Sociological Explanation of the Relationship Between ‘Member Participation’ and ‘Success’ of Agricultural Cooperatives (Case Study: Agricultural Cooperatives of Lorestan Province)

Abstract

The present study, which employs a survey method, is applied in terms of the purpose. Its statistical population is the "members" of "active" agricultural cooperatives in Lorestan. The research instrument was a questionnaire whose face validity was determined according to the opinions of 15 members of the statistical community, its content validity was calculated using content validity ratio (CVR) and its reliability was calculated by Cronbach's alpha test which was 0.76 and the data was analyzed by SPSS and Amos software. According to the results of the one-sentence t-test, members' participation in the management of the cooperatives studied is above average, as well as the results of correlation tests of variables and the results of structural equation analysis of the research model. (Members’ participation in general assemblies, members' participation in cooperative oversight, members’ participation in management and members' economic participation,) and "success" of agricultural cooperatives was confirmed and the relationship between them with 99% confidence level showed a direct, positive and significant relationship. The results obtained in relation to the fit indices of the model showed that the research model has a good fit. In this regard, there was no significant difference between married and single men and women in terms of participation in cooperative activities, while there was a direct and significant relationship between the variables of age, membership history, education and members' shares in the success of cooperatives.

Keywords

• cooperatives
• member participation
• success
• agricultural cooperatives