Assessing the willingness of non-members to invest in new financial products in agricultural producer cooperatives: A choice experiment

Authors

• Eeva Alho Pellervo Economic Research PTT and University of Helsinki, Finland

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23986/afsci.64945

Keywords:

agricultural cooperative, agribusiness, investment decisions, Q13, Q14, G11

Abstract

The sourcing of outside investment capital from non-members has motivated the emergence of innovative cooperative structures, but the literature on these new organizational forms omits the perspective of an outside investor. This paper reports a study that applied a choice experiment method in a novel setting to increase understanding of the preferences of investors in agricultural firms. A large questionnaire dataset consisting of 845 financially literate subjects enabled testing of the form in which residual and control rights provide incentives for non-producer investors to invest in agricultural firms. The choice experiment data were analyzed using a latent class model. The results demonstrate that the subjects were interested in the currently hypothetical, new types of investment instruments in agricultural producer cooperatives. Three investor classes were distinguished based on the preferences: return-seeking, ownership-oriented and risk-averse investors. Who controls the firm appears to be irrelevant concerning willingness to invest, while the rural ties of the respondent are positively related to the preference for voting rights.