Neuroeconomic Decisions in Cocoa Producers: Impact of Cooperative Innovation Methodology on Prospecting for Fair Trade Organic Niche as an Incentive for Agricultural Sustainability

Abstract

This article focuses on analyzing the neuroeconomic decisions in cocoa producers and the impact of this methodology on the productivity of fair trade organic cocoa producers on the population of Nuevo Bambamarca, province of Tocache, Peru. The main elements of the methodology are the incentive phase of associativity, the alignment phase to macro trends, the prospecting phase of the country to be exported to, the prospecting phase of the type of niche market, the prospecting phase of fair participation, the innovation and design phase of the prototype, the standardization phase of the raw material technical specifications for collection, the strengthening phase the producer’s commitment, the learning phase of the producer in crop management, and the evaluation phase of productivity in the field. This research study is pre-experimental, cross-sectional, explanatory, and descriptive. The experimental group made up of 20 fair trade organic cocoa producers of the Cooperativa Agroindustrial Naranjillo obtained on average a profitability of 143 EUR per campaign higher than the control group made up of 20 producers of conventional cocoa that did not belong to the cooperative who obtained a loss of −642 EUR per campaign, even with the same purchase price of 1.92 EUR per kg for both cases during the 2011 campaign. It is concluded that Hypothesis 1 is met, it shows that the cooperative innovation methodology of prospecting for fair trade organic niche encourages the productivity of producers of the experimental group with respect to the control group.

Neuroeconomics in Cooperatives: Hierarchy of Emotional Patterns in the Collective Decision-Making Process for Sustainable Development

“…To predict organizational behavior, it is sufficient to identify the learning process in a hierarchical path from the bottom up with the correlation of holistic integrated innovation competencies of each small producer in each of its microworlds facing individual entrepreneurship decisions developing competencies that would then allow him to make collective decisions at the managerial level in an organization. According to Mavrodiev, P.; Schweitzer (2021) [68] collective wisdom could establish that the average of all opinions is closer to the truth, but groups would make decisions to maintain their initial decision if no more information is available, but if they had more information they could change their initial decision as small cocoa producers who preferred to maintain their status as individual entrepreneurs even when they did not achieve the expected results in Zúñiga (2021) [9].…”

“…When analyzing the results of the behavior of collective entrepreneurship of small producers of alternative organic cocoa crops and fair trade comparing it with the behavior of individual entrepreneurship of small producers, it was identified that productivity was higher in collective entrepreneurship considering that prices were the same in both groups (Zúñiga, 2021) [9].…”

“…Likewise, the process of the fast track (emotional aspect) and slow track (rational aspect) of the neocortex of small collective producers could identify coherence between both processes of collective decision-making that were denominated in the article "Neuroe-conomic Decision in cocoa producers" as a decision of cooperative strengthening, unlike the incoherence that could be observed in the small individual producers who identified themselves as an opportunist decision of an association of the individual entrepreneur (Zúñiga, 2021) [9]. According to Gowdy, Dollimore, Wilson and Witt (2013) [69], cosmology and economics have been trying to understand hierarchical processes in man and cooperative behaviors from a more complete focus in neuroscience-based on the analysis of man in his configuration as a self-sufficient being and being selfish, the competence of individuals would motivate them to function well considering that there would be an ideal optimal natural state.…”

“…In the organization, information flows between the different levels of its hierarchical structure such as grassroots partners, managing partners, and collaborators by measuring the level of correlation between their sixteen holistic innovation competencies such as stress management, belief in being creative, self-knowledge, introspection, logical and lateral thinking, intuition and reason, high self-motivation, ease of formulating problems, a constant search for ideas, transgressive attitude, adventurous attitude, creative leadership, knowing how to think naively, search for recognition, search for life improvement, and level of holistic innovation (Zúñiga, 2020) [24]. The emotional alignment of the organization would manifest itself in a greater correlation of the holistic competencies of innovation that are located in the neocortex of the members of the different levels of the organization, consequently, to greater organizational memory, and lower corporate risk [33] and greater sustainability [9].…”

“…In this sense, in the decision-making process of small producers who decided to adopt alternative crops to coca, we could find the emotional configuration of their predisposition to change and their learning by taking into account the importance of neuroeconomics and the coherence between the subprocesses of a "fast decision" (emotional process) and a "slow decision" (rational process) [7,8], and their impact on agricultural sustainability [9] (Zúñiga, 2021), where the productivity of collective entrepreneurship was greater than individual entrepreneurship [10]. However, collective groups could be more productive, depending on the incentive level and the individual efficiencies of the members that formed it [11].…”