Table 3 Contingent variables Contingency... | Emerald Publishing

Table 3

Contingent variables

Contingency variable	Description	Sub-variables	Reference
SC stage	The main agri-food SC stages	Producer: farmers and growers Cooperative: aggregations of producers providing members with shared services and fair economic conditions Processor: actors performing food processing to transform raw materials into finished products Retailer: actors belonging to the distribution sector	Tsolakis et al. (2014); Cagliano et al. (2016); Bonazzi and Iotti (2014)
Size of the firm	Size of the firms, considering as SMEs all firms with an annual turnover lower than €50m and employing less than 250 people, or whose annual balance sheet total does not exceed 43 million	Large firms SMEs	EU recommendation 2003/361/CE
Product category	Food product categories	Aged: products characterized by long production cycles due to long ageing periods, during which their value increases Fresh: highly perishable products with short shelf-life Packaged: processed and packaged food products, with long shelf-life Frozen: packaged products that require to be kept at low temperature (cold chain), with long shelf-life Commodity: agricultural raw materials used by processors	Bonazzi and Iotti (2014); Smith (2007), Cagliano et al. (2016)
Regulation	Laws regulating payment terms in the agri-food industry	Late Payment Directive 2011/7/EU: imposes a maximum of 60 days of payment terms for enterprises. In Italy, in the agri-food industry, a derivative of this directive imposes a maximum of 30 days of payment terms for perishable products	European Commission

Contingency variable	Description	Sub-variables	Reference
SC stage	The main agri-food SC stages	Producer: farmers and growersCooperative: aggregations of producers providing members with shared services and fair economic conditionsProcessor: actors performing food processing to transform raw materials into finished productsRetailer: actors belonging to the distribution sector	Tsolakis et al. (2014); Cagliano et al. (2016); Bonazzi and Iotti (2014)
Size of the firm	Size of the firms, considering as SMEs all firms with an annual turnover lower than €50m and employing less than 250 people, or whose annual balance sheet total does not exceed 43 million	Large firmsSMEs	EU recommendation 2003/361/CE
Product category	Food product categories	Aged: products characterized by long production cycles due to long ageing periods, during which their value increasesFresh: highly perishable products with short shelf-lifePackaged: processed and packaged food products, with long shelf-lifeFrozen: packaged products that require to be kept at low temperature (cold chain), with long shelf-lifeCommodity: agricultural raw materials used by processors	Bonazzi and Iotti (2014); Smith (2007), Cagliano et al. (2016)
Regulation	Laws regulating payment terms in the agri-food industry	Late Payment Directive 2011/7/EU: imposes a maximum of 60 days of payment terms for enterprises. In Italy, in the agri-food industry, a derivative of this directive imposes a maximum of 30 days of payment terms for perishable products	European Commission

Source: Authors’ own creation