URBAN AND PERI-URBAN COOKING ENERGIES DYNAMICS AMONG HOUSEHOLDS IN UMUAHIA ZONE OF ABIA STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The research paper focused on the dynamics of urban and peri-urban cooking energies 
preference among the households in Umuahia zone of Abia State, Nigeria. In particular, the 
paper has analyzed the urban and peri-urban cooking energies consumptions dynamics and 
factors that affected households’ cooking energies choice and difficulties in using cooking 
energies by households. Multi-stage purposive and random sampling methodology was used 
in order to select 120 household heads (60 urban and 60 peri-urban household heads). Data 
were gathered using structured questionnaire from primary source. Data were analyzed using 
descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics of multinomial 
logit model. The study findings depicted that the more frequently used sources of cooking 
energy among urban households in the region were LPG (Gas) (3.93), Electricity (3.24), 
Kerosene (2.75) and Charcoal (2.56). Alternatively, households in peri-urban/rural regions 
more frequently use fuelwood (3.80), charcoal (3.51), kerosene (2.85) and crop residues (2.77) 
as cooking energies. The socioeconomic variables that play major role in preference for 
cooking energies by the households are: location (urban and peri-urban), education, household 
size, income, primary occupation and age at 1 and 5%. Urban household problems in energy 
consumption for cooking include: unhealthy cooking with firewood and charcoal, dirty cooking 
of some energies e.g fuelwood, high cost of modern energy sources and increasing poverty 
among the people while and the challenges confronting peri-urban/rural households in cooking 
energy use include: increasing poverty among the people, high cost of modern energy sources, 
non-availability of modern energies and lack of regular supply of electricity. According to the 
results, the research other among them proposed subsidizing the prices of available clean 
sources of cooking energy in order to make them affordable to the majority of the low income 
households in the urban and peri-urban regions in the state.