Search

Two important risks faced by many smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa are erratic weather patterns and insecure land tenure. It is likely these risks will increasingly interact as projections of more erratic weather make small-scale farming more difficult and demand for rural land grows. This paper asks how farmers in Western Tanzania view these compound risks and the influence this has on levels of investment in adaptive agricultural technologies and the demand for land certification in a lab-in-the-field setting. Presenting novel data from a series of framed decision tasks linked to a household survey, this paper explores the relationship between individual risk preferences, adaptive investment and the demand for land certification from a group of 645 rural households in Kigoma, Tanzania. While adaptive investment increases with weather related risk, we find it responds negatively to land tenure risk. Individual risk preferences and past experiences of land disputes play significant roles in adaptive investment. Demand for land certification is high, investment increases significantly after certification, especially for risk-averse individuals. • In a lab-in-the-field setting, adaptive investment responds strongly to land tenure and weather risk. • Investment in adaptive technologies is much lower than under expected income maximization. • Participants show high demand for land certification, but levels of willingness to pay are lower than current costs. • Risk-averse individuals show larger increases in investment after obtaining land certification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • 4% of Tanzanian households use electricity, gas or kerosene as main cooking fuels. • Two thirds of Tanzanian households rely mainly on paraffin lamps for lighting. • We analyse fuel choices using a panel dataset of 3088 households. • Richer households are more likely to use multiple fuels. • Households where the wife has more bargaining power use more modern fuels. Abstract Energy-use statistics in Tanzania reflect the country's low level of industrialization and development. In 2016, only 16.9% of rural and 65.3% of urban inhabitants in mainland Tanzania were connected to some form of electricity. We use a nationally representative three-wave panel dataset (2008–2013) to contribute to the literature on household energy use decisions in Tanzania in the context of the stacking and energy ladder hypotheses. We firstly adopt a panel multinomial-logit approach to model the determinants of household cooking- and lighting-fuel choices, using night time lights data to proxy for electricity access. Secondly, we focus explicitly on energy stacking behaviour, proposing various ways of measuring what is inferred when stacking behaviour is thought of in the context of the energy transition and presenting household level correlates of energy stacking behaviour. Thirdly, since fuel uses have gender-differentiated impacts, we investigate the relevance of common proxies of women's intra-household bargaining power in the decision-making process of household fuel choices. We find that whilst higher household incomes are strongly associated with a transition towards the adoption of more modern fuels, especially for lighting, this transition takes place in a context of significant fuel stacking. In Tanzania, government policy has been aimed mostly at connecting households to the electricity grid. However, the public health, environmental and social benefits of access to modern energy sources are likely to be diminished in a context of significant fuel stacking. Our analysis using proxies of women's intra-household bargaining power suggests that the level of education of the spouse is also a major factor in the transition towards the use of modern fuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]