Household energy mobility and transition sustainability: Evidence from an eleven-year balanced panel in Tanzania

This study examines the transition to cooking fuels among households in Tanzania, driven by the ongoing reliance on traditional fuels and the need for cleaner energy alternatives. Utilizing data from five waves of the Tanzania National Panel Survey (2008–2020), we analyze a balanced panel of 441 households to provide a unique longitudinal perspective on "energy mobility". Unlike previous cross-sectional studies, this research explicitly identifies bidirectional movement, revealing that while 14.06% of households were "steady climbers," 3.4% were "steady decliners" and 11.56% "fluctuated" between categories, challenging the linear assumptions of the Energy Ladder Model. Employing random effects ordered logit and multinomial logit models with clustered standard errors, we find that while firewood remains the dominant cooking fuel, there is a gradual shift towards transition fuels like charcoal, with limited adoption of clean fuels such as gas and electricity. Key findings reveal that rural location is the strongest predictor of remaining "always dirty" (increasing the probability by 31.5 percentage points), while human capital and income serve as critical stepping stones for breaking biomass dependence. Our findings provide a historical baseline for current interventions, highlighting the need for sustained policy support, such as Pay-As-You-Go for gas, to prevent transition reversals and address the deep-seated rural-urban inequality gap.