Investigating the Impact of Perceived Micro-Level Neighborhood Characteristics on Housing Prices in Shanghai
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
You did a great job here. I only have a few comments.
1. The title is quite confusing. Can you rephrase it?
2. Your introduction section only includes a literature review. Can you offer your motivation, contribution, and a brief overview of your study design?
3. I think your data set has a hierarchical structure and spatial autocorrelation. Thus, OLS can be biased. Can you develop a multilevel regression model or spatial econometrics model instead of a simple OLS model? You stated this in the limitation section. However, I believe it is easily overcome by developing the models. I recommend you build the models.
4. Can you offer policy implications?
Author Response
Thank you for your great comments and suggestions, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is well-written. It explores whether street view affects housing prices by applying a machine-learning approach to measure street view. I have the following comments about the use of the machine learning approach and hedonic pricing model.
1. Housing price reflects the utility that housing owners occupy the site. Street view can be important to housing owners and should be valued in the housing price. My question is what kinds of street views are important to housing owners? Street views that can be seen from each unit or general street views? It seems to me that the paper measures general street view but not property-specific street view. The authors may need to consider the property-specific street view.
2. Are street views time-varying? A repeated sale approach can be used to capture the value of street view if the view is time-varying.
3. The streetscape variables may be correlated with some omitted variables, such as school quality, distance to parks/rivers, etc. The authors may need to consider additional variables that can significantly affect housing prices.
4. Provide detailed information about housing transaction data. The time-fixed effect should be included in the hedonic pricing model if the time period is long.
Author Response
Thank you for all your great comments and suggestions, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors, this article is devoted to a rather relevant and non-trivial topic. The results of this study are beneficial for research, industry professionals, and policymakers.
The research aims to study the correlation between housing price and micro-level subjective and objective urban perception attributes using the HPM procedure, through ordinary least squares (OLS).
The abstract summarizes the article well, the problem to be addressed, the techniques and the results. The introduction presents the structure of the article in detail, gives the reader a clear idea of what to expect in the following sections, and briefly describes the methodology of the survey. Regarding the article's citations and bibliography, the sources used are numerous and authoritative. The empirical method used is reasonable and appropriate to illustrate the phenomenon. The data and results are comprehensively represented. The conclusion section is well structured, summarizing and clearly interpreting the data. The writing style is clear, concise, correct, and unambiguous. Numbering the lines of the article makes it easier to read. In conclusion, the work can be published in the present form.
Author Response
Thank you for your great comments, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Although some comments I raised cannot be addressed in the current version, the authors acknowledged the limitations of the manuscript. I have no further comments.
