Analysis of Influencing Factors and Income Effect of Heterogeneous Agricultural Households’ Forestland Transfer

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for developing this manuscript. Please review for spelling errors and especially grammar, as well as missing references.

I am recommending major revisions for your manuscript:

All tables will have to be reviewed in the context of units reported e.g. income. Table readings need to be more detailed. Potentially transferring income to USD could be beneficial so that other international readers can draw conclusions from your study.

Income should be standardized in the context of global parameters to allow for international comparison.

In tables and text, "farmers" has to be replaced with the term farms or agricultural households.

Is the presentation of 10 tables necessary? I recommend reducing the data presented to allow for a more concise manuscript.

Finally, it seems as if there is a lack of a discussion section that could have compared study findings to other manuscripts or gray literature. I recommend adding this section.

The conclusions section should typically not exceed 10-15 lines.

Sincerely

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is interesting and well written. However, there are some specific comments and remarks for authors.

 

The basic limitation is that the survey was conducted in 2014. Is it safe to be published after 8 years?? Will there have been no changes on influencing factors that presented?

 

In Abstract (line 6) the word "Farmers" in cited twice.

Table 1. Please add a better description on the Title.

Tables 4-9 I propose to be unified I someway.

Table 11

  a) the title of each table should give complete information in a concise form. I propose a title like “the results of logistic regression analysis (n = 500)

b) For the logistic regression it is important to present additional measures, i.e. −2 Log likelihood, Cox and Snell R² , Nagelkerke R². Please add them.

c) I propose the variables to be explained. It is difficult for the reader to find what x1, x2, …mean.

Table 12. It is impossible to be read. I propose to be presented in a more readable way.

Table 14. Please add a better description on the Title.

In generally the results could be presented in a more coherent way.

The Conclusion section should be improved further.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you, editor and authors, for providing an opportunity to read this manuscript. The paper is well-written and has a significant contribution to the literature. However, there are still a few things that need to be incorporated before making it publishable in the Land journal.

Comments:

·   Samples and Data: The paper uses the Stratified Sampling method and selected ten counties and ten farmers from each village. So, how did the authors select 10 counties or 10 farmers as a respondent? Were there any criteria for participating in the survey? How did the authors determine the household head? What did the authors do if the household head is not available? Were that face-to-face interviews? Did the authors require any approval before conducting the interviews? Please these steps in detail.

    What might be the time frame to define the Transfer Vs No Transfer? For instance, if the father/mother of the household head transferred the forestland (while the current household head was at a young age), does that considered a “transfer”?

·    Table 1 is not clear. I suggest(s) authors explain (or define) each of the covariates, such as the type of variables (binary or continuous), How did the authors use that explanatory variable and covariates in the models? Please explain:

·     What does the “Real age of head of household” mean? How did the authors know the real age?

·      Household laborer: how did the authors define household laborer?

·       The grammatical flaws. For instance, there is one core explanatory variable, therefore it should not be “variables”.

·       Table 11: What are those values in Table 11? p-value or what? If they are p-value, how 0.109 for X10 (non-agricultural households) is significant at 5%.

·       Table 12: Are those incomes yearly or monthly? And what is the currency? Also, does this income account for cash income only or also accounted for the equivalent money to the household consumption items (food)?

Specific comments:

·         Line 99: what does hm² stand for?

·         Line 143: “…..forest coverage rate..”.. Is the “Rate” word appropriate? I suggest revising lines 143-144.

·         I do not aware of the unit mu. I suggest the author(s) writing unit in SI system or Metric System so that international readers (or audience) will be benefited. Or provide the conversion factor as a footnote.

·         Figure 3: It is hard to read the labeling of the axes of the figures.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Analysis of Influencing Factors and Income Effect of Heterogeneous Farmers´ Forestland Transfer

The paper explore the factors influencing the behaviour of farmers´ forestland and the income effect of forestland transfer. The authors analysed in the detail the factors based on Binary Logistic regression model and Propensity Score Matching model.

However, some issues need to be addressed before the paper can be considered for publication:

·       the authors set three research hypotheses, but the answers to their evaluation are lacking, even though the results of analysis are described in detail

·       chapter Discussion is missing, in this chapter, individual results and answers to established hypotheses would be discussed in detail

·       the last part of the post contains recommendations, which can be evaluated positively

·       formal adjustments, it would be advisable to adjust the alignment of the numbers to the right (e.g. table 12), it would be much clearer and better readable

·       I propose to publish the contribution after its formal adjustments and completion of the discussion chapter

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,   Following a review of the mdpi research ethics, I was hoping to find the required research ethics assessment and declaration but couldn’t find it. The article also doesn’t include the wording outlined on the mdpi website. (https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#3)   Besides this, I cannot follow the policy recommendations in this manuscript. The data presented does not allow for political or policy-guiding recommendations based on the research setup.   Without Information on research ethics& ethics approval and a proper adjustment of the discussion (which is way too short and does not consider reforestation of agricultural lands (e.g. conducted in Canada or Europe) and an adjustment of the recommendations, I cannot recommend publication.   Additional questions/recommendations: -household income for non-agricultural total? -please review percentage values in some of the tables presented   Regards

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Although i continue to beleive that it is a limitation for a paper to present findings that refer to the previous decade.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your revised manuscript. The authors attempted to improve the manuscript. However, there are still a few points that need to be considered before making it publishable. 

Point 1: The authors did not address my previous comment in the manuscript. I suggest authors write the description of the sampling technique and interviewing process in the manuscript instead of a rebuttal letter.

Point 2: Table 9. I got to know that value in parentheