A Study On The Factors Influencing The Willingness And Behavior Of Apricot Planters To Participate In Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives In Kuche Cit

As a mutual economic organization of voluntary association in rural areas and democratic management,farmers’ specialized cooperatives play an important role in driving farmers to master production techniques,acquire market information,reduce market risks,reduce transaction losses,expand sales channels and increase farmers’ income.As the main producing area of small white apricot in Xinjiang and even the whole country,Kuche City has gradually and vigorously developed small white apricot farmers’ professional cooperatives on the basis of developing other crop cooperatives and taking advantage of its own advantages.However,through field investigation,it is found that there are still some problems in the development of local small white apricot farmers’ professional cooperation,such as farmers’ insufficient understanding of cooperatives and low actual participation rate.Therefore,in order to solve the problem of low enthusiasm of farmers to participate in cooperatives,this paper,through field research,goes into the countryside in earnest to understand the main reasons influencing farmers to join farmers’ professional cooperatives,and then analyzes the specific reasons influencing farmers to join farmers’ professional cooperatives through sorting out the collected questionnaires,which are mainly as follows: The number of relatives and friends participating in cooperatives has a positive impact on the participation intention of farmers,but has a negative impact on the participation behavior,there is an obvious "strong intention,weak behavior".Finally,the paper puts forward relevant countermeasures and suggestions for the problems that affect farmers’ participation in farmers’ professional cooperatives.Specific research results are as follows:(1)In recent years,local farmers’ specialized cooperatives have developed rapidly,among which there are 197 specialized farmers’ cooperatives in the forest and fruit industry related to little white apricot.However,the survey found that 78.59% of farmers were willing to join the professional farmer cooperatives,but only 39.88% of them actually joined.(2)The empirical analysis of 341 valid questionnaires using binary Logistic regression model found that in the willingness to participate,Age,education background,labor input in planting white apricot,total planting income of white apricot,yield of white apricot,whether it is expected to increase income by joining the cooperative,the number of relatives and friends participating in the cooperative,and the necessity of developing professional cooperatives in rural areas have significant effects on farmers’ willingness to participate in the cooperative.In addition to the negative effect of labor input on participation intention,other variables had a positive effect.In terms of participation behavior,education background,village cadre status,labor input,part-time employment status,annual household income,understanding degree of cooperatives,and number of relatives and friends participating in cooperatives had statistical significance on the actual participation behavior of farmers.Among them,age,village cadre status and education background had positive effects on the actual participation behavior,while other variables had negative effects.Finally,using PSM(propensity value matching method)to eliminate the selection bias of respondents,the net effects of education,labor input and the number of relatives and friends participating in cooperatives on the participation intention and actual behavior of farmers were estimated.The results show that the number of relatives and friends participating in cooperatives has a positive impact on farmers’ willingness to participate in cooperatives,while it has a negative impact on their participation behavior,which is consistent with the understanding from farmers in the survey.In the willingness to participate,farmers generally have a herd mentality,which leads to a high willingness to participate.However,after in-depth understanding of cooperatives,the actual behavior of joining cooperatives is low due to the influence of cooperative management system and other aspects.(3)According to the problems in the above studies that affect the willingness and behavior of farmers to participate in cooperatives,suggestions are put forward to promote the enthusiasm of farmers to participate in cooperatives: strengthen the guidance of surplus labor force in households and increase the number of participating labor force;Strengthen the training of farmers’ cultural quality and improve their cognition;Strengthen the publicity of cooperatives,improve the social visibility of cooperatives;Vigorously develop land circulation,improve the scale of land management level;We will improve the management system of cooperatives and strengthen their comprehensive management.