Investigating the effective factors in farmer’s membership in rural production cooperatives in the form of an integrated model of innovation dissemination: Case study of Ardabil province

One of the obstacles to rural development in Iran is the dispersion and fragmentation of agricultural land. This condition, considering the production method and unusability of some of the machinery and the impossibility of using some machinery, increases the cost of production and act as a barrier to rural development. This problem can be solved with the establishment of rural production cooperatives. Therefore, investigating the factors on formation of production cooperatives in order to achieve rural development is important. The main aim of the present study is to investigate the effective factors in farmer’s membership in rural production cooperatives in the form of an integrated model of innovation dissemination. The method of this study is Description- Correlation. Data collection has been done in documentary (secondary data) and surveys (primary data) and the tool used in the survey was a questionnaire. In order to classify members of the population, the amount of land index was used. The statistical society of the present study includes all farmers living in villages covered by rural production cooperatives which have been established in Ardebil from the beginning of the first five-year program to the end of 2006. From the statistical society, 100 people from two groups, one of which was a member of cooperatives and another one was not, were chosen equally with a stratified random sampling. In addition, for determining the validity of the questionnaire we tried to get feedback about the studied issue from some of the colleagues. To determine the quantitative reliability of the questionnaire Corn Bach Alpha coefficient was used and it was around 79/45% which is satisfactory. According to the results of the study, among the innovation dissemination models (dissemination model, farm structure model and integrative model), the integrative model variables could determine 90% of the variance of the effective factors in the formation of rural production cooperatives.