Does Service Utilization Improve Members’ Welfare? Evidence from Citrus Cooperatives in China

Guoqiang Liu, Dakuan Qiao, Yuying Liu and Xinhong Fu
Additional contact information
Guoqiang Liu: Faculty of Agricultural Economics and Management, College of Management, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China
Dakuan Qiao: Faculty of Agricultural Economics and Management, College of Management, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China
Yuying Liu: Sichuan Center for Rural Development Research, College of Management, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China
Xinhong Fu: Faculty of Agricultural Economics and Management, College of Management, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu 611130, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-20

Abstract: Farmers’ professional cooperatives (hereinafter referred to as “cooperatives”) are an important carrier for small farmers to organically connect to the big market. Under the background of frequent phenomena such as generalization of cooperatives, cooperative alienation, empty shelled cooperatives and involution of cooperatives in China, whether cooperatives can improve members’ welfare has attracted the attention of all walks of life. Service is the essential attribute of cooperatives, and the key to the functioning of cooperatives is the services utilization by members (hereinafter referred to as “service utilization”). Therefore, examining the impact of service utilization on members’ welfare has important theoretical and practical significance, which helps to scientifically evaluate of the current value of cooperatives in China and then objectively respond to questions about the development of cooperatives. Thus, this study takes the micro-survey data of 74 citrus cooperatives and 524 citrus members in Citrus County, Sichuan Province, China as examples, and uses the endogenous switching model to empirically analyze the impact of service utilization on members’ welfare. The results show that the level of service utilization is not high, and only half of the members use cooperative services. However, service utilization can significantly improve members’ welfare. Specifically, the average treatment effect of service utilization on citrus yields, net returns and household income is respectively 285.446 kg/mu, 1290 yuan/mu and 4980 yuan/person. Simultaneously, service utilization can increase citrus yields, net returns and household income by 13.49%, 18.32% and 17.99% on average. Finally, some countermeasures and suggestions are put forward, such as actively publicizing cooperative’s services, guiding members to use cooperative’s services, improving the standardization level of cooperatives and strengthening policy support for cooperatives.

Keywords: citrus cooperatives; service utilization; welfare; endogenous switching model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6755/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/11/6755/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:11:p:6755-:d:829209

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().