Consumers’ choices for crucial firewood in Saudi Arabia and banning the use of local types

Abstract

Environmental laws in Saudi Arabia ban the using of local firewood, restricting consumers to only imported types. Hence, the study aims to investigate the factors affecting consumers’ choices of imported firewood. To obtain variations in consumers' choices of firewood, in the absence of local firewood, the study employed the stated preference approach to estimate the probability of choosing imported firewood using Logistic regression. The results pose that environmental attitudes and knowledge positively affect imported firewood choices while the aroma and country of origin negatively influence the imported firewood selection. Shopping from stores of recreational supplies and supermarkets increases the likelihood of selecting imported firewood. The collection available in the bagged logs shows a positive effect in selecting imported firewood. The essential of findings supply to shift preferences toward imported firewood comprise increasing environmental awareness, importing logs with a similar aroma to that of local types, and providing labels for the exporter countries. As local firewood is illegal, the latter insight might stimulate the selection mentality among only imported types of firewood.

Keywords

• Firewood
• Environmental Laws
• Stated Preferences
• Social Welfare
• Logistic Regression
• Saudi Arabia