The Intensive Margin of Technology Adoption:  Experimental Evidence on Improved Cooking Stoves in Rural Senegal

Today 2.6 billion people in developing countries rely on biomass as primary cooking fuel, with profound negative implications for their well-being. Improved biomass cooking stoves are alleged to counteract these adverse effects. This paper evaluates take-up and impacts of low-cost improved stoves through a randomized controlled trial. The randomized stove is primarily designed to curb firewood consumption but not smoke emissions. Nonetheless, we find considerable effects not only on firewood consumption, but also on smoke exposure and smoke-related disease symptoms – induced by behavioural changes at the intensive margin affecting outside cooking and cooking time due to the new stove.

Keywords: Impact evaluation; randomized controlled trial; respiratory disease symptoms; energy access; technology adoption

JEL Classification: C93, O12, O13, Q53, Q56

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Bensch, Gunther and Ankel-Peters, Jörg, The Intensive Margin of Technology Adoption: Experimental Evidence on Improved Cooking Stoves in Rural Senegal (June 4, 2015). Ruhr Economic Paper No. 494, USAEE Working Paper No. 15-213, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2614505 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2614505