ISSN 2360-798X
Abstract:
Energy is a key requirement for human life. It greatly influences all aspects of human welfare. Thus, access to sustainable, affordable, and modern sources of energy is decisively important to addressing many of the current global development challenges such as poverty, climate change, food insecurity, and inaccessibility to health care and education. Solar energy, which is abundant and accessible with low price and minimum ecological and environmental hazard, is a significant one to bring a desired human’s life improvement. Because of limitation of using this opportunity, the majority of the rural population of Ethiopia is still suffering with lack of electricity access. This study investigates the major factors influencing households’ adoption of solar energy and its impact on household welfare in Ameya district South west shewa. Based on cross-sectional data collected from a sample of 359 households consists of both solar energy Technology adopter and non-adopter was selected using two stage random sampling. Logit regression was used to estimate the factors that influence participation in solar energy Technology while propensity score matching (PSM) was used to estimate its impact on rural household’s welfare. From logit result, the factor that influences adoption of solar energy Technology positively are; access to credit service, education, number of livestock, land size, access to information, training and off farm income Subsequently, the PSM results show that adoption of solar energy technology has a positive significant impact on the household’s income, household expenditure and wealth of household. Last but not least, distance from main market and age of household head, dependent ratio and alternative fuel price decreases the likelihood of adopting the Technology.
Keywords: Impact, Propensity score, solar energy technology, adoption, welfar