In this paper an attempt has been made to determine the factors that influence individual's decision to choose a particular energy carrier, viz., firewood, LPG, kerosene, and electricity. From the economic perspective, an individual's propensity to choose a particular energy carrier is determined by his/her economic status, carrier availability and prices, household size and other regional and demographic variables. For this reason, the choice of selecting a carrier for a service (e.g. cooking) is expected to vary among individuals. To assess this, the study uses the 1999-2000 National Sample Survey (NSS) data covering over 118,000 households and analyses the rural and urban areas separately. A multinomial logit selection model has been applied for estimating the energy carrier choice decision. The results show that individuals are influenced by per capita income, household size, educational status of the head of the household, occupation of the household members, in addition to other household location characteristics. It is found that the monthly household income and household size have nonlinear relationship on the probability of choosing a fuel. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.