Why do some household users of solar cookers turn back to traditional cooking?
Users should be more involved in technical development. The objective of the solar cooking technological change is to replace conventional stoves that are fuelled by environmentally non-sustainable, polluting, expensive, less available, and/or less hygienic energy sources. However, facts indicate that in households in which there is an option for conventional cooking, the interest in continued and regular use of solar cookers has declined. This happened even among direct target groups of the studied solar-cooker projects, where solar cookers were provided to the households free of charge or at subsidised prices. In the following, two case studies show some basic user aspect that led to the decline of interest in using solar cookers. Solar Box Cooker in India In India, there has been a national solar-cooker program since the beginning of the 80’s. To date, 400,000 Indian-produced solar box cookers have been sold, of which 40,000 were sold in Gujarat. However, more than 50% of the urban
