Behavioural factors that drive stacking with traditional cooking fuels using the COM-B model

Abstract

Globally, 2.8 billion people cook with biomass fuels, resulting in devastating health and environmental consequences. Efforts to transition households to cooking with clean fuels are hampered by "fuel stacking", the reliance on multiple fuels and stoves. Consequently, there have been few interventions that have realised the full potential of clean cooking. Here we conduct a structured literature review (N=100) to identify drivers of fuel stacking and specify them according to a psychological model of behaviour, the Capability-Opportunity-Motivation (COM-B) model. We create a taxonomy of stacking and find that the Physical Opportunity domain accounted for 82% of drivers. Our results have important implications for intervention design as they suggest improving opportunity is the most effective pathway to adoption of cleaner fuels. The findings are used to derive recommendations about how policy makers and practitioners can proactively address drivers of stacking in order to foster adoption of clean cooking stoves and fuels.

A geospatial approach to understanding clean cooking challenges in sub-Saharan Africa

“…This is probably due to underdeveloped supply chains for improved technology 8 , household internalities (that is, a misalignment of decision-makers' preferences and benefits to household members) 12 , liquidity constraints that inhibit adoption of new solutions 10,11 , and cultural or peer influences whereby people mimic the costly behaviours of others around them 19 . Other key behavioural challenges that can influence the household decision calculus include present or short-term bias, a lack of salience for non-pecuniary benefits 10,11 and fuel stacking (the use of several fuel-stove combinations) [20][21][22] . Addressing this complex web of factors and barriers will require coordinated policies, interventions, and cooperation between governments and private sector suppliers of clean solutions 8 .…”

Thermo-electric generation (TEG) enabled cookstoves in a rural Indian community: a longitudinal study of user behaviours and perceptions

“…As the TEG cookstoves were distributed for free or at a subsidised rate used free solid biomass, TEG cookstoves did not encounter the Physical Opportunity barriers to adoption of being unaffordable to purchase that clean cookstoves have, as observed by Gould and Urpelainen (2018) and by Perros et al (2022). The TEG cookstoves were adopted for a while and were generally appreciated for cooking some traditional foods, so did not succumb to the social opportunity barrier to adoption that TEG cookstoves tested in India by Wilson et al did (Wilson et al 2018).…”

Household Waste and the Circular Economy in Bangkok

“…Recent literature has been making the case for the utility of such frameworks for sustainability-related behaviours. For instance, the COM-B model has been applied to water conservation (Addo et al, 2018), sustainable packaging (Allison et al, 2021) and energy (Perros et al, 2022). We argue there remains a need for more theoretically driven work on behaviour change for sustainability-related behaviours to build the evidence base for what works.…”