From smoke to smiles: Quantifying the happiness benefits of household cooking energy transition

Abstract

Existing studies that assess the impact of cooking with dirty solid fuels on human beings tend to underestimate the adverse impact on welfare. This paper aims to address this research gap by examining the happiness benefits of transitioning from solid fuel to cleaner alternatives. Using an extensive panel dataset from China, which includes 150,248 observations collected from 43,251 survey respondents interviewed between 2010 and 2018, this study employs various complementary methodologies, such as the fixed-effect model, propensity score matching, and time-varying difference-in-differences, to overcome challenges related to treatment selection bias and unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity. Further, life satisfaction approach is used to evaluate the economic benefits of cooking energy transition. Our findings indicate that switching from firewood to LPG/natural gas/gas can significantly enhance individual subjective well-being (SWB). Although the improvement brought about by electricity is slightly lower than that of LPG/natural gas/gas, it remains substantial. Notably, the positive effect is more pronounced among specific demographic groups, including females, rural residents, and low-income families. Moreover, these well-being improvements can manifest quickly and persist many years before any noticeable enhancements in physical health. This effect further amplifies over time. However, biogas shows no significant effect on SWB. These findings underscore the importance of clean fuels that contribute to increased happiness, as they are more likely to be consistently adopted. Finally, we estimate that the economic benefits of the well-being improvements resulting from the use of LPG/natural gas/gas and electricity range between $5.15 and $5.44 per day.