La Participation des Adhérents Dans Leurs Coopératives Agricoles: Une Étude Exploratoire du Secteur Céréalier Français

When a farmer joins an agricultural cooperative, he or she undertakes to participate in the cooperative economically, as a co‐operator, and also in its administration, as an associate. Yet, today, researchers and directors of cooperatives are observing a drop in member participation in both spheres. The goal of this paper is to build a typology of the members of grain farmer agricultural co‐operatives in France, based on the members’ participation, and then use a multinomial probit model to identify the factors that come into play and result in a member belonging to a given category in the typology. We make the hypothesis that attitudes with respect to organizational involvement and the member's confidence in his or her co‐operative can explain these differences in behavior, along with individual variables tied to the member and his or her farm business, and variables associated with the co‐operative to which the member belongs. Following the analysis of the participation behavior of the 290 members in the sample, the members can be grouped into three distinct categories: “individualists,” “good soldiers,” and “engaged.” The results of the multinomial probit model on these three categories show, in particular, that attitude toward organizational involvement has a significant effect, as do the presence of storage on the farm and the size of the cooperative on the probability of being an “individualist” rather than a “good soldier” or “engaged.”