University of Toronto Research Delegation Travels to South India to Explore Clean Cook Stove Design, Marketing, and Adoption

By Hayden Rodenkirchen, Kay Dyson Tam, and Mimi Liu

In March of 2014, a group of professors from the “Global Innovation Group”, an interdisciplinary network of researchers interested in poverty and innovation in the Global South, and four undergraduate students travelled to South India to conduct preliminary research into clean cook stove technology, marketing, and adoption. The research delegation consisted of Professor Joseph Wong (Political Science), Professor Yu-Ling Cheng (Engineering), Professor Stanley Zlotkin (Nutrition, Paediatrics, and Public Health), Poornima Vinoo (Rotman), as well as students Mimi Liu (Economics), Kay Dyson Tam (Psychology), Tameka Deare (Engineering), Seemi Qaiser (Global Health), and Hayden Rodenkirchen (International Relations). Prakti Design, a social enterprise based in South India which designs and manufactures clean cook stoves, hosted the delegation.

Problems associated with traditional cook stoves

In North America, gas and electric stove technology have eliminated concerns about cook stove smoke in the home. In South Asia and other developing countries, by contrast, modern cooking technologies are too expensive for some lower-income families, with the result that nearly 3 billion people worldwide live in households that burn wood and other biomass in rudimentary, inefficient, traditional stoves. In many cases, this means that carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and other toxic pollutants are emitted from the traditional stove into the home. Chronic exposure to this cooking smoke may be associated with negative respiratory and pregnancy outcomes. Inefficient stoves that consume large amounts of fuel may lead poor families to spend a significant portion of their income on fuel if they buy it, or cause women and girls to spend many hours on fuel collection. As well, the inefficient use of solid biomass as cooking fuel contributes to forest depletion, and releases carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon, which contribute to climate change.

Potential health and socioeconomic benefits of clean cook stoves

There is no universally agreed-upon definition of “clean cook stove”, but in general, the term refers to stoves that burn fuel more efficiently, and with less and cleaner smoke compared to traditional stoves like India’s ubiquitous clay chulha. Clean cook stoves may improve long-term health outcomes in impoverished communities by reducing household exposure to indoor air pollution. In areas where fuel wood must be collected, stoves that burn wood more efficiently may also cut down on the amount of time women have to spend collecting fuel and cooking. In urban, peri-urban, or wood-scarce regions where fuel wood cannot be collected, a more efficient stove may result in savings for families that purchase fuel wood on a regular basis.

The Trip

In principle, the benefits of clean cook stove technology are straightforward. In reality, cook stove design, marketing, and adoption remain difficult. The team travelled to India to conduct preliminary research into these challenges and how they might be practically addressed. In advance of their departure, the team conducted several months of secondary research and interviewed experts in order to become familiar with the marketing, technological, and adoption challenges identified thus far.

The team conducted preliminary research in Tamil Nadu state, a relatively prosperous area of southern India. The team began their research in Chennai, the state’s capital, before moving on to visit Prakti’s design lab in a rural area close to Puducherry.

In Chennai, the team of professors and students met with senior bureaucrats at the Tamil Nadu Planning Commission; with economists and environmental scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras; and with Prakti’s CEO and manufacturing director at the company’s manufacturing facilities. They also interviewed researchers at Sri Ramachandra University, a leading institution in the study of the impacts of cook stove smoke on health in India.

Close to Puducherry, the team spent time interviewing Prakti’s research & development, marketing, and distribution staff, as well as end-users. In several focus-group interviews and visits to households organized by a local NGO, they were able to learn about some common motivations for stove purchase by individual households, common cooking and fuel collection practices, perceptions of chronic air pollution, and user opinions on which design features a clean cook stove should possess in order to serve as an attractive replacement for traditional stoves.

Challenges surrounding clean cook stove design, marketing, and adoption

Over the trip, a number of challenges emerged as significant barriers to cook stove adoption in the eyes of consumers, manufacturers, and distributors. Observed challenges to the cook stove sector in Tamil Nadu largely mirrored those presented as most significant by the current literature. Price, for example, was a concern for all parties interviewed. Stove unit costs are currently too high for stoves to be sold to low-income users without subsidies or lending schemes. For adoption to increase, costs must be brought down drastically through the use of less expensive materials, economies of scale in manufacturing, or other means.

