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Objectives’ alignment between members and agricultural cooperatives

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Abstract

Members’ commitment lessens when agricultural cooperatives grow larger. Their organization becomes more complex, and their membership more heterogeneous, which threatens their sustainability and leads them to implement specific mechanisms for collective decisions. We explore how the alignment of objectives between a multi-purpose cooperative and its members influences member commitment. We estimate a multinomial probit model on a cross-section sample of 3205 members from a large agricultural cooperative in France. We assess the determinants of member commitment through four factors: the offer of new agricultural practices, the availability of outlets and supplies to members, the farm distance to the cooperative headquarters and the farm governance. We show that the adoption of new agricultural practices has a small but significant effect. The availability of outlets and supplies has the strongest effect on the economic involvement of the farmers. Other determinants, such as farm governance or geographical distance to the cooperative headquarters, also reinforce member commitment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SMART-LERECO, AGROCAMPUS OUEST, INRA, 35000, Rennes, France

    François Bareille & Sabine Duvaleix-Tréguer

  2. BIOEPAR, INRA, ONIRIS, 44000, Nantes, France

    Florence Bonnet-Beaugrand

Authors
  1. François Bareille
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  2. Florence Bonnet-Beaugrand
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  3. Sabine Duvaleix-Tréguer
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Correspondence to Sabine Duvaleix-Tréguer.

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Bareille, F., Bonnet-Beaugrand, F. & Duvaleix-Tréguer, S. Objectives’ alignment between members and agricultural cooperatives. Rev Agric Food Environ Stud 98, 75–91 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41130-017-0048-3

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