Effects of Incentives and Penalties on Farmers’ Willingness and Behavior to Separate Domestic Waste-Analysis of Farm Household Heterogeneity Based on Chain Multiple Intermediary Effects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript aims at providing a “theoretical basis for improving farmers' willingness to separate household waste and strengthening their sorting behavior, and provides a policy reference for rural household waste management”….

I found the subject and the outcomes most relevant. I read the manuscript twice so that I could grasp the message. I find it, as it is, a rather complicated structure, incoherent and rhetorical.

The structure is rather difficult because in the first section with no name (I assume the Introduction) the authors frame the research problem from the methodological point of view. Nonetheless, the paragraphs are way too long and comprised too many unchained ideas. The next section (Theoretical analysis and research hypothesis) is also too long and rhetorical partly to the first section. These too sections may be integrated and the selected literature and problem statement made very clear. At this level, there is no need for figure 1. The objective of the manuscript must be short and straightforward: “to investigate the influence of incentives and penalties on farmers' willingness and behavior of domestic waste sorting”.

Section of methods (which is not given, I assume section 3) ought to be reconstructed. There is a combination of data sources, analyses, and results altogether. This was the section most difficult to understand.

Section 4 (results) must also be reorganized in regard to the core objective. There are paragraphs mixing the empirical outcomes and theoretical explanations. I consider that figures 2 and 3 are the main outcomes and the rest is not that relevant since the tables are just preliminary results. This section can be split into results and discussion.

Finally, the conclusion must be straightforward too. There is no need to repeat what has been said in other sections.

 

Thus, a new restructured and shorten and more focused version may facilitate the readers to learn about the outcomes of this relevant research.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Manuscript ID: sustainability-2069917

Title: Effects of incentives and penalties on farmers' willingness and behavior to separate domestic waste

-Analysis of farm household heterogeneity based on chain multiple intermediary effects

Journal: SUSTAINABILITY

 

Comments to authors:

Although extensive work has been performed but the novelty can be questioned. However, before it can be considered for publication, please address the following comments for a revision:

1)      The authors should format the article in the template of the journal “sustainability”.

2)      Please reduce the Abstract for introduction, aims, methodology, and results.

3)      The problem to be addressed in this study should also be highlighted in the Abstract.

4)      Please highlight the novelty in the Abstract also.

5)      The authors should also present some quantitative results in the Abstract.

6)      English proofreading is required for grammatical mistakes and typos.

7)      The novelty and significance of the present work should be highlighted in the last paragraph of the Introduction section.

8)      The authors are recommended to add latest relevant literature review on such works.

9)      What is the need for this work?

10)  Is this work helpful for practical applications? Which applications?

11)  The literature review should be improved by adding latest references and discussion.

12)  Work methodologies need more discussion.

13)  Results section should be defended using technical reasons and relevant references.

14)  The paper needs more graphical representation to present the data precisely.

15)  More technical discussion to the presented experimental results should be added.

16)  There are no critical review/discussions before the Conclusions. Authors should add it.

17)  Conclusions should be refined and briefly presented. More numerical results should be added.

18)  The authors can add the future recommendations based on the present study.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I have read with a lot of interest the work of Chen et al. entitled "Effects of incentives and penalties on farmers' willingness and behavior to separate domestic waste -Analysis of farm household heterogeneity based on chain multiple intermediary effects". I should recognize the contribution of this research paper to our perception of the factors that influence the farmers' willingness and behavior to separate domestic waste. The correlation study is very pertinent and provides interesting directions for governments to improve policy making in this context. However, there are several points that need to be adjusted prior to publication:

1. The first part of the work should have an "Introduction" title. The people going through the output without reading the Abstract will not know about what the authors aim to do for this work. A few lines before "Literature review" should be added to explain what is the aim of this work and what to expect next: In this research work, we will... We will begin by ... (Section 2). Then, we will ... (Section 3)...

2. The authors should provide a link to the data of "China Land Economic Survey" for research reproducibility purposes.

3. The number assigned to regressions (e.g., Return to 5, regression 7-8, Return 1...) are a bit hard to understand and can alter the perception of the work. The authors should add a table to explain what every number stands for. This will be simpler than going through the full text to know this fact.

4. Please try to support the explanation and discussion with references. Previous findings of other scientists can be useful to confirm the findings of this research paper.

5. Before the conclusion, there is a double point (separation. .). Please remove that point.

6. Please inform us in the Acknowledgements that this work is an adaptation or extension of "信息获取对农户垃圾分类意愿的影响分析" instead of including the Abstract of this original work as an Appendix to this work.

Based on these points, I will accept this paper for publication after these minor revisions will be applied to the work.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx