IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/epolit/v40y2023i3d10.1007_s40888-023-00311-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of power outages on households in Zambia

Author

Listed:
  • Imaduddin Ahmed

    (UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, Engineering for International Development
    Tony Bair Institute for Global Change – Energy and Climate Advisory)

  • Priti Parikh

    (UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, Engineering for International Development)

  • Parfait Munezero

    (Stockholm University
    Ericsson)

  • Graham Sianjase

    (UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction)

  • D’Maris Coffman

    (UCL Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction)

Abstract

As global average temperatures rise, so does the frequency and intensity of El Niño-induced droughts, which in turn threaten the reliability of hydropower. 1.4 billion people live in countries where hydropower constitutes more than a quarter of the electricity production and which have experienced El Niño droughts, meaning many more power outages can be expected around the world. Little research has been conducted on the impact of power outages on mental health. This study takes Zambia as its case study to examine the impact that El Niño droughts have had on the lives of householders connected to a highly hydropower-dependant electricity grid, and includes the impact it has had on their physical and self-reported mental health. Using 54 online responses to a survey, we found that the greatest impacts of outages spoiled food, compromised entertainment, compromised ability to work and limitation in cooking options. More than a fifth of respondents reported experiencing self-reported depression to a major degree or all of the time due to power outages, with individuals writing their own responses that they felt debilitated, experienced reduced communication and reduced activities, and stress. Using Bayesian inference, we found that changes in sleeping patterns arising from power outages was a statistically significant predictor of self-reported depression. 63% of surveyed households were willing to pay approximately USD 0.10/kWh as of the end of 2019, about double the tariff that they did, to ensure reliable electricity supply. Household income was a statistically significant predictor of willingness to pay more.

