Social Capital, Member Participation, and Cooperative Performance: Evidence from China’s Zhejiang

Qiao Liang (), Zuhui Huang (), Haiyang Lu and Xinxin Wang

International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 2015, vol. 18, issue 01, 30

Abstract: Despite the position of farmer cooperatives in markets and their social capital based characteristics, neither the definition nor the role of social capital in farmer cooperatives has been broadly investigated. Thus, this study seeks to develop a framework for defining and clarifying various aspects of social capital and examines the effects of social capital on members’ participation in collective activities and on the economic performance of farmer cooperatives. Social capital is indicated in terms of three dimensions, i.e., the external, relational, and cognitive dimensions. A statistical model is applied to a database consisting of 147 farmer cooperatives in China’s Zhejiang province. The results demonstrate a positive relationship between certain dimensions of social capital and members’ participation in training and general meetings. In addition, each dimension of social capital has a significant and positive impact on the economic performance of cooperatives.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Labor and Human Capital; Productivity Analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/197768/files/20140050.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:ifaamr:197768

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.197768

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Food and Agribusiness Management Review from International Food and Agribusiness Management Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().