Has the agricultural cooperatives served each member fairly? A new perspective based on utilization level of member services

Abstract

With the rapid increase of the number of agricultural cooperatives in China, the problem of fake cooperatives has become more and more serious. The core problem is that some members do not use cooperative services, and elite capture phenomenon appears in the organization. Since services are one of the most important public goods attributes of cooperatives, it is important to ensure that more members use them. What are the factors that affect members’ utilization level of cooperative services? Existing research does not provide a comprehensive answer. Based on the micro-survey data of 74 citrus cooperatives and 524 citrus members in China, the article found out that 50.9% of the members did not use any services provided by cooperatives, and only 20.04% of the members used cooperatives’ sales services. So, this study empirically analyzes the factors that influence the use of cooperatives’ services by puns model. The results show that quality of service, service convenience and mountain terrain promote the use of cooperative sales services for members. In addition, cooperative knowledge, planting area, surplus distribution, quality of service, and service convenience significantly increased the utilization leve of cooperative sales services by members. Finally, the study puts forward some suggestions, such as propagating cooperative sales service, improving the quality of cooperative sales service, perfecting cooperative distribution system.