Suggested Citation

  • Imaduddin Ahmed & Priti Parikh & Parfait Munezero & Graham Sianjase & D’Maris Coffman, 2023. "The impact of power outages on households in Zambia," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 40(3), pages 835-867, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:epolit:v:40:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s40888-023-00311-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s40888-023-00311-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40888-023-00311-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s40888-023-00311-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abdullah, Sabah & Mariel, Petr, 2010. "Choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to improve electricity services," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4570-4581, August.
    2. Carlsson, Fredrik & Martinsson, Peter, 2008. "Does it matter when a power outage occurs? -- A choice experiment study on the willingness to pay to avoid power outages," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 1232-1245, May.
    3. Pepermans, Guido, 2011. "The value of continuous power supply for Flemish households," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 7853-7864.
    4. Nkosi, Nomsa Phindile & Dikgang, Johane, 2018. "Pricing electricity blackouts among South African households," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 11(C), pages 37-47.
    5. Stephan Klasen & Tobias Lechtenfeld & Kristina Meier & Johannes Rieckmann, 2012. "Benefits trickling away: the health impact of extending access to piped water and sanitation in urban Yemen," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(4), pages 537-565, December.
    6. Meles, Tensay Hadush & Mekonnen, Alemu & Beyene, Abebe D. & Hassen, Sied & Pattanayak, Subhrendu K. & Sebsibie, Samuel & Klug, Thomas & Jeuland, Marc, 2021. "Households' valuation of power outages in major cities of Ethiopia: An application of stated preference methods," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    7. Musiliu O. Oseni, 2017. "Self-Generation and Households' Willingness to Pay for Reliable Electricity Service in Nigeria," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4).
    8. George Y. Obeng & Ebenezer Mensah & George Ashiagbor & Owusu Boahen & Daniel J. Sweeney, 2017. "Watching the Smoke Rise Up: Thermal Efficiency, Pollutant Emissions and Global Warming Impact of Three Biomass Cookstoves in Ghana," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-14, May.
    9. M.‐H. Chen & J. G. Ibrahim & C. Yiannoutsos, 1999. "Prior elicitation, variable selection and Bayesian computation for logistic regression models," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 61(1), pages 223-242.
    10. Meles, Tensay Hadush, 2020. "Impact of power outages on households in developing countries: Evidence from Ethiopia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    11. Hotaling, Chelsea & Bird, Stephen & Heintzelman, Martin D., 2021. "Willingness to pay for microgrids to enhance community resilience," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    12. Fredrik Carlsson & Peter Martinsson, 2007. "Willingness to Pay among Swedish Households to Avoid Power Outages: A Random Parameter Tobit Model Approach," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 75-90.
    13. Kenneth Chukwuemeka Asanya & Mohamed Kharrat & Akaninyene Udo Udom & Emmanuel Torsen, 2023. "Robust Bayesian approach to logistic regression modeling in small sample size utilizing a weakly informative student’s t prior distribution," Communications in Statistics - Theory and Methods, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(2), pages 283-293, January.
    14. Carlsson, Fredrik & Kataria, Mitesh & Lampi, Elina & Martinsson, Peter, 2021. "Past and present outage costs – A follow-up study of households’ willingness to pay to avoid power outages," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    15. Imaduddin Ahmed, 2021. "The Political Economy of Hydropower Dependant Nations," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-030-71266-2, December.
    16. Eliana Carranza & Robyn Meeks, 2021. "Energy Efficiency and Electricity Reliability," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(3), pages 461-475, July.
    17. Shengyu Tao & Yiqiang Zhang & Meng Yuan & Ruixiang Zhang & Zhongyan Xu & Yaojie Sun, 2021. "Behavioral Economics Optimized Renewable Power Grid: A Case Study of Household Energy Storage," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-17, July.
    18. Morrissey, Karyn & Plater, Andrew & Dean, Mary, 2018. "The cost of electric power outages in the residential sector: A willingness to pay approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 141-150.
    19. Marx, M.A. & Rodriguez, C.V. & Greenko, J. & Das, D. & Heffernan, R. & Karpati, A.M. & Mostashari, F. & Balter, S. & Layton, M. & Weiss, D., 2006. "Diarrheal illness detected through syndromic surveillance after a massive power outage: New York City, August 2003," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 96(3), pages 547-553.
    20. Reichl, Johannes & Schmidthaler, Michael & Schneider, Friedrich, 2013. "The value of supply security: The costs of power outages to Austrian households, firms and the public sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 256-261.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aweke, Abinet Tilahun & Navrud, Ståle, 2022. "Valuing energy poverty costs: Household welfare loss from electricity blackouts in developing countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    2. Amoah, Anthony & Ferrini, Silvia & Schaafsma, Marije, 2019. "Electricity outages in Ghana: Are contingent valuation estimates valid?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    3. Motz, Alessandra, 2021. "Security of supply and the energy transition: The households' perspective investigated through a discrete choice model with latent classes," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    4. Bigerna, Simona & Choudhary, Piyush & Kumar Jain, Nikunj & Micheli, Silvia & Polinori, Paolo, 2022. "Avoiding unanticipated power outages: households’ willingness to pay in India," MPRA Paper 114160, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Richard S. J. Tol, 2023. "Navigating the energy trilemma during geopolitical and environmental crises," Papers 2301.07671, arXiv.org.
    6. Meles, Tensay Hadush & Mekonnen, Alemu & Beyene, Abebe D. & Hassen, Sied & Pattanayak, Subhrendu K. & Sebsibie, Samuel & Klug, Thomas & Jeuland, Marc, 2021. "Households' valuation of power outages in major cities of Ethiopia: An application of stated preference methods," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    7. Deutschmann, Joshua W. & Postepska, Agnieszka & Sarr, Leopold, 2021. "Measuring willingness to pay for reliable electricity: Evidence from Senegal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    8. Meles, Tensay Hadush, 2020. "Impact of power outages on households in developing countries: Evidence from Ethiopia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    9. Jin, Taeyoung & Lee, Tae Eui & Kim, Dowon, 2023. "Value of lost load estimation for the South Korea's manufacturing sector—finding the gap between the supply and demand side," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    10. Wen, Cheng & Lovett, Jon C. & Kwayu, Emmanuel J. & Msigwa, Consalva, 2023. "Off-grid households’ preferences for electricity services: Policy implications for mini-grid deployment in rural Tanzania," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    11. Hashemi, Majid, 2021. "The economic value of unsupplied electricity: Evidence from Nepal," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    12. Bigerna, Simona & Choudhary, Piyush & Jain, Nikunj Kumar & Micheli, Silvia & Polinori, Paolo, 2024. "An empirical investigation of the Indian households’ willingness to pay to avoid power outages," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    13. Jin, Taeyoung & Lee, Tae Eui & Kim, Dowon, 2024. "Valuing flexible resources in the Korean electricity market based on stated preference methods," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    14. Woo, C.K. & Ho, T. & Shiu, A. & Cheng, Y.S. & Horowitz, I. & Wang, J., 2014. "Residential outage cost estimation: Hong Kong," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 204-210.
    15. Ovaere, Marten & Heylen, Evelyn & Proost, Stef & Deconinck, Geert & Van Hertem, Dirk, 2019. "How detailed value of lost load data impact power system reliability decisions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 1064-1075.
    16. Kaczmarski, Jesse I., 2022. "Public support for community microgrid services," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    17. Hotaling, Chelsea & Bird, Stephen & Heintzelman, Martin D., 2021. "Willingness to pay for microgrids to enhance community resilience," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    18. Paul Nduhuura & Matthias Garschagen & Abdellatif Zerga, 2021. "Impacts of Electricity Outages in Urban Households in Developing Countries: A Case of Accra, Ghana," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-26, June.
    19. Nkosi, Nomsa Phindile & Dikgang, Johane, 2018. "Pricing electricity blackouts among South African households," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 11(C), pages 37-47.
    20. Johane Dikgang & Nomsa P. Nkosi, 2018. "Pricing electricty blackout among South African households," Working Papers 727, Economic Research Southern Africa.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Power outages; Impact on households; Mental health; Physical health; Sleep;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D1 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior
    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
    • M2 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development
    • O2 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy
    • R2 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:epolit:v:40:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s40888-023-00311-0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.