Understanding Household Cooking Fuel Choice of the User Segments in Urban India

Abstract

The residential sector of India is the second biggest energy consumer globally, amounting to 29% of the net national consumption. In the residential sector, cooking accounts for the highest share of energy consumption. In India, approximately 30% of the urban population used polluting fuels as primary cooking fuels as per the latest consumer survey. Given the projection of the urban population growth in India, it is imperative to understand the variables affecting cooking fuel choices. The current literature, however, assumes the population under the study area to be homogeneous, but in countries like India, the heterogeneity is relatively high. In this study, the urban population was segmented using K-Means Clustering and Multinomial Logistic Regression Analysis was applied to each segment to study the variables influencing their cooking fuel choice. The data from the Household Consumer Expenditure Survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) of India was used for the study. The analysis shows that the same variables influence the fuel choices of different socio-economic household segments differently. This research contributes to the existing literature by analysing fuel choice through socio-economic segmentation, thus allowing future trend prediction from a cross-sectional study.