Designing and Evaluating Behavior Change Interventions to Improve the Adoption and Use of Improved Cookstoves

A stove promotion intervention was implemented and randomized at the hamlet level; all sample households living in treatment communities
were visited by sales teams working for a local NGO; households living in control communities were not. Following careful field piloting of potential promotion techniques (Lewis et al., 10 2015), trained sales people working in teams of two visited treatment households and conducted intensive promotion activities with them. First, these teams presented treatment households with an information sheet and explanation of the stove features for the two available options (an electric coil stove and a biomass-burning improved cook stove), even as they performed a live tea-making demonstration. Second, once the demonstration was complete, the sales people proposed a financing plan to households: All households were given the choice of paying for the stoves upfront or in three equal installments (including a modest fi nancing fee of INR 60 or 80, depending on the stove) that would be collected over a period of three installments spread over four weeks.
Third, households were assigned a randomized rebate to be given at the time of the final payment if they were found to be using the stoves (as observed during unannounced visits). Those paying for stoves upfront were also eligible for the rebate and thus were also revisited roughly one month later. Prior to households indicating whether they would purchase a stove, this household-level randomized rebate was revealed by drawing a chit out of a bag. The bags contained equal numbers of chits corresponding to the three potential rebate levels, low - INR 25 (a 2.5% discount), medium - INR 200 (a 20% discount), and high - equivalent to a full installment (a 33% discount). Sales prices prior to the rebate corresponded to the stove-specifi c prices paid to suppliers.
On the basis of power calculations and our estimation of the differential treatment effects expected from the alternative rebate levels, 71 of the baseline hamlets (corresponding to 770 of the 1,061 baseline households) were randomly assigned to the treatment group, and the remaining 26 sample hamlets served as controls, that did not receive any visits from the stove promotion teams.

2013-08-05

2013-10-31

Purchase of improved cookstoves (overall and by technology), and use of improved cookstoves.

Not applicable

Impacts of intervention and stove adoption on solid fuel consumption, cooking time, collection time, and self-reported health.

Baseline surveys followed by intervention and then short-term follow-up surveys, in a sample of 1061 households living in 98 hamlets.
Hamlet-level randomization of intervention to 71 hamlets (with 27 hamlets as controls): Supply of stoves during sales visits, basic demand promotion (information and demonstrations), and financing option for purchase of stoves.
Household-level randomization of rebates delivered to households conditional on observed use of stoves.

Hamlet-level randomization done in an office on a computer; household level randomization achieved in the field by draw from a bag.

Sales intervention: Hamlet level
Rebates: Household level

Yes

97 hamlets.

1061 households

71 clusters assigned to treatment, 27 to control
Among treatment households (n=770), one third expected in each rebate group.

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.

Pattanayak, S. K., Jeuland, M., Lewis, J. J., Usmani, F., Brooks, N., Bhojvaid, V., ... & Ramanathan, V. (2019). Experimental evidence on promotion of electric and improved biomass cookstoves. Proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences, 116(27), 13282-13287.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.1808827116

Preference heterogeneity can influence behavior in economically significant ways, thereby influencing the effectiveness of environmental policies or interventions. We test this hypothesis in the context of efficient cooking technology in India. We use stated preference methods to first characterize household tastes for various features of a more efficient cooking technology. We then relate these typically unobserved preferences to households’ adoption decisions during an experiment that allowed them to choose between two alternatives with different features. Stated preferences help predict actual adoption: households initially classified as uninterested are less likely to purchase and use any new technology, while relative distaste for pollution is linked to selection of a cleaner technology. Because of this influence on adoption behaviors, preference heterogeneity has important implications for how environmental policies can impact various health and development outcomes.

Jeuland, M., Pattanayak, S. K., Tan Soo, J. S., & Usmani, F. (2020). Preferences and the effectiveness of behavior-change interventions: Evidence from adoption of improved cookstoves in India. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 7(2), 305-343.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/706937

Programs implemented by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are often more effective than comparable efforts by other actors, yet relatively little is known about how implementer identity drives final outcomes. By combining a stratified field experiment in India with a tripledifferences estimation strategy, we show that a local development NGO's prior engagement with target communities increases the effectiveness of a technology-promotion program implemented in these areas by at least 30 percent. This “NGO reputation effect” has implications for the generalizability and scalability of evidence from experimental research conducted with local implementation partners.

Usmani, F., Jeuland, M., & Pattanayak, S. K. (2022). NGOs and the effectiveness of interventions. Review of Economics and Statistics, 1-45.

https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01217/112430/NGOs-and-the-Effectiveness-of-Interventions