Nigerian households' cooking energy use, determinants of choice, and some implications for human health and environmental sustainability

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the types of cooking fuels and factors that influence their choice by households in Nigeria. Cross national data used were extracted from the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) on households' cooking energy and was subjected to descriptive and inferential statistics. The results indicated that 55% of sampled households have access to electricity, while about two-third (66.3%) of households depend on biomass as fuel for cooking. The Chi-square analysis revealed that a significant statistical relationship existed between geo-political regions, place of residence, access to electricity, educational level, and wealth index and type of cooking used. Results also showed significant statistical differences between rural and urban households' type of cooking fuel while analysis of variance found significant differences in the type of cooking fuel according to regions, educational level, and wealth index. Multiple regression results demonstrated that socio-economic factors such as household size, geographical region, place of residence, educational level and wealth index have a significant positive influence on the type of cooking fuel used by households in Nigeria. However, access to electricity showed no significant association with the household type of cooking fuel. These results have important implications for human health and environmental sustainability, and therefore it was recommended that government needs to intensify educational efforts towards enlightening people about the need for the sustainable utilization of energy resources.