Awareness and cost of installing biogas facility

Findings show that one household plant could cost USD 550- 675 with wide standard deviation suggesting a high variation for the cost of installation depending on the expertise availability and the size of the biogas facility. The size for biogas plants ranged from 6­12m3.

poor (p<2%) categories. However, there was no significant difference of cost of installation between the less poor and the poor respondents. A major explanation to this is that a high proportion of the slightly well off respondents benefited from the pilot project in 1996 when the biogas facilities were installed at half cost by the Danish volunteers. This was a strategy used to sensitise and raise awareness and demand for the biogas facilities. Unfortunately, many people from the less poor and the poor categories could not take up this opportunity because of many reasons, one of them being risk averse. They wanted to learn from others how it worked and what the advantages were to be. However, by the time they were convinced by the technology and started adopting it, the price had gone back to the market price levels. Another reason for not adopting it during the promotion period was that they had other more pressing issues than biogas, such as a need for cash to carter farming activities and paying for education and health services. Various studies have shown that poor people are always risk averse and therefore it takes time for them to adopt a new technology. Many of the studies about technology adoption conclude that the pace of adopting a new technology in developing countries has been slow among the poor.[20] Feder et al., (1985) have identified factors such as aversion to risk and limited access to information as reasons that could partly explain why adoption is slow. Individual characteristics such as education, access to credit, the capacity to bear risk, availability of other inputs and access to information may play a big role in the adoption of the technology.

Wealth Category

Slightly Well-off

Less Poor

Comparison 1

Slightly Well-off

Less Poor

Level of significance

550

635

**

(215)

(125)

Comparison 2

Less Poor

The Poor

670

675

NS

(192)

(250)

Comparison 3

Slightly Well-off

The Poor

550

(250)

675

(176)

***

NS =not significant, ** Significant at p<5%, *** Significant at p<2%

Table 5. A comparison of cost (USD) of installation across wealth ranks