Journal of Entrepreneurial Strategies in Agriculture

  The aim of this study was to investigate the sociological characteristics and their impact on the development of entrepreneurship in agricultural production cooperatives in Qazvin Province. The research method was descriptive - correlation and analytic in kind of causal-relational. The research’s population included all managers of agricultural production cooperatives of Qazvin Province that given the limited number of cooperatives, the census method was used (N =86). To evaluate the validity of research’ tool, the method of panel of experts was used. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient that it was estimated higher than 0.85 for different parts of the questionnaire. The Spearman correlation coefficient was used to study the relationship between variables and Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used for bi-level and multilevel nominal variables, respectively. Also, the stepwise multiple regression method was used to study the major interactive effects of independent variables on the dependent variable and to identify the direct and indirect effects of independent variables on the dependent variable, the path analysis was used as well. The results showed that three variables of demographic characteristics, characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, paying attention and emphasize on the importance of investment in cooperatives as an important part of the economy, could explain 40.2 percent of the variability of the dependent variable. The results of path analysis showed that the variable of characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, directly and indirectly, had the greatest impact on the dependent variable.