Sustainability of Public–Private Partnerships in Agribusiness: Research Instruments, Instrument Validity and Field Evidence from Purvanchal, Uttar Pradesh, India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.66635/wmah8804Keywords:
public–private partnerships, agribusiness, research instruments, instrument validity, farmer producer organisations, field survey, Purvanchal, IndiaAbstract
Purpose: This paper reports the development, field testing and empirical application of a three-instrument survey set designed to study the sustainability of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in agribusiness in a data-scarce agricultural sub-region. It addresses a gap in the agribusiness partnership literature, where instruments are typically administered to one stakeholder group and measurement properties are seldom reported.
Design/methodology/approach: Three parallel structured interview schedules, built on a shared construct set, were administered face to face to 460 respondents across seven districts and five administrative divisions of Purvanchal: 45 government officials, 65 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and allied agencies, and 350 farmer members. Analysis comprised rank-order correlation, non-hierarchical cluster analysis, exploratory factor analysis, multivariate analysis of variance and a chi-squared automatic interaction detection (CHAID) classification tree.
Findings: The instruments performed unevenly. Single-item ordinal and binary behavioural measures produced stable and interpretable associations, and the principal perception dimension reached acceptable reliability (McDonald’s ω = .744), while two shorter dimensions proved under-sampled. Substantively, administrative engagement was categorically rather than continuously distributed; organisational resource commitment was associated with perceived success only through technology adoption; and farmer participation was distinguished by awareness and perceived opportunity rather than by demographic or landholding characteristics.
Originality/value: The paper contributes a tested multi-stakeholder instrument set, transparent measurement diagnostics rarely reported in this literature, and evidence that the binding constraint on partnership sustainability lies with the intermediary producer organisation.
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