Reproducibility package for From Habits To Hardware: A Field Experiment On Energy-Saving Cooking Practices In Rwanda

A third of the world’s population still relies on traditional cookstoves and polluting fuels, despite the many benefits of cleaner cooking technologies. The adoption of modern stoves is not the only barrier to this transition, since households with access to cleaner technologies often continue using traditional stoves alongside these. One reason for this ‘stove stacking’ is that modern cooking technologies are often considered incompatible with established and customary household cooking practices. These practices are not only 'normative’ but often ‘habitual’, making them particularly difficult to change. This paper asks whether behavioral insights can help to better align household cooking practices with the capabilities of modern stoves, using a group session implemented as a randomized control trial in peri-urban Rwanda. Based on a behavioral model of the clean cooking transition, the intervention seeks to establish a new cooking habit among participants (pre-soaking beans before cooking them) by targeting their attitudes, norms and perceived behavioral control, as well as using contextual cues to encourage repetition of the behavior over time. Results point to the successful formation of a new energy-efficient cooking habit that lowered cook times on traditional stoves on days in which beans were cooked. Importantly, the intervention also had a positive effect on attitudes about the suitability of modern stoves for cooking beans, and increased participants’ aspirations and expectations to purchase these devices.