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

Authors: Daniel E. May; Graham J. Tate

Addresses: Department of Rural Affairs\Environment, Harper Adams University College, Newport, Shropshire TF10 8NB, UK. ' Department of Enterprise and Strategic Management, University of Wolverhampton Business School, Telford Campus, Telford TF2 9NT, UK

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.

Keywords: agricultural cooperative alliances; decision making; economic variables; social-psychological variables; cooperation failure; strategic alliances; UK; United Kingdom; agriculture; farmers; willingness to participate; multivariate modelling; theory of planned behaviour.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSBA.2011.044860

International Journal of Strategic Business Alliances, 2011 Vol.2 No.4, pp.329 - 346

Published online: 31 Mar 2015 *

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