How does household ageing influence cooking energy transition in rural China? A bargaining between elderly and non-elderly adults

The Chinese government considers achieving an energy transition from traditional biofuels to modern energy as one of its major rural development and environmental protection goals. However, the transition faces challenges from the population ageing trend. This article examines how ageing influences household cooking fuel use in rural China. It builds a theoretical framework that takes preference differences and bargaining between elderly and non-elderly adults into account and tests the hypotheses derived from this framework using survey data collected in rural central China in 2021. The empirical results suggest that ageing households consume less energy for cooking. Households with a larger share of elderly in the household spend less on modern cooking energy but more on commercial firewood, due to the lower affordability but higher preference for traditional energy of the elderly. Saving preference can reduce household modern energy consumption but exhibits intergenerational transmission characteristics. These results signal that the rural energy transition will still be a long-term program. Diversifying the livelihood choices and lower risk expectations of ageing households could contribute to rural energy transition.