Take-up of efficient cooking fuels and equilibrium outcomes for women's work

Last registered on January 01, 2025

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Take-up of efficient cooking fuels and equilibrium outcomes for women's work
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0014920
Initial registration date
December 26, 2024

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
December 26, 2024, 12:24 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
January 01, 2025, 11:34 PM EST

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

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Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Michigan State University

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi
PI Affiliation
University of Notre Dame

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2024-06-10
End date
2026-12-31
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Why is the adoption of efficient cooking fuels so low in LMICs, despite well-documented health and potential time-saving gains? This is puzzling for two reasons. Many countries subsidize cleaner fuels for low-income households to facilitate a switch out of firewood. Moreover, freeing women’s time spent on collecting and cooking with solid fuels can potentially raise household incomes, if women have opportunities to do more market work.

We identify two opportunities. First, despite the provision of heavy subsidies, recent research has highlighted financial constraints in the adoption of cooking fuel technology. Second, switching from firewood to clean fuels requires financial consideration often by men in the household, while women are to gain from switching away from firewood collection and cooking. Intrahousehold decision-making has important implications for energy transition, but is relatively less studied. Access to a suitable labor market can help women gain financial resources as well as realize returns from time and “energy” saved in home production.

Our core research premise is that clean fuel subsidies alone cannot lead to sustained energy transition in cooking fuel until informational and intra-household constraints are addressed. We seek to answer two main questions by experimentally evaluating a novel combination of two treatments — information on clean fuel cost and access to digital work for women. First, we assess how information on clean fuel costs and increasing women’s access to income-generating employment affect households’ transition from biomass to clean cooking fuel. Second, we seek to understand whether information on clean fuel costs and government subsidies on LPG and women’s access to income-generating employment complement each other in boosting adoption of LPG and other clean fuels. Specifically, we posit that there are strong complementariness between easing information constraints on clean fuel expenditures and women’s employment.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Afridi, Farzana, Prabhat Barnwal and Taryn Dinkelman. 2025. "Take-up of efficient cooking fuels and equilibrium outcomes for women's work." AEA RCT Registry. January 01. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.14920-1.2
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
This intervention includes two treatments that are randomly assigned to households, primarily targeting women who have the main responsibility of household chores. First, the provision of jobs to women that can be completed virtually using a smartphone/tablet/laptop. Second, the provision of information on clean cooking fuel subsidies.
Intervention Start Date
2024-11-13
Intervention End Date
2025-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
1. Monthly LPG refill purchase by household
2. Any clean cooking fuel usage (LPG or electric or both) by household
3. Solid fuel usage by household
4. Time spent on home production by primary cook
5. Any market work by primary cook
6. Time spent on any market work by primary cook
7. Earnings from any market work by primary cook


Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Our intervention targets women who also have primary household chores responsibility. We randomly assign households to three primary treatment groups and one control group– (1) access to digital jobs, (2) clean cooking fuel subsidy information, and (3) combined treatments (digital jobs and clean fuel subsidy information), (4) Control group. These jobs are primarily targeted at the women in the household. However, for a subgroup of randomly selected households within groups 1 and 3, we provide job offers to men instead of women. An additional sample of households from villages where no treatment is provided to any household serves as pure control.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
We have two stages of randomization, with a primary focus on household-level randomization in the second stage. We start with 104 villages with a total of 1531 households. We first randomly assign 34 villages to the pure control group where no household receives any treatment. In the remaining 70 villages, we randomly assign households to treatment groups 1 to 3 and to the control group.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Total 104 villages and 1531 households. In the first stage, we clustered the treatment at the village level for comparison between villages with any treated households (70 villages) and villages with no treated households (i.e., 34 pure control villages). In the second stage, we randomize treatment at the household level in 70 villages.
Sample size: planned number of observations
1531
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Out of 1027 households from 70 villages, 230 households are assigned to digital job (women) treatment, 140 households are assigned to clean cooking fuel subsidy information treatment, 274 households are assigned to the combined job (women) and information treatment arm, and 140 households are assigned to the control group. Additionally, 112 households are assigned to digital job (male) treatment, and 131 households are assigned to the combined job and information treatment.
The remaining 34 pure control villages have 504 households.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of Notre Dame
IRB Approval Date
2024-04-22
IRB Approval Number
24-03-8470