Smallholder livestock farmers' willingness to adopt biogas technology to meet the energy crisis in rural Bangladesh

Despite gains in national electrification, rural Bangladesh continues to experience persistent energy insecurity, while livestock-based livelihoods generate large volumes of organic waste that remain underutilized as locally available renewable energy resources. This study investigates smallholder livestock farmers’ willingness to adopt biogas technology as a decentralized clean-energy solution for reducing rural energy shortages and advancing SDG-oriented outcomes related to clean energy, climate resilience, and sustainable livelihoods. A semi-structured household survey was conducted among 480 livestock-farming households selected from 12 Upazilas in four northern districts of Bangladesh, where livestock dependence, rural poverty, and recurrent electricity interruptions make household-scale biogas particularly relevant. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, exploratory factor analysis to construct an awareness index, and a maximum-likelihood probit regression model were employed to identify the determinants of adoption willingness. The model demonstrates strong explanatory performance, with an LR chi-square value of 92.67 and a pseudo R² of 0.5457. The findings reveal that daily electricity shortage (coefficient = 0.3361), awareness of biogas benefits (1.0406), surplus homestead space (0.4826), women’s work-related energy burden (0.0835), electricity-related disruption to children’s education (-0.5707), and educational attainment are statistically associated with willingness to install biogas technology at the reported significance levels. These results indicate that biogas adoption is shaped not only by resources but also by information access, education, infrastructure constraints, gendered labor burdens, and the everyday consequences of unreliable electricity. Scaling rural biogas diffusion therefore requires integrated policy support, including targeted awareness campaigns, technical extension, concessional finance, space-sensitive plant designs, and incorporation of biogas into rural energy planning.