Rural versus urban - A comparison of the perception of credit coopertatives operating in different environments

Aktivität: VortragWissenschaftlicher Vortrag (Science-to-Science)

Beschreibung

Because of the relations between cooperatives and local inhabitants that developed over decades, especially in Austrian rural areas the economic, cultural, emotional and social vicinity to credit cooperatives situated in the region might be very pronounced. In more densely populated and more urban regions, the connection between credit cooperatives and customers might not be as closely and intertwined, which might lead to different degrees of approval of credit cooperative measures, depending on the degree of urbanization of the operating area of the cooperative. Therefore, this paper aims to uncover differences in the perception of Austrian rural and urban credit cooperatives from their members’ and non-member customers’ perspective. To this end, two datasets were employed that were surveyed in one urban credit cooperative in 2016 and three rural credit cooperatives in 2019. In the statistical analysis of the data, a cross-table was used to contrast the knowledge on the personal membership status of members and non-member customers. Furthermore, customers of both credit cooperative types where asked to rate specific measures of “their” credit cooperative according to their approval, the results of which were checked for statistically significant deviations with a Student’s t-test.

The according analyses uncovered that:
• Knowledge on the membership status is lower in rural areas, also because non-member customers fail to diversify between a longstanding customer relationship and the true membership.
• Differences in the approval of specific credit cooperative actions between rural and urban credit cooperatives exist, probably because of the role of credit cooperatives as local financiers of social measures and sponsors local clubs.
Zeitraum27 Mai 2019
EreignistitelACE - CASC - ICA-CCR - Joint Conference
VeranstaltungstypKeine Angaben
BekanntheitsgradInternational

Österreichische Systematik der Wissenschaftszweige (ÖFOS)

  • 502011 Genossenschaftswesen