The Influence Of Social Capital On The Growth Of Farmers’ Professional Cooperatives

Farmers’ professional cooperatives can cover pre-production,mid-production and post-production services of agricultural production,break the monopoly of the market,and enable “small farmers” to effectively connect with “big market”,thereby reducing the risk of small farmers facing market competition alone and reducing agricultural production costs.To achieve cooperative benefits and increase the income of farmers.Social capital is an important basis for realizing resource acquisition and information sharing between cooperatives and stakeholders.Farmers’ professional cooperatives use social capital to obtain the resources needed for production and competition from their network members,which contributes to the improvement of the cooperative’s growth level.It can be seen that to promote the healthy growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives,it is especially necessary to help farmers’ professional cooperatives to expand and manage social capital and enhance their access to resources.This study is guided by social capital theory,corporate growth theory,and research on resource acquisition,this paper explores the mechanism of social capital’s role in the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives based on a new perspective of resource acquisition.this study divides the social capital of farmers’ professional cooperatives into structural social capital and cognitive social capital,and divides the resource acquisition of farmers’ professional cooperatives into asset-based resources.Acquisition and resource-based resource acquisition,constructing a theoretical model of the impact of social capital on the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives with resource acquisition as a medium variable,and analyzing the mechanism of social capital’s role in the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives through resource acquisition.Through the survey data of 215 cooperatives in Liaoning Province,the SPSS22.0 software was used to descriptive statistical analysis of the sample data,and the reliability and validity of the data were verified.Then the structural equation model was constructed by using AMOS22.0 software,the adaptability of the whole model was tested,and the empirical results were analyzed.The direction and influence of various factors on the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives were discussed.The research shows that:(1)Both structural social capital and cognitive social capital have significant influence on the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives.Cognitive social capital has the greatest impact on the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives,while structural social capital has the second largest impact on its growth.(2)Structural social capital and cognitive social capital have significant effects on asset-based resource acquisition and knowledge-based resource acquisition.Cognitive social capital has the greatest impact on cooperative asset-type resources,and structural social capital has influence on it.Structural social capital has the greatest impact on the acquisition of cooperative knowledge resources,and cognitive social capital has the second impact.(3)The acquisition of asset-based resources and the acquisition of knowledge-based resources have significant impact on the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives.Among them,the acquisition of asset-based resources has the greatest impact on the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives,and the acquisition of knowledge-based resources has the second impact on their growth.(4)Asset-based resource acquisition and knowledge-based resource acquisition play a partial intermediary role between structural social capital,cognitive social capital and the growth of farmers’ professional cooperatives.Finally,based on the above research conclusions,this paper proposes the following suggestions:(1)The cooperative needs to expand and manage the external relationship network.(2)Cooperatives need to strengthen the level of trust between members.(3)Cooperatives should improve their ability to access resources.(4)The government should give full play to its functions to improve the growth level of cooperatives.