Exploring member data for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in California: Comparisons of former and current CSA members

This article is a description of data related to the research article entitled “The (un)making of ‘CSA people’: member retention and the customization paradox in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in California” (Galt et al., in press). The data presented were collected through two statewide surveys, conducted via internet-based questionnaire, related to Community Supported Agriculture in California: a former CSA member survey, and a current CSA member survey. We gathered responses for these surveys from April 2014 to January 2015. The data include responses from 409 former CSA members (those who had left) from 27 CSAs and 1149 current CSA members from 41 CSAs. The data tables included here contain information relevant to the retention of CSA members and other concerns, and come from two analyses: 1) comparisons of characteristics of former and current CSA members, and 2) importance-satisfaction analysis (ISA) of former and current CSA members’ experiences with CSA. We make the detailed results of these analyses available in this article so they can inform other researchers’ analyses of the increasingly important phenomenon of CSA member retention, and, more generally, customers’ participation in and satisfaction with a variety of alternative food networks (AFNs).


a b s t r a c t
This article is a description of data related to the research article entitled "The (un)making of 'CSA people': member retention and the customization paradox in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in California" (Galt et al., in press). The data presented were collected through two statewide surveys, conducted via internetbased questionnaire, related to Community Supported Agriculture in California: a former CSA member survey, and a current CSA member survey. We gathered responses for these surveys from April 2014 to January 2015. The data include responses from 409 former CSA members (those who had left) from 27 CSAs and 1149 current CSA members from 41 CSAs. The data tables included here contain information relevant to the retention of CSA members and other concerns, and come from two analyses: 1) comparisons of characteristics of former and current CSA members, and 2) importance-satisfaction analysis (ISA) of former and current CSA members' experiences with CSA. We make the detailed results of these analyses available in this article so they can inform other researchers' analyses of the increasingly important phenomenon of CSA member retention, and, more generally, customers' Value of the data The data provide detailed comparisons of current CSA members with former CSA members in areas that might affect continued membershipenjoyment of food-related activities, conditions interfering with CSA participation, household and individual demographics, and use of food access programs (Tables 1-4)and are valuable because they provide a fairly comprehensive way of examining variables possibly relevant to continued CSA membership, an important part of CSA member retention.
The data showing a detailed analysis of the gap between former and current members' ratings of importance of, and satisfaction with, various CSA attributes (Table 5) is valuable because it allows others to replicate what Galt et al. [1] refer to as importance-satisfaction analysis (ISA), which is a modified version of importance-performance analysis (IPA) commonly done in business settings [2,3].
Both of the above analyses can be applied to better understand consumers involved and formerly involved in other CSAs or other forms of alternative food networks (ANFs) (e.g., farmers' market shoppers, you-pick consumers, etc.), thereby allowing better understanding of the populations that continue to engage with a particular kind of AFN compared to those that have discontinued their engagement with that AFN.

Data
The data that compares various characteristics of former and current CSA members are presented in Tables 1-5. Tables 1 and 2 present data that is significantly different between current and former members, specifically about enjoyment of food-related activities (Table 1) and conditions interfering with CSA participation (Table 2). Tables 3 and 4 present data where few to no significant differences were found: demographics (Table 3, see [1] for a discussion of similarities and differences), and food access programs (Table 4). Table 5 presents the analyzed numerical data for the importancesatisfaction analysis (ISA) conducted by Galt et al. [1].

Experimental design, materials and methods
The data in Tables 1-4 were gathered through statewide surveys of former and current CSA members. We created Internet-based questionnaires for former and current members, one survey for each group, with most questions shared, but with some disparate sections (e.g., reasons for leaving for former members). We sent the two questionnaire links to CSA farmers in California so they could share them with their members. Both surveys were open between April 2014 and January 2015, with numerous reminder emails sent to farmers to remind their former and current members to respond. For former members, the survey collected 409 complete responses from 27 CSAs (for details, see [1]).    Two-tailed, unequal variance assumed.

Table 5
Importance of, and satisfaction with, CSA attributes by former a and current members.

Descriptive statistics Former members a Current members
Column labels for calculations and comparisons: Satisfaction c Gap (Satisfaction-Importance) Importance b Satisfaction c Gap (Satisfaction-Importance) mean n mean n mean n mean n mean n mean n For current members, the survey collected complete responses for 1149 from 41 CSAs (for details, see [4]). We compared a large number of variables between the two populations using t-tests, and present many of these comparisons thematically in Tables 1-4. The data in Table 5 is the numerical data behind the importance-satisfaction analysis (the visualization of the data appears in [1]). The analysis compares former and current CSA members' ratings of importance of, and satisfaction with, various CSA attributes, and the gap between them (for methodological details, see [1]). Unlike other studies of former CSA members, we removed the former members whose membership ended due to reasons completely exogenous to the member-CSA relationship, because these reasons are completely unrelated to CSA management choices (i.e., a CSA ending operation or closing a drop-off area, members moving out of the area, and members experiencing large changes to their household situations, like finances). Since CSA management cannot influence these former members who left for completely exogenous reasons, we argue it is best to remove them from this analysis and other analyses that seek to understand why former members voluntarily leave CSA (see also [1]).