Factors that enable or limit the sustained use of improved firewood cookstoves: Qualitative findings eight years after an intervention in rural Mexico

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to analyze the factors enabling/limiting the use of improved cookstoves among rural fuel wood users from one mestizo and two indigenous communities eight years after an intervention in the state of Michoacan, in Mexico. METHODS A qualitative study with an ethnographic perspective was conducted in 2013/2014 based on 62 interviews with women who had participated in an improved firewood cookstove program in 2005. Thematic qualitative content analysis was performed. RESULTS Very few women from the indigenous communities were using the improved cookstove at the time of the study; the majority had dismantled or had ceased using it; whereas most of those from the mestizo community were using it for all of their cooking activities. In the indigenous communities, characterized by extended families, uptake of new technology was limited by traditional routine practices, rearrangement of rooms in the house, attachment to the traditional stove, a low- or non-risk perception of woodsmoke; gender relations, insufficient training, non-compliance with program recommendations and design-related aspects. Conversely, in the mestizo community, the uptake of the improved cookstove was favored by routine cooking practices in a nuclear family, a previous use of a raised cookstove and social representations on the health-disease-death effects of woodsmoke vs. the health benefits of cooking with improved stoves. The sociocultural dimension of communities and the cookstove design are aspects that either favor or limit the use of improved cookstoves in indigenous and mestizo populations. CONCLUSIONS Effective cookstove programs must take these elements into account from their early planning stages, and blend them into implementation and follow-up. Project communication, training and differentiated follow-up activities ensuring the operation and maintenance of the cookstove, should be designed according to the specific needs and traditions of each community; they should be based on the preferences and needs of the users.