Promotion Of Improved Cookstove In Rural Bangladesh
This study aimed to explore the factors affecting the promotion of improved
cookstove (ICS) to replace traditional stove and hence to combat indoor air pollution
(IAP). The study was conducted in 58 randomly selected villages of Jamalpur sadar and Hatia upazilas (29 villages in each) in 2008. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Focus group discussions were performed in each village to
divide the villages in three equal clusters as well as Paras and listed the opinion
leader of the villages. Fifty randomly selected households and nine households of the opinion leaders were surveyed in each village. Thus, a total of 3,080 households were selected for quantitative survey with pre-designed questionnaire. These households were also offered two types of ICSs – portable and with-chimney under different experimental conditions. Among those who adopted ICS as was offered usually chose portable ICS since they believed this would reduce fuel consumption while they chose ICS with chimney to reduce pollution. We found that households were usually aware of IAP but not so much so of the existence of ICS. But once they came to know about it through this survey, they would expect ICS to be better than traditional stoves in producing better tasting food, less smoke emissions, less cooking and fuel collection time, etc. When compared with those who did not know about ICS before, prior knowledge on ICS was found to be associated with greater
share of people thinking ICS was better than traditional in terms of taste of food and
smoke emission. In most cases financial constraints was stated as a reason for not to
adopt an ICS. The adoption decision was also found to be highly responsive to price.
On the other hand, opinion leaders appeared to have a stronger impact on
households’ decisions when the leaders decided against ICS as opposed to when
they decided in its favour. Although this is a very product specific study the results
can provide a guideline to understand similar constraints for many other improved
technologies that exist but are not generally adopted.