The marketing of clean cook stoves remains difficult, as well. The potential health benefits that make clean cook stoves appealing as a development intervention for many donors did not greatly appeal to the women we interviewed in rural Tamil Nadu. Most users the team spoke with were relatively unconcerned with the health benefits of the stove, especially as those benefits are not immediate or easily demonstrable. The potential health benefits of clean cook stoves have yet to resonate in rural areas where food cooked using traditional stoves is perceived as tasty and the smoke from traditional stoves is not seen as a significant health problem as traditional stoves have been used for generations.

Further, clean cook stoves that burn biomass must also compete with more expensive but cleaner alternatives, such as LPG or electric stoves. Unlike these stoves, which are sometimes subsidized and distributed by the government and whose parts are replaceable by order and at distribution centers, biomass-burning clean cook stoves do not yet have well established and scaled distribution and maintenance and repair systems. It is a challenge to reach illiterate, low-income, and scattered potential customers; stove companies must create extensive networks of local retailers or salespeople to reach potential users.

Appropriate, high-value, low-cost stoves are needed to increase rates of adoption

Throughout the interviews, it became clear that cook stove design is highly contextual. The design of a clean cook stove must be customized for specific geographic regions due to cultural and ecological differences between them. These differences bear on cooking practices and aspirations. In areas where flatbreads are widely consumed, for example, the stove must be able to accommodate cooking utensils with large surface areas.

Interviews further revealed that cook stove purchases might involve negotiation between female cooks and their husbands. The dynamics of these decisions are unclear, however, and vary from household to household. Marketing may become more effective  by better taking into account decision-making dynamics between family members.

It also appeared that if the cook perceived robust value in the clean cook stove, they could either purchase the stove with their own income or persuade their husband to purchase it. To offer robust value, clean cook stoves need to perform cooking functions as well as or better than traditional and competitor stoves, be safe, durable, easy to use and maintain, and aesthetically pleasing. While the clean cook stove sector tends to focus on emissions and fuel efficiency performance, more attention needs to be paid to the overall cooking experience using clean cook stoves.

If the value of the stoves is not evident for users, stoves may fall into disuse and disrepair and have limited impact. The value of stoves needs to be clear, compelling, and appropriate for specific customer segments in order for people to buy, use, and maintain stoves. More investment is needed to better understand markets for clean cook stoves, to design high-value and low-cost stoves, and to find marketing and distribution strategies that are viable and scalable.

This research project highlighted the need for user-centered design, interdisciplinary research, and cross-sector collaboration when trying to design, implement, and scale international development interventions. The literature points out that decades of efforts by NGOs and governments to distribute clean cook stoves had limited success: people did not adopt clean cook stoves because they were often not designed with user preferences and aspirations in mind. The research trip also highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration when trying to address cook stove challenges: engineering problems of cook stove efficiency and emissions, for example, were shown to be tied to anthropological questions of cooking and fuel-use practices, and to public health questions about exposure to air pollution. Political support, investment, and technical expertise need to be coordinated and committed for the long-term in order to increase the potential health, socioeconomic, and environmental benefits of clean cook stove use.

Next Steps      

Since returning to Toronto, the group has continued to meet and synthesize their preliminary findings. In response to gaps in the current literature and the challenges identified above, they are considering ways to gather more granular data on air pollution and the health impacts of exposure to air pollution. The group is also interested in further exploring beliefs and decision-making processes surrounding practices that affect exposure to air pollution at the individual, household, and community levels. There is interest as well in further investigating multi-fuel stoves, which burn the lowest grade fuels (including cow dung and agricultural waste) and could serve the poorest in South Asia. To these ends, the team is working towards the development of research collaborations between University of Toronto professors and partners in India.

Hayden Rodenkirchen, Kay Dyson Tam, and Mimi Liu are all undergraduate students at the University of Toronto.