Conference Agenda

Clean cooking represents an important pathway through which households in Sub-Saharan Africa can contribute to environmental sustainability and improve health outcomes. However, both adoption and sustained use of clean cooking technologies remain limited. While existing studies document barriers to initial adoption, less is known about how household-level financial shocks affect the ability to sustain clean cooking practices and whether such shocks lead households to revert to traditional cooking methods. This paper addresses this gap using panel data from the Nigeria General Household Survey–Panel, covering Wave 4 (2018/2019) and Wave 5 (2023/2024). We apply a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impact of financial shocks experienced between survey waves on clean cooking outcomes. The results indicate that households exposed to financial shocks are significantly less likely to sustain the use of clean cooking technologies and are more likely to revert to traditional cooking fuels, with particularly strong effects among rural households. These findings suggest that policies aimed at promoting clean cooking should move beyond access and initial adoption to address affordability and resilience over time. In particular, policies that reduce upfront cash requirements such as smaller LPG refill options or pay-as-you-go systems, may help ease short-term liquidity constraints and reduce the likelihood of reversion among low-income households.