Exploring member data for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in California: Comparisons of former and current CSA members

Abstract

This article is a description of data related to the research article entitled “The (un)making of ‘CSA people’: member retention and the customization paradox in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in California” (Galt et al., in press). The data presented were collected through two statewide surveys, conducted via internet-based questionnaire, related to Community Supported Agriculture in California: a former CSA member survey, and a current CSA member survey. We gathered responses for these surveys from April 2014 to January 2015. The data include responses from 409 former CSA members (those who had left) from 27 CSAs and 1149 current CSA members from 41 CSAs. The data tables included here contain information relevant to the retention of CSA members and other concerns, and come from two analyses: 1) comparisons of characteristics of former and current CSA members, and 2) importance-satisfaction analysis (ISA) of former and current CSA members’ experiences with CSA. We make the detailed results of these analyses available in this article so they can inform other researchers’ analyses of the increasingly important phenomenon of CSA member retention, and, more generally, customers’ participation in and satisfaction with a variety of alternative food networks (AFNs).