Gendered demand for environmental health technologies: Evidence of complementarities from stove auctions in India
Research co-authored by P.P. Krishnapriya, Marc Jeuland, Jennifer Orgill-Meyer and Subhrendu Pattanayak is published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.
P.P. Krishnapriya, Marc Jeuland, Jennifer Orgill-Meyer and Subhrendu Pattanayak examine if prior exposure to one environmental health technology – improved sanitation – complements or substitutes for additional household investments in another such technology — an electric induction cookstove.
The authors conducted a cookstove demand revealing auction 10 years after a random half of their sample had been exposed to an intensive sanitation promotion campaign in rural India. They observe that demand for induction cookstoves among men seems to be affected by information they obtain following the sanitation intervention, whereas preferences and demand among women, who likely have more at stake, are unchanged. This points to the importance of understanding interactions between gender, information, knowledge, and preferences for technology, and decision-making power over adoption of the solutions needed to achieve environmental health targets.
Their paper, "Gendered demand for environmental health technologies: Evidence of complementarities from stove auctions in India," is published in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics.