Solar Cooking in Senegalese Villages: an Application of Best-Worst Scaling

Abstract

Dissemination programs of nontraditional cookstoves often fail. Nontraditional cookstoves such as solar cookers aim to solve problems associated with biomass fuel usage in developing countries. Recent studies do not explain what drives user’s cookstove choice and overlook numerous influencing factors. In this study, a holistic framework that contains all factors but that centralizes product-specific preferences, is built. Households choose a cookstove or fuel, based on the services, features, characteristics and utility that it can provide users with. The case study therefore identifies product-specific factors that influence rural Senegalese inhabitants to switch to solar cooking, using the Best Worst Scaling (BWS) methodology and open and closed questions. Looking at the preferences, the case study studied and classified 126 respondents, from eight different rural villages, in three distinct market segments that all have different solar cooking expectations. However, the preferences are influenced by multiple factors. The paper identifies socio-demographic characteristics and needs that explain the differences in the respondents’ preferences. Finally, the respondent sample is divided in two groups: solar cooker owners and non-solar cooker owners. When studied with regard to the same issue, solar cooker owners appear to value benefits of the solar cooker lower than non-solar cooker owners. This is due to program factors (e.g. involving the appropriate local people, organizing sufficient and repeated solar cooking formations, a good after-sales network…) and miscommunication (e.g. wrong image of the solar cooker, marketing…) that highly influenced the respondents’ preferences and cookstove choice. As a conclusion, solar cookers and solar cooking projects do not always seem to be well adapted to the needs, preferences and requirements of the end-users. More need-based assessments and end-user adopted strategies are necessary in order to successfully implement nontraditional cookstoves programs.