ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1644397
Discrepancies Between Farmers' Willingness and Behavior: An Analysis of Participation in Cooperative Economic Organizations
Provisionally accepted
Fanglan Xu1
Nan Mu2*- 1Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, Guiyang, China
- 2Guizhou University of Commerce, Guiyang, China
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Although most respondents express a strong willingness to join cooperatives, a substantial behavioral gap remains. Specifically, while 82.5% of surveyed farmers reported willingness to participate, only 27.4% actually engaged in cooperative activities, highlighting a significant intention–behavior discrepancy. Using multinomial logistic regression and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) based on data from 530 rural households in Guizhou Province, this study systematically examines the determinants and hierarchical structures underlying these gaps. Results show that cooperative support for livelihood security and market expansion significantly reduces willingness–behavior discrepancies, while political leadership and cadre encouragement play important mediating roles. ISM analysis further indicates that political leadership and legal awareness function as deep institutional drivers that shape behavioral realization. However, regression results reveal a paradoxical short-term effect: higher legal awareness is associated with increased behavioral deviation, as more informed farmers may perceive institutional deficiencies or risks that discourage participation. Over the longer term, when embedded within effective governance structures, legal awareness can nevertheless strengthen farmers' confidence and facilitate intention–behavior alignment. By integrating regression and ISM, this study extends the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to reveal both cognitive and institutional mechanisms of intention–behavior alignment. Overall, this study makes threefold contributions: it extends TPB theoretically by incorporating institutional mechanisms, advances methodological integration through combining regression and ISM, and offers practical policy guidance for narrowing farmers' intention–behavior gaps.
Keywords: Theory of Planned Behavior, Farmer cooperatives, Participation intention, intention–behavior gap, InfluencingFactors
Received: 20 Jun 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Xu and Mu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nan Mu, Guizhou University of Commerce, Guiyang, China
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