Local Identity Based on Villagers’ Vision of Life and Village Dynamics—Evidence from 40 Villages in Yunnan Province, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

good job

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have significantly improved their work. I carefully looked at all the points that were a problem in the previous version and noticed that the authors made an effort to correctly answer each of the suggestions. With the Literature review chapter that they added, the paper now has a theoretical breadth that has brought the objectives of the paper closer to every reader. In the Data chapter, it is now clear how much time and effort the authors invested to collect the data for the paper. There are two more minor technical issues that the authors should address that I flagged in the last version.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I think this article is mainly to attempts to discuss the relationship between the local identity of villagers and the level of human settlement.  It's a meaningful topic has been researched for a long time. However, there are many serious drawbacks in this paper.

1. The research question is not explicitly addressed in the article.

2. The introduction to fieldwork do not state the methodology employed for collecting questionnaire data and its corresponding efficacy.

3. The evaluation framework and indicators lack a robust scientific foundation and fail to provide adequate literature supporting.

4. The multiple regression method employed in this study is deemed inappropriate due to the failure of the analyzed data to meet the assumptions of randomness and independent observations. The degree of similarity among villagers residing within the same village tends to surpass that observed among villagers dwelling in distinct villages.

5. In short, I think this paper lacks scientific rigor and fails to meet the standards required for publication in a scholarly journal.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I was also satisfied with the previous version of this work. The authors have corrected two minor errors that I brought to their attention and I have no further suggestions. As far as I can see, the authors further improved their work on the suggestion and suggestions of another reviewer.

Author Response

Dear academic reviewer,

Thank you for your encouraging comments! Once again, I would like to express my appreciation for the time and effort you put into revising this article.

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

please see the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors have significantly improved the manuscript according to reviewers' comments. The revised version of the manuscript is easy to follow, well-structured and well-written. 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Rural development is a very important issue in a world where the rural population is shrinking. Therefore, rural management is becoming a challenge for the world's leading economies such as China. In this paper, the authors have taken great efforts to explore the identity of local people and relate it to the changes in Yunnan province. Although the stated methodology produced clear results, the paper has some shortcomings that the authors should correct. Sections appear in the introduction that should be part of a new chapter of the literature review, as rural development is a very broad topic that has been addressed by many authors from different perspectives. The paper lacks an overview map of Yunnan Province showing the settlements studied. The conclusion could be completed with facts that relate this work to other works and to its practical significance and application. I believe that the correction will not be a big problem for the authors, and the suggestion is made in good faith. 

 

All comments are in attached version. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

OVERVIEW:

The Manuscript of ID # Sustainability-2458987 titled “Local identity based on villagers' vision of life and village dynamics - Evidence from Yunnan Province, China” has no clear-cut objectives, unfortunately.  It is indeed a struggle to discern the authors’ intention when they indicated that the paper’s aim was to ‘…analyse the interrelationship between the development of rural human settlement and local identity and their potential influencing factors’. Understanding the thrust and content of the paper is an uphill task because of the way it was written – there are too many incomplete and disjointed sentences in the write-up! I know the authors are non-Native English speakers. So, the first thing to do is to subject the paper to some critical editing even before submission for publication in a standard journal like “Sustainability”.  That said, I will provide specific comments as follows:

ABSTRACT:

The abstract is too sketchy and grossly falls short of providing the methodology of the paper.

INTRODUCTION:

This section is difficult to follow and somewhat structureless. It is noteworthy that some conclusions made in the penultimate paragraph of the introductory section smacks of lack of experience in research paper writing on the part of the authors. This awkward structural issue is further aggravated by outlining what looks like a mini methodology of the paper in the last paragraph of the introduction.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

2.2.1 Field Survey Data - What does the statement “This paper visited 699 villagers in 40 villages in 5 cities in Yunnan Province, recording 699 valid villagers’ questionnaires” mean? Assuming I know the authors’ intention, how did they arrive at the decision to investigate 40 villages in 5 cities the study area? What informed the choice of the 40 villages and 5 cities? Are there some criteria used in selecting them? What instrument did they use in collecting their data? What’s the nature of the data collected from the respondents – qualitative or quantitative or both? How were the data managed and analyzed?

2.2.2. Statistical Data – Apart from the fact that the information under this subsection is not properly presented, the links provided there should have been better placed in the references section.

2.3. Methods: Up to this point, it is indeed difficult to understand what the authors wanted to achieve here. There’s no detailed information on how they came about or constructed their concepts of “local identity index” and “village human settlement index”. Straightaway, anyone will be interested in knowing what these concepts are all about and how they are developed at this juncture; this subsection should have provided pertinent but simple information about the concepts. It appears they were belatedly explained somewhere, implying a structural defect in the paper. Even so, it is difficult to ascertain how the variables constituting these two indices were quantified. In other words, information on the measurement of variables is missing. For instance, one single case will suffice: how was X₆, which is the “villages’ historical and cultural attributes”, measured? This makes it somewhat difficult to determine the appropriateness of the use of “…a multivariate linear regression analysis” to test the relationship between “the village human settlement index” and the local identity index…”  It is not even clear if the authors did what they said they were going to do in their multivariate analysis because they eventually and jerkily indicated in lines 181-182 of the manuscript that “…a multiple linear regression method to explore the potential factors between the ‘Local Identity Index’ and the development of rural human settlement”. The sentence is incomplete.

Rather than arbitrarily introduce "Production-living-Ecology Theory" in the methods section, it would have been more appropriate to have a section on “Theoretical framework” explaining this theory, assuming it is the most appropriate framework for analyzing the major issues in the paper.  

RESULTS: This is as good as the methodology itself.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

By and large, the paper needs to be re-written in Standard English to make it readable.  

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The manuscript presents a quite interesting study, but for me some aspects must be improved:

-        First of all the aim of this research must be defined. The hypothesis also…in the introduction part

-        What methods have you used to obtain this research what sampling method?

-        As a final suggestion, the implications and limitations of the study are too short (almost absent). Hence, the authors should add implications (both practical and theoratical) and limitations section.

Overal you have a good research

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors created and applied a complex indicator for measuring rural human settlement. The analysis was carried out for almost 2 decades, covering a long term period. In the method, various approaches have been applied. The paper is of high quality, having great practical implications, I only miss the limitations mentioned at the end of the paper.