The ability to successfully engage in collective action is often related to group heterogeneity. In the case of farmer cooperatives, member heterogeneity is often assumed to relate negatively to long-term performance. However, applied research is lacking in part because of the difficulty in measuring and matching farm-level and firm-level constructs. Using 1,061 survey responses from members of an organic food and beverage marketing cooperative, we develop a solution by measuring heterogeneity in age, education, farm experience, farm size, and membership length as the absolute difference from the median, which is interpreted as the base case with zero heterogeneity. A structural equation model is developed to relate our measurement of member heterogeneity to membership satisfaction. The latent factor of member heterogeneity is manifested significantly by each measure of individual heterogeneity (except age). Furthermore, as expected, member heterogeneity has a negative relationship to the latent factor of membership satisfaction. Our study demonstrates an ability to measure heterogeneity in continuous as opposed to binary form (e.g. small or large, young or old), and to explore the heterogeneity-performance relationship with farm-level observations.

中文翻译：

---

合作社成员：更多样化，更不满意？

成功地采取集体行动的能力通常与群体异质性有关。就农民合作社而言，成员异质性通常被认为与长期绩效负相关。但是，缺乏应用研究的部分原因是难以衡量和匹配农场级别和公司级别的结构。我们使用有机食品和饮料营销合作社成员的1,061份调查问卷答复，通过测量年龄，教育程度，农场经验，农场规模和成员长度的异质性来作为与中位数的绝对差，以此来开发解决方案异质性为零的情况。开发了一个结构方程模型，以将我们对成员异质性的度量与成员满意度相关联。成员异质性的潜在因素通过个体异质性的每种度量（年龄除外）得到显着体现。此外，正如预期的那样，成员异质性与成员满意度的潜在因素呈负相关。我们的研究表明，有能力以连续形式而非二进制形式（例如，小或大，年轻或年老）测量异质性，并探索与农场水平观测值之间的异质性与绩效的关系。