week. Urbanization at sub-county leads to increases in use of LPG for cooking, irrespective of household-level SES. The Government is encouraged to enact policies that would increase the availability of LPG refills to rural communities hence reducing the time and transportation costs that are likely to affect access with consequent low usage.

Keywords: Cooking fuel; associated factors; peri-urban; rural; Western Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0958305X231185338 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:engenv:v:36:y:2025:i:2:p:870-887

DOI: 10.1177/0958305X231185338

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Energy & Environment
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().