Abstract
European society, with its steadily increasing welfare levels, is not only concerned with food (safety, prices), but also with other aspects such as biodiversity loss, landscape degradation, and pollution of water, soil, and atmosphere. To a great extent these concerns can be translated into a larger concept named sustainable development, which can be defined as a normative concept by). Sustainability in the food chain means creating a new sustainable agro-food system while taking the institutional element into account. While different concepts of sustainability abound, in recent years, spontaneous groups of consumers called solidarity purchase groups (SPG) have been developing. In short, they are characterized by an economy that is not necessarily local, but ethical and equitable, where social and economic territorial relations tend to develop districts and networks. One of the main characteristics of a SPG is the direct relationships between small farms and their customers; a relationship that is characterized by consumer participation and farmer specialization. This study aims to address issues related to organizational frameworks, at farm and chain level, and to assess those elements that lead to consumer choice and satisfaction.
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“The development of GASs in Sicily and its relation with the world of production”, Demetra Department, University of Palermo, Sicily Region—Department of Food and Agriculture Resources, National Institute of Agricultural Economics (INEA).
5th General Agriculture Census, Sicily.
Italian National Institute of Statistics.
13th and 14th General Population Census, Sicily.
4th and 5th General Agriculture Census, Sicily.
The only data available on GASs that are operating in Italy are on the Italian GAS network web site, where the GASs can register on a voluntary basis.
Time Banks are based on the free sharing of time and know-how. Each partner dedicates some of his time and in turn receives other services, always on a volunteer basis. The hours that a partner dedicates to a certain cause become credits that can be exchanged through an appropriate service (Bank) among partners. In the Book Banks the partners establish libraries, which are often “virtual,” where books that one intends to lend are put at the disposal of other partners, covering cultural and economic needs.
The partial correlation result from the correlation between two variables when the effect of a third variable is annulled; the formula for calculating the KMO is the following:
\( {\text{KMO}} = {{\sum\limits_{i}^{p} {\sum\limits_{j \ne i}^{p} {r_{ij}^{2} } } } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{\sum\limits_{i}^{p} {\sum\limits_{j \ne i}^{p} {r_{ij}^{2} } } } {\sum\limits_{i}^{p} {\sum\limits_{j \ne i}^{p} {r_{ij}^{2} } } + \sum\limits_{i}^{p} {\sum\limits_{j \ne i}^{p} {r_{ij,12 \ldots \ldots q}^{2} } } }}} \right. \kern-\nulldelimiterspace} {\sum\limits_{i}^{p} {\sum\limits_{j \ne i}^{p} {r_{ij}^{2} } } + \sum\limits_{i}^{p} {\sum\limits_{j \ne i}^{p} {r_{ij,12 \ldots \ldots q}^{2} } } }} \)where \( r_{ij.12 \ldots q}^{2} \) is the correlation coefficient between x i and x j excluding extracted factors and x ij is the simple coefficient between the variables.
Bartlett’s of sphericity is based on Chi-squared:
\( x^{2} = (n - 1 - \frac{2v + 5}{6})Log_{e} \left| {R_{vv} } \right| \)where n is the number of cases, v is the number of element present on the diagonal of the correlation matrix and \( \left| {R_{vv} } \right| \) is the determinant of the correlation matrix. The degrees of freedom are calculated in the following way:
\( df = v\frac{v - 1}{2}. \)
Where Y i is the i-th new variable, X 1, X 2, …… , X p are the standardized original P variables and w i1, w i2, …, w ip , are the values of the loading weights associated to each of them.
Despite the literature, the number of Principal Components extracted is rather large, the choice of the number of factors to extract has tried to maximize the variance explained using the fewest possible factors (De Lillo et al. 2007). Also, to avoid arbitrary solutions to the number of components to extract, but still remain subjective, in addition to the variance explained jointly used the Scree Method (graphic method) which aims to consider the difference between successive eigenvalues dk = λ(k − 1) − λ(k), where the number of components is determined by where dk is almost constant for different values of k (Anania and Tarsitano 1995).
More in detail the Varimax rotation is orthogonal and seeks the position of the axis that maximizes the variance among all the factors through a transformation of the factorial coefficients of each factor. In particular what has to be maximized is the variance of the factorial coefficients squared among the factors (De Lillo et al. 2007).
Price satisfaction regarding organic products is explained with the final price being much lower when compared with prices in the traditional channels of distribution. In fact, in GASs there are no intermediaries between farmer and consumer resulting in lower prices for consumers and higher earnings for producers.
Purchase groups are organized product purchase forms which are not motivated by aspects of environmental or social solidarity but, prevalently by aspects of economic and organizational convenience for the purchases.
The interpretation of the variable producer partner is amenable to the distribution of frequency of the forms expressed by the same variables.
The advantage of the K-means technique lies in the shifting of cases from one group to another optimizing the objective-criteria.
The decision to consider only the first factor derives from the capacity to include within factor 1 a great part of the variability of the sample. Remaining with the description of the factors of paragraph 5 of this paper, we need only to remind that Factor 1 was defined “Agro-food systems sustainability” since it is characterized by the variables amenable to the motivations that brought the individuals to adhere to the GAS.
In this case supply rigidity refers to the difficulty, mainly experienced by small group pf consumers, to buy a volume of products big enough to make the delivery convenient. For this reason introducing new products or widening the offer of goods is diffiult. Organizative rigidity is, on the other hand, referred to the managerial aspect related to the procedure followed by GAS members to pick up products. Very often they are organized in a specific place in a short range of hours with little margin of flexibility.
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Cembalo, L., Migliore, G. & Schifani, G. Sustainability and New Models of Consumption: The Solidarity Purchasing Groups in Sicily. J Agric Environ Ethics 26, 281–303 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-011-9360-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-011-9360-0