Determinants for adoption decision of small scale biogas technology by rural households in Tigray, Ethiopia

- The underlining and proximate factors affecting the uptake and use of biogas technology in the Tigray region, Ethiopia, are assessed.
- Institutional, social and demographic factors determine households' decision to adopt small size biogas plant.
- Rural households in the drier areas seek to supplement domestic biogas energy facility with electricity from national grid.
- Women who shoulder most of the burden of fulfilling household energy demand prefer to use biogas energy than their male counterparts.
- Complementing the existing biogas feedstocks with other sources such as human excreta help ease the shortage of feedstock for biogas digesters.

The deployment of biogas energy as alternative energy source can have the potential to fill the gap in the energy needs of the rural community if it is effectively managed and appropriately utilized. Using a logistic regression analysis of cross sectional data, the driving forces for adoption decision of biogas technology by rural households in the Tigray region, Ethiopia, were examined. The study found that the factors that significantly affect biogas adoption decision of rural households were for the most part socio-demographic factors and access to basic infrastructures. Besides, some environmental, institutional and economic attributes were significantly associated with diffusion of biogas technology. From among the variables included in the model, age of household head, family size, level of education, cattle size owned, distance to firewood collection site, access to electricity, access to credit and access to all weather roads were found to positively affect biogas adoption decision of households. On the other hand, distance to the nearest market negatively affected the adoption decision of the households. Female headed households tend more to adopt the biogas technology as compared to their male counterparts. As socio-economic attributes of households and environmental factors are mostly varied contextually and spatially, the policy of biogas technology promotion should be tailored based on the principle of fit for the purpose instead of the existing unimodal approach for all settings.