Browsing by Author "Usmani, F"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Can economic incentives enhance adoption and use of a household energy technology? Evidence from a pilot study in Cambodia
    (Environmental Research Letters, 2017-03-08) Usmani, F; Steele, J; Jeuland, M
    While much work has examined approaches to increase uptake of a variety of household environmental, health and energy technologies, researchers and policymakers alike have struggled to ensure long-term use. Drawing on a pilot-scale experiment conducted in rural Cambodia, this study evaluates whether economic incentives enhance continued use of—and fuel savings from—improved cookstoves (ICS). Capital-cost subsidies that have been traditionally employed to enhance ICS adoption were augmented with rebates linked to stated and objectively measured use in order to investigate impacts on both initial and sustained adoption in the treatment group. Results show that households do respond to these rebates by adopting the intervention ICS at significantly higher rates, and by using it more frequently and for longer periods. Consistent with these stove-use patterns, solid-fuel use and time spent collecting or preparing fuels also decline. However, this effect appears to diminish over time. Thus, while economic inducements may significantly increase adoption and use of new environmental health technologies, corresponding reductions in environmental or livelihood burdens are not guaranteed. Additional research on the design and implementation of incentive-based interventions targeting households directly—such as carbon financing or other forms of results-based financing (RBF) for improved cookstoves—therefore seems warranted prior to wider implementation of such solutions.
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    Energy & Development (Global Energy Access Network Case Studies)
    (2017-06-20) Aggarwal, A; Childress, S; Greene, L; Guidera, L; Guo, K; Holt, D; Klug, T; Litzow, E; Rains, E; Samaddar, S; Wakefield, T
    The present volume represents the culmination of one of the Global Energy Access Network's central initiatives in our inaugural 2016-17 year. We observed that many of our student members had previously worked in areas of poor or missing energy access, even if the projects that brought them to those communities were not directly related to energy access. We sought to take advantage of students’ contextual knowledge from these experiences, and provide a forum for them to share their latent experiences widely with others. The six vignettes in this volume address a diverse set of topics related to energy access. They span five countries (India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nicaragua, and Peru), primarily in rural areas, but sometimes address issues in urban areas as well. The entities featured in these stories include local and state governments, community-based organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Topically, they address a variety of technologies, including solar, wind, and hydroelectric power, as well as improved cookstoves. The issues discussed range from financial viability of utility providers, to relationships between local community members and distant institutions, to the gap that sometimes persists between householders’ beliefs and “expert knowledge.” Throughout, the authors highlight the richness of the setting and context even as they focus in on issues specific to energy access.
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    Experimental evidence on promotion of electric and improved biomass cookstoves
    (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) Pattanayak, SK; Jeuland, M; Lewis, JJ; Usmani, F; Brooks, N; Bhojvaid, V; Kar, A; Lipinski, L; Morrison, L; Patange, O; Ramanathan, N; Rehman, IH; Thadani, R; Vora, M; Ramanathan, V
    Improved cookstoves (ICS) can deliver “triple wins” by improving household health, local environments, and global climate. Yet their potential is in doubt because of low and slow diffusion, likely because of constraints imposed by differences in culture, geography, institutions, and missing markets. We offer insights about this challenge based on a multiyear, multiphase study with nearly 1,000 households in the Indian Himalayas. In phase I, we combined desk reviews, simulations, and focus groups to diagnose barriers to ICS adoption. In phase II, we implemented a set of pilots to simulate a mature market and designed an intervention that upgraded the supply chain (combining marketing and home delivery), provided rebates and financing to lower income and liquidity constraints, and allowed households a choice among ICS. In phase III, we used findings from these pilots to implement a field experiment to rigorously test whether this combination of upgraded supply and demand promotion stimulates adoption. The experiment showed that, compared with zero purchase in control villages, over half of intervention households bought an ICS, although demand was highly price-sensitive. Demand was at least twice as high for electric stoves relative to biomass ICS. Even among households that received a negligible price discount, the upgraded supply chain alone induced a 28 percentage-point increase in ICS ownership. Although the bundled intervention is resource-intensive, the full costs are lower than the social benefits of ICS promotion. Our findings suggest that market analysis, robust supply chains, and price discounts are critical for ICS diffusion.
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    NGOs and the effectiveness of interventions
    (WIDER Working Paper, 2018-05-31) Usmani, F; Jeuland, MA; Pattanayak, SK
    Interventions in remote, rural settings face high transaction costs. We develop a model of household decision-making to evaluate how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) address these implementation-related challenges and influence intervention effectiveness. To test our model’s predictions, we create a sample of observationally similar Indian villages that differ in their prior engagement with a local development NGO. In partnership with this NGO, we then stratify a randomized technology promotion intervention on this institutional variable. We uncover a large, positive, and statistically significant ‘NGO effect’: prior engagement with the NGO increases the effectiveness of our intervention by at least 30 per cent. Our results have implications for the generalizability of experimental research conducted jointly with NGOs. In particular, attempts to scale-up findings from such work may prove less successful than anticipated if the role of NGOs is insufficiently understood. Alternatively, policy makers looking to scale-up could achieve greater success by enlisting trusted local partners.
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    The Price of Purity: Willingness to pay for air and water purification technologies in Rajasthan, India
    (Environmental and Resource Economics) Shannon, Alexandra; Usmani, F; Pattanayak, SK; Jeuland, MA
    Diarrheal illnesses and acute respiratory infections are among the top causes for premature death and disability across the developing world, and adoption of various technologies for avoiding these illnesses remains extremely low. We exploit data from a unique contingent valuation experiment to consider whether households in rural Rajasthan are unwilling to make investments in "domain-specific" environmental health technologies when faced with health risks in multiple domains. Results indicate that demand for water-related risk reductions is higher on average than demand for air-related risk reduction. In addition, households' private health benefits from mitigating diarrheal (respiratory) disease risks are higher (no different) when community-level air pollution risks, rather than community-level water pollution risks, have previously been mitigated. This asymmetric response cannot fully be explained by survey order effects or embedding, but rather suggests that that the broader health environment and the salience of particular risks may be important in households' decision to adopt environmental health technologies.
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    What are Households Willing to Pay for Improved Water Access? Results from a Meta-Analysis
    (Ecological Economics, 2017-06-01) Van Houtven, GL; Pattanayak, SK; Usmani, F; Yang, JC
    © 2016Although several factors contribute to low rates of access to improved water and sanitation in the developing world, it is especially important to understand and measure household demand for these services. One valuable source of information regarding demand is the growing empirical literature that has applied stated preference methods to estimate households’ willingness to pay (WTP). Because it is difficult to generalize and support planning based on this scattered literature, we conduct a meta-analysis to take stock of the worldwide sample of household WTP for improved drinking water services. Using 171 WTP estimates drawn from 60 studies, we first describe this sample and then examine the potential factors that explain variation in WTP estimates. Our results suggest that households are willing to pay between approximately $3 and $30 per month for improvements in water access. Specifically, in line with economic theory and intuition, WTP is sensitive to scope (the magnitude of improvement in drinking water services), as well as household income, and stated-preference elicitation method. We demonstrate how our results can be used to predict household-level WTP for selected improvements in drinking water access in regions with low coverage, and find that private benefits exceed the cost of provision.