Economics of urban households’ cooking fuel consumption in Arusha city, Tanzania

Masters Dissertation

The study was conducted in Arusha City, Tanzania. The aim of the study was to analyse the socio-economic factors that influence urban households’ choice of primary cooking fuel and its share to the total household expenditure. The specific focus of the study were (i) to investigate households’ cooking fuel(s) consumption pattern (ii) toanalyse factors affecting households’ choice of cooking fuel (iii) to examine households’ cooking fuel consumption intensity (iv) to develop a Liquidified Petroleum Gas (LPG)consumption descriptive model. A cross sectional research design was adapted for this study. Primary data was collected using semi-structured questionnaires administered to 200 households. Furthermore, Interview and checklist were used to collect information from 2 key informants and 25 cooking fuel dealers. The data obtained was analysed using Descriptive Analysis, Binary Logistics Regression, and Log-Linear Regression. The findings suggested that there are four cooking fuels used and available in the study area (firewood, charcoal, Kerosene and LPG). The principal cooking fuels as stated by the respondents were charcoal and LPG at 35.5% and 57.5% respectively. Most households prefer to use LPG to charcoal at 97.7% and 11.6% respectively. The study further revealed that the choice of the principal cooking fuel is influenced by socioeconomic and demographic factors such as education level (p <0.01), marital status (p<0.01), occupation of respondent (p <0.05), household size (p ˂0.05), Residence ownership (p <0.05), and age of respondent (p <0.05). It is recommended that a policy instrument should be created to help improve households’ welfare and ensure availability of diverse modern fuels, government subsiding households energy sector mostly for modern fuels by creating a dependable energy distribution towards modern fuels.

Prof. Thadeo T.C. Mokiti and Dr (Mrs) Frida T. Mokiti