Primary Outcomes (explanation)
A). Behavioural game: This behavioural game will simulate household energy choices to gauge participants’ responsiveness to adopting cleaner energy sources, specifically biogas. Each participant will be given a fixed budget (generated through average household budget allocation to energy consumption from the four waves of the Ethiopia Socioeconomic Survey -2011-2012, 2013-2014, 2015-2016, and 2018-2019) that represents their monthly household energy expenditures and is asked to allocate this budget between traditional energy sources (such as firewood or charcoal) and biogas. The game presents participants with the initial costs, maintenance fees, and potential long-term savings for each option, as well as information on environmental impacts. Throughout the game, participants must make decisions based on these trade-offs, simulating real-world scenarios they might face when adopting cleaner energy technologies. Their final choices will be used to assess the extent to which they prioritize short-term costs versus long-term benefits, providing insight into their willingness to shift to
environmentally friendly alternatives like biogas. Following this game, we will be measuring (a.) the proportion of the household budget allocated to biogas relative to biomass. (b.) We will also be measuring the likelihood of choosing biogas at all in the
budget allocation.
It is important to note that the budget will mirror real data on household income and energy expenditures from the baseline survey. This approach is expected to give participants a budget that reflects their actual financial situation, making the decision-making process more relatable. In addition, we will be including real-world costs of traditional energy sources (firewood, charcoal, etc.) and biogas systems. Based on inputs from experts, we will be factoring in both the upfront installation costs of biogas and its long-term savings to provide a realistic cost-benefit comparison. The aim of these additional measures is to ensure that the behavioural game reflect realistic situations confronting households in our context.
B). Behaviour towards interest in cleaner energy sources: This is an SMS measure will be offering invitations through text messages to the phone numbers provided by the respondents, asking whether the respondent will be interested in having more information about biogas technology. Respondents had to reply ''no'' or ''yes'' to receive the information, and we will be recording the responses as an indicator whether the respondent is interested in this new technology. Responses were processed until one week after the last interview took place. For those respondent who did not respond after a specific period of time, we will be sending a reminder to them about the pending response. These text messages involve costly actions on the part of the respondent and it is unlikely to be influenced by the enumerator, and are, therefore, less likely to be subject to social desirability bias relative to the earlier survey questions regarding attitudes and preferences. Hence, apart from the behavioural game, this could be another objective measure.