Using local provincial authorities, the government of Zambia has demonstrated renewed interest in cooperatives as a means of reaching smallholder farmers in rural areas. There exists, however, the problem of high heterogeneity within cooperatives regarding members' commitment, with many passive members holding only formal membership and having a minimal understanding of the cooperative's principles and benefits. The main objective of this study was to analyse how varying levels of members' commitment determine their economic benefits. We selected a total of 215 rice farmers (72 active and 143 passive members) from two rice-dominant districts and used the propensity score matching technique and endogenous treatment regression model for the analysis. The study results show that educational level, distance to the cooperative, members' perception about trust and acceptance, and value of the investment in the cooperative have a considerable influence on member commitment. The results further indicate that actively committed members of the cooperative achieve much more economic benefits than passive members.

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As the world population is continuously growing, agricultural practices should be done sustainably to achieve food security, nutrition, and economic success. Due to the networking, economies of scale and improved access to information, collective actions and producers' cooperatives seem to be a good instrument for acquiring, sharing and promoting such practices. Therefore, the main aim of this study was to estimate the effect of cooperative membership on the awareness and adoption of environmentally sustainable practices. We purposively selected 210 members and 166 non-members of maize cooperatives in the Southern province of Zambia. To cater for both observed and unobserved bias in the study, we adopted the propensity score matching and endogenous treatment effect models. The study results confirm that cooperative membership positively influences the awareness and adoption of sustainable environmental practices used in the study but encourages the usage of synthetic fertilizers because of the government input subsidy.