The promise of eCooking: improving livelihoods, decreasing deforestation, and promoting peace. Experimental evidence from Eastern Congo.

Around 2.6 billion people remain dependent on biomass fuel for cooking. This has severe health, budgetary and environmental consequences. Electric cooking is a healthier, cheaper, and cleaner alternative. It has also become a feasible one, given the recent improvements in reliable electricity access. But, while both development and environmental actors are now seeking to untap the potential of eCooking, very little is known about barriers to its adoption, and whether it can deliver on its promises. We study the uptake and impact of Electric Pressure Cookers (EPCs) in the city of Goma, North-Kivu, where people's reliance on charcoal entails huge individual and social costs. Here, the burning of charcoal not only constitutes a health hazard, but also severely exacerbates poverty, as it drains one third of household budgets. In terms of social costs, charcoal reliance not only threatens the nearby Virunga National Park; it also perpetuates conflict as armed groups seek to control its production and trade. To co-create the first experimental evidence on EPC uptake and livelihood impact, we team up with a local electricity provider and randomly distribute 1,000 EPCs. We include different treatment arms to learn about factors affecting adoption, including financial and informational constraints and social learning. The experiment will entail lessons for scaling up. When scaled up, we will be able to also study social benefits in terms of deforestation and peace.

Keywords:ECONOMY AND ENVIRONMENT

Disciplines:Agricultural and natural resource economics, environmental and ecological economics, Economic development