Impact Carbon’s Preliminary Focus Group Discussions on Improved Cookstoves Reveal Positive Reactions from Ugandan Women

Impact Carbon’s Preliminary Focus Group Discussions on Improved Cookstoves Reveal Positive Reactions from Ugandan Women
Half of the world’s population cooks with solid fuels on poorly functioning stoves or open fires, primarily using wood or other biomass. Nearly 2 million people, mostly women and children, die each year as a consequence of household air pollution levels that are typically 100 times greater than World Health Organization air quality guidelines.

Through the Translating Research into Action (TRAction) project, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is supporting the development and evaluation of behavioral approaches to tackle household air pollution.

“Understanding the causes of and solutions for indoor air pollution, a leading cause of respiratory infections, is essential to demonstrate USAID’s commitment to Global Health Initiative goals of protecting women and children, who are disproportionately affected by indoor smoke.”
-  Dr. Ariel Pablos-Mendez, Assistant Administrator, Global Health with USAID

Impact Carbon was awarded a TRAction research grant to test behavior change communication (BCC) strategies that can increase the number of people who buy and correctly use improved, cleaner-burning wood stoves in rural Uganda. Primary partners on the project include the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and the Centre for Integrated Research and Community Development, Uganda (CIRCODU).
The project will foster behavior change and improve the acquisition and correct use of cleaner cookstoves by conducting three randomized controlled trials in 2012 that will:

• Test how marketing messages can affect consumers’ willingness to pay
• Test whether a novel sales offer can increase adoption
• Measure the effects of efficient cookstoves on indoor air pollution emissions.

From the three focus groups that Impact Carbon conducted as part of this research, women complained that cooking on traditional three stone fires:

• Generates smoke which irritates their eyes and causes headache, dizziness, and a loss of appetite;
• The fires can be difficult to light;
• Use a lot of wood which takes a lot of time and energy to collect;
• Wind can easily blow out the fire and if sitting next to the fire can easily burn the cook;
• Contributes to the accumulation of soot on the walls and roof of the kitchen that can drop into the pans used for preparing food;
• Makes clothes dirty when cooking;
• Gets a lot of soot on pans which is difficult to clean.

Lead Investigator, Dr. Theresa Beltramo, was encouraged by the initial findings from the feasibility study:

"Women in our focus groups told us they had never seen any of our stoves. I was really impressed how interested they were in buying one and the detailed questions they asked about product durability and where to get replacement parts. From our focus groups, I believe we got the problem right, now we have to focus on how to shift women's behavior such as to prepare small pieces of wood for cooking on the new stoves and shift some traditional cooking practices of leaving the pots to simmer for hours while doing other activities to help maximize the benefits of these new stoves."
- Dr. Theresa Beltramo, Principal Investigator, Impact Carbon

After learning about the energy efficient cookstoves, women noted that the improved stoves:

• Produce less smoke
• Are attractive because they are portable
• Use less wood
• Light fast
• Distribute the flame well and are less susceptible to wind
• Cook fast
• Generate less soot on the pans
• Are modern.

Over the coming months, Impact Carbon’s research team will continue to work with community members in rural Uganda to identify methods for promoting the improved cookstoves that most effectively encourage families to buy the stoves and use them correctly for a long period of time.