DETERMINANTS OF COOPERATIVE PATRONAGE IN ALBERTA

Co-operative managers face an increasingly heterogeneous pool of poten tial members. Because these members bring a variety of economic and no neconomic demands to their co-operative, managers must know how differ ent member characteristics and performance perceptions influence their decision to patronize a co-operative This study applies three models of co-operative patronage to survey data from rural al Alberta. A Pois son regression is used to determine the factors that explain the numbe r of co-operatives used, while an index of co-operative patronage meas ures the relative intensity of co-operative versus proprietary firm us age. A third model contucts a Tobit analysis of the amount of business conducted with each of several different types of co-operatives. The results show that older farmers tend to partonize move co-operatives, and larger farms do a greater shave of their business with co-operativ es than do smaller firms. Farmers who believe co-operatives offer inno vative products and services are more likely to patronize them, while a belief that co-operatives should play an active role in noneconomic matters is not important.