Impact of off-farm employment on cooking fuel choices: Implications for rural-urban transformation in advancing sustainable energy transformation

Abstract

Off-farm employment is a prominent manifestation of rural-urban transformation in developing countries, and it theoretically plays a critical role in rural sustainable energy transformation. Exploiting the nationally representative household-level panel data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS), this study employs a multi-dimensional fixed-effects (MDFE) model, an inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) technique and a propensity score matching (PSM) approach to investigate the impact of off-farm employment on cooking fuel choices. The results show that off-farm employment exerts a positive and significant impact on the probability of adopting clean fuels for cooking, with specific reductions in biomass and coal and increases in electricity and gas. Furthermore, this effect is mainly realized by reducing the amount of available labor, the number of family meals, and increasing kitchen equipment purchases. However, the relationship between off-farm employment and cooking fuel choices varies considerably across the region, village and household groups. Off-farm employment mainly benefits the eastern, central and western regions of China, villages in plain areas, with brick-concrete houses and ethnic Han Chinese, households with children or the elderly, with poor health and more females, while it is less beneficial for others. The study highlights the important policy implications of rural-urban transition for sustainable energy transition through the creation of off-farm jobs.