Research On The Influence Of Members’ Trust On The Internal Financing Of Farmer Cooperatives

Under the national conditions of "big country smallholder",smallholder farmers are numerous and will exist for a long time.As an important way to "organize smallholder farmers",farmer cooperatives are the only way to organically connect smallholder farmers with modern agricultural development.However,lack of funds and financing difficulties have become prominent obstacles for the further development of cooperatives.On the one hand,the cooperative is a trade and labor as the link of the "joint" rather than the combination of capital,it is difficult to get the favour of financial institutions and credit support,also shows that its own "blood-making" cooperative function that relieve internal financing problems is the key to its long-term development,and cooperative members is the core strength in the process of "blood".On the other hand,the trust relationship formed by the long-term exchanges between farmers limits the scope of cooperative objects,and the leaders of cooperatives tend to control the decision-making and management rights,so cooperatives are faced with a crisis of trust.The lack of trust leads to the lack of internal investment motivation of members,coupled with the heterogeneity of the membership structure,the phenomenon of ordinary members "joining the company but not buying shares" still exists.Therefore,based on 630 micro-survey data,this paper empirically analyzes the influence of member trust on the internal financing of farmer cooperatives--members’ shareholding behavior and investment amount,and explores the relationship between member heterogeneity at the present stage,in order to provide valuable suggestions for solving the problems of internal financing of cooperatives.Based on the theory of collective action,social capital theory,social exchange theory and related research achievements in the field of farmer cooperative financing,members of the trust and the heterogeneity of members should be brought into the research framework,build the theoretical model analysis of trust for its members to participate in the cooperative members internal financing,and the influence of heterogeneity on the mechanism of action between them.Secondly,based on the questionnaire survey data of cooperative members in Liaoning province,descriptive analysis of key variables is conducted to understand the trust level of members,the trust level of each dimension of member trust,the heterogeneity characteristics of members and their participation in internal financing.Again,in the measure trust and member heterogeneity,on the basis of building the sample selection model based on instrumental variable(Ⅳ-Heckman)empirically trust for its members to participate in the internal financing behavior and the degree of influence,and through the analysis of three dimension members trust,comparing its members to participate in the internal financing behavior and the degree of change,Then the robustness of the baseline regression results was tested using the two-stage independent Probit model and the measurement method of changing core explanatory variables.Finally,considering the heterogeneity of members,the moderating effect model is used to analyze the internal mechanism of the influence on members’ trust and internal financing.The results show that:(1)members’ trust has a significant positive impact on their behavior and degree of participation in cooperative internal financing.(2)Members’ trust in the chairman,trust in other members and trust in the cooperative have a significant positive impact on their shareholding behavior and investment amount.(3)In this paper,resource endowment of members is used to measure the degree of heterogeneity,and member heterogeneity has a moderating effect on the effect of member trust on the internal financing of cooperatives.Compared with the members of the high resource endowment group,the improvement of the trust level of the members of the low resource endowment group is conducive to their choice of equity.At the same time,compared with the members in the low resource endowment group,the improvement of the trust level of the members in the high resource endowment group is helpful to increase their investment amount.Combined with the above research conclusions,the countermeasures and suggestions put forward in this paper are as follows: First,the accumulation level of trust capital of farmer cooperatives should be improved to form a more sufficient and stronger sense of cooperation and member group consciousness;Secondly,strengthen the trust core of cooperative members,maintain a stable internal trust structure,enhance the internal cohesion of cooperatives;Thirdly,promote the cooperative system innovation and standardization construction,enhance the trust level of members to cooperatives;Finally,make full use of the resource endowment advantages of heterogeneous members to realize the long-term development of cooperatives.