Participation Members In Their Agricultural Cooperatives: An Exploratory Study of the French sector Cerealier

En adherent a une cooperative agricole, les agriculteurs s'engagent a participer economiquement a celle-ci en tant que cooperateurs et egalement a participer a son gouvernement, en tant qu'associes. Or aujourd'hui, les chercheurs et directeurs de cooperatives constatent une baisse de ces deux niveaux de participation. Ce papier a pour objectif de construire une typologie des adherents de cooperatives agricoles du secteur cerealier francais au regard de leurs comportements de participation puis d'identifier les determinants qui expliquent l'appartenance des adherents a une des classes de la typologie a partir d'un modele probit multinomial. Nous faisons l'hypothese que les attitudes de confiance et d'implication organisationnelles manifestees par l'adherent envers sa cooperative peuvent expliquer ces differences de comportements aux cotes de variables individuelles liees a l'adherent et son exploitation agricole et de variables liees a la cooperative a laquelle il adhere. L'analyse des comportements de participation permet de regrouper les 290 adherents de l'echantillon en trois classes distinctes: << les individualistes >>, << les bons soldats >> et << les engages >>. Les resultats du probit multinomial sur ces 3 classes montrent notamment un effet significatif de l'attitude d'implication organisationnelle, de la presence de stockage a la ferme et de la taille de la cooperative sur la probabilite d'etre individualiste par rapport aux deux autres classes. When a farmer joins an agricultural cooperative, he or she undertakes to participate in the cooperative economically, as a co-operator, and also in its administration, as an associate. Yet, today, researchers and directors of cooperatives are observing a drop in member participation in both spheres. The goal of this paper is to build a typology of the members of grain farmer agricultural co-operatives in France, based on the members' participation, and then use a multinomial probit model to identify the factors that come into play and result in a member belonging to a given category in the typology. We make the hypothesis that attitudes with respect to organizational involvement and the member's confidence in his or her co-operative can explain these differences in behavior, along with individual variables tied to the member and his or her farm business, and variables associated with the co-operative to which the member belongs. Following the analysis of the participation behavior of the 290 members in the sample, the members can be grouped into three distinct categories: individualists, good soldiers, and engaged. The results of the multinomial probit model on these three categories show, in particular, that attitude toward organizational involvement has a significant effect, as do the presence of storage on the farm and the size of the cooperative on the probability of being an individualist rather than a good soldier or engaged.