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

type="main"> <p>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.”