A Path Analysis of Factors Influencing the Development of Entrepreneurship Skills and Innovation in Rural Cooperatives of Alborz Province

This study mainly aimed to identify the factors influencing the development of entrepreneurial skills and innovation in rural cooperatives of Alborz Province, Iran. This purposefully practical research is a descriptive-correlational study considering the fact achieving and data processing. The research measurement tool was a questionnaire. The statistical population of this study consisted of 22,207 members of cooperatives in Alborz Province, with 283 people selected as the sample calculated by Cochran's formula. The simple random sampling method was performed in this study with a proportional allocation. The validity of the research questionnaire through Cronbach's alpha coefficient for its different parts was calculated to be >0.84, indicating its proper validity. According to the results of multiple regression, four variables, i.e., economic factors, psychological factors, managerial factors, and socio-cultural factors respectively included in the multivariate regression equation, together resulted in approximately 40.7% of the dependent variable modifications in the development of entrepreneurial skills in agricultural cooperatives. The results also revealed that these variables affect the development of entrepreneurial skills and innovation in agricultural cooperatives positively. In addition, the results of path analysis suggested that economic factors had the highest impact on the development of entrepreneurial skills and innovation in rural cooperatives of Alborz Province (F = 0.579), indicating the importance of economic factors; while technical factors showed the least impact on the development of entrepreneurial skills and innovation of rural cooperatives in Alborz Province (F = 0.051).