Exploring economic and social-psychological factors in explaining farmers' willingness to participate in cooperative alliances

Abstract

Cooperative alliances are considered as useful business strategies to reduce costs and to increase negotiation power. However, these alliances are not common in some regions of the UK. The paper proposes a new multivariate model based on the theory of planned behaviour to test the hypothesis that the importance that farmers attribute to cooperative alliances is determined by economic and social-psychological variables. Evidence supporting this hypothesis was found from a sample of ex-sugar beet farmers of the West Midlands of the UK. This finding provides an additional explanation for the cooperation failure in this country.