Hurdles in Fuel Choice in Rural India (Springerbriefs in Geography)

This Springer Brief presents a study that aims to identify the demand for cooking fuel at household level under different socio-economic conditions in rural India, with the goal of offering recommendations to reformulate and redesign energy policy. Households’ fuel choice and level of fuel consumption contribute to efforts toward sustainable development in emerging economy like India. In this context, it is important to identify the determining factors of fuel choice and consumption decision for cooking purpose at household level. Earlier studies mainly focused on fuel price and household income determining domestic fuel consumption, and insufficient attention has been given to other socioeconomic factors and decision processes for fuel choice. In this Brief, the double hurdle model is used to estimate the hurdles in fuel demand and its determinants at the household level in rural India.

Dr. Soumyananda Dinda is working as a Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics, University of Burdwan, India. Previously, he taught at several institutes and Universities like University of Bath, UK; Madras School of Economics in Chennai, Chandragupt Institute of Management at Patna, S.K.B. University at Purulia and S.R.F. College, Beldanga, Murshidabad. He also taught as guest faculty at Presidency College and University of Calcutta. He also worked as Economic Affair Officer in the UN ESCAP, Bangkok. He has visited many foreign institutes and universities like International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste; Peace Institute, Norway; Nottingham University, Reading University, Oxford University, Barmingham University, Norway State University, and Pritoria University, etc. He started his academic journey as a Research Fellow at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He is working on green economics, climate change and technology and different social aspects. He has published several papers in international journals and also published four books.

Mrs. Sanchita Daripa was an M.Phil scholar at the Department of Economics, University of Burdwan, India. She is teaching in school and working on fuel choice at household level. She has worked at NSSO for short time as learnt about NSSO and its data collection. She is an expert in Stata software. She has participated several conferences, seminars, and workshops. She published one paper in Journal and two book chapters.