Clean-cooking transitions have the potential to generate large public health, environmental and societal gains for 2.6 billion people in the Global South. Here we use data from Ghana’s largest household energy survey (n = 7,389) to provide two main insights. First, regression analysis of 13 commonly cited socio-economic and demographic determinants of household fuel use indicates remarkably different relationships with clean-fuel use at different stages of the transition process. We propose a stage-based transition framework that can help inform the rollout of clean-cooking interventions. Second, we identify factors that are associated with the exclusive use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) using a statistically powered sample of exclusive LPG users (n = 693). We show that, all else equal, increases in wealth and urbanicity are not—contrary to conventional wisdom—associated with a transition from primary to exclusive LPG use. Whereas further research is needed to determine causality, our findings highlight the potential for more careful measurement, isolating each stage of the clean-cooking transition, to inform new insights and policy opportunities.

清洁烹饪转型有可能为全球南方 26 亿人口带来巨大的公共卫生、环境和社会效益。在这里，我们使用加纳最大的家庭能源调查 ( n  = 7,389) 的数据来提供两个主要见解。首先，对 13 个常用的家庭燃料使用的社会经济和人口决定因素的回归分析表明，在转型过程的不同阶段，与清洁燃料使用的关系截然不同。我们提出了一个基于阶段的过渡框架，可以帮助为清洁烹饪干预措施的推出提供信息。其次，我们使用独家液化石油气 (LPG) 用户的统计样本 ( n  = 693) 确定了与独家使用液化石油气 (LPG) 相关的因素。我们表明，在其他条件相同的情况下，财富和城市化的增长与传统观点相反，与从主要使用液化石油气到仅使用液化石油气的转变并不相关。尽管需要进一步研究来确定因果关系，但我们的研究结果强调了更仔细测量的潜力，隔离清洁烹饪转型的每个阶段，以提供新的见解和政策机会。