Resource Mobilization Efficiency of Household Biogas Potential in a Pastoral Economy: The Case of Mt. Suswa, Kenya

Abstract

Despite abundant cattle-dung resources, household biogas adoption remains low across Kenya’s arid and semi-arid pastoral zones. Only 0.5% of Narok County households use biogas as their primary cooking fuel, and prior research has not examined how efficiently pastoralist households can mobilize this feedstock. This study assessed feedstock-mobilization efficiency and its determinants among pastoralist households in Mt. Suswa, Narok County, Kenya, using a non-experimental, cross-sectional design grounded in Production and Efficiency theories. A census of 150 livestock-keeping households was attempted, and 114 complete questionnaires (76.0%) were analyzed. Potential biogas yield was derived from herd size, assuming 9.0 kg of dung per head per day and 50% collection efficiency. It was modelled as an ex-ante resource-mobilization frontier using a Battese–Coelli Translog stochastic frontier with an inefficiency-effects component. Likelihood-ratio tests favored the stochastic Translog specification over both OLS and Cobb-Douglas. Mean mobilization efficiency was 67.04%, revealing a 32.96% structural gap, and 28.1% of households fell below 60% efficiency. Returns to scale were strongly diminishing (0.55 under individual grazing and 0.38 under communal grazing). A significant negative water-access-by-grazing-distance interaction pointed to compounding spatial constraints. Livestock maintenance cost and grazing distance raised the frontier, while communal grazing lowered it by 24.68%. Cultural compatibility with dung-derived energy reduced inefficiency, whereas formal education increased it, a pattern interpreted through life-cycle and Chayanovian accounts of livestock accumulation. Modern cooking-energy use and technology awareness showed marginal, opposing effects. Closing half the efficiency gap could yield about 208 m³ of additional biogas per household annually, displacing roughly 1.26 tonnes of firewood worth KES 18,303. These results suggest that clean-energy deficit stems from spatial, environmental, and institutional frictions. Biogas policy should therefore target household-level mobilization constraints, through culturally anchored extension, co-location of water and energy infrastructure, and localized paddocking, rather than aggregate biomass availability.