@article{Mensah:125946,
      recid = {125946},
      author = {Mensah, Edouard R. and Karantininis, Kostas and Adegbidi,  Anselme and Okello, Julius Juma},
      title = {Determinants of Commitment to Agricultural Cooperatives:  Cashew Nuts Farmers in Benin},
      address = {2012},
      number = {1007-2016-79578},
      series = {Selected paper},
      pages = {34},
      year = {2012},
      abstract = {Forming and using cooperatives as marketing channel is  usually advised to African smallholder farmers for  overcoming the constraint of market access. However,  limited evidence of cooperative behavior in marketing has  been observed. In this paper, we estimate a two-stage model  of commitment to cooperatives by cashew nut farmers in  Benin, West Africa. In the first stage, we use data on 109  non-members and 168 members and estimate a binary Logit  model of farmer’s discrete choice with respect to  committing to membership. In the second stage, we use the  members’ data to estimate a Tobit model of the proportion  of produce delivered to the cooperative, after controlling  for the endogeneity of the proportion of presales.  Empirical results reveal that the commitment to membership  depends on the assessment of prices offered by the  marketing channels, the farmer’s preferences for the  specific attributes of the channels, the total farm size,  and some psycho-sociological factors; the commitment to  business depends on prices and transaction costs in the  channels. Our findings call cooperatives for improving  commitment by considering the subjective and economic  reasoning of the farmers, and setting formal contracts  between members and their organization.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/125946},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.125946},
}