Adoption is not the finish line for clean cooking

Panel data following households well past the programme reporting window shows sustained fuel stacking: the improved stove is used, and so is the old one. Reported adoption is real; exclusive use is not.

This is not household irrationality. Stacking is a rational hedge against fuel price volatility and supply interruption. Programmes that treat it as a behaviour-change failure address the wrong variable.1

Results-based finance structures that pay against sustained fuel purchase, rather than device distribution, align incentives far better — and are administratively feasible where mobile payment records already exist.