The problem of fuelwood use, or more generally energy ues, as an economic decision is attracting the attention of applied economists. The standard approach is to extend the agricultural household production model to incorporate domestic fuel decisions. The advantage of this approach is that energy choices are viewed as one choice in the context of a series of consumtion and production decisions. A small group of researchers have adapted the household production modeling framework to consider problems such as the adoption of improved
stoves using a binary logit model [Amacher, et al (1992)], the choice between agricultural residues and fuelwood for domestic use with switching regressions [Amacher,et al (1993)] and the decision to purchase or collect fuelwood [Amacher et al (1996)]. Where the demand and supply equations are estimated. Understanding domestic energy choice is
important not only for issues of deforestation in the developing world but as researchers and policy makers are
beginning to realize, for the global environment. The prospects of global warming and the potential importance of carbon sequestration suggests that the economics of fuelwood collection needs to be better understood as part of exploring the potential options to address these problems.
This paper follows the same tradition of modeling as the Amacher et al papers in that the collection decision is seen as part of household resource allocation decision. A micro approach is useful
for isolating the nature of the trade-offs occurring in the household production process with respect to fuel choices. For rural areas in north-eastern Zimbabwe, where the data for this study were collected, energy sources such as
bottled gas and electricity for domestic use are not available outside urban areas. Since the sale of fuelwood is
largely prohibited on communally held land and the prohibition is well enforced through local social institutions sush as the “sebhuku’s court”. For collecting fuelwood, virtually no hired labor is used. The use of family labour was consistently observed and confirmed in discussions with local women. Therefore, households must collect their own fuelwood. Here is where the significant difference lies between this paper and Amacher et al: the decision to collect wood becomes a discrete choice problem concerning whether or not to collect wood at a particular site. This requires a very different approach to modeling the fuelwood collection decision. In this case, a behavioral choice approach is use to model the site choice problem. The fuelwood collector chooses a site, usually at the base of a hill or mountain, from a set of wooded sites. The fuelwood collector is assumed to collect a standard load of wood in terms of weight, and size. Choosing a particular site is likely to be based on the various attributes of the the site such as availability of good quality fuelwood, as well as the measure of effort to get to each site.