Rural areas development through endogenous potentials

The main objective of the present paper is to reveal the most important reasons for admitting and supporting a local factor, such as a Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, by the rural residents of a typical Greek region. Moreover, the investigation of the possible dependence relationships among the socioeconomic variables of a market research, which refers to the willingness to purchase dairy products from the Cooperative (the dependent variable) and the independent variables, constitute the intention of the paper. From a methodological point of view, the study extends the employment of categorical multivariate methodologies into rural development issues. Interesting results are revealed from the segmentation of rural populations regarding the drivers of project adoption. In particular, the majority of the potential adopters of the local project face the same, more or less, challenges in supporting local cooperative projects and therefore in supporting their incomes. The survey results indicate the success of the investment project of the Union and the confidence of the local community in a local cooperative organization in supporting the development of the region