Rethinking socio-cultural resistance: Systemic factors behind successful and failed transitions to toilet-linked anaerobic digesters in Nepal and India

Abstract

Toilet-linked anaerobic digesters (TLADs) are promoted as technologies that can simultaneously address household energy, sanitation, and agricultural needs, yet diffusion remains uneven, and project failures are frequently attributed to “socio-cultural resistance.” This paper challenges that narrative by examining why Nepal's domestic biogas programme achieved greater success in implementing TLADs than India's, despite broadly similar policies and rural socio-economic conditions. Using a sustainability transitions framework, we conduct a comparative case study of successful adoption in Nepal's Gandaki Province with non-adoption in Assam, India. The study draws on 57 household interviews, 15 expert-stakeholder interviews, and policy and programme documents. Findings indicate that while socio-cultural norms influence TLAD diffusion, they are not stand-alone determinants of household transitions. Instead, these norms interact with programme design, governance structures, institutional commitment, and wider policy environments, and are conditioned by local socio-technical contexts. These interactions shape how socio-cultural norms manifest in relation to technology adoption at the household level. We argue that failed transitions are too often attributed disproportionately to socio-cultural resistance—a framing that unfairly shifts responsibility onto households while obscuring systemic shortcomings such as inadequate targeting, weak institutional support, and misalignment between technologies and local contexts. A more balanced framing should acknowledge socio-cultural norms while situating them within broader socio-technical and policy environments. Such reframing could shift research and practice away from narratives of household blame and towards critical assessments of contextual fit, programme capacity, and policy coherence, supporting more equitable and context-appropriate transitions in sanitation and household energy systems such as TLADs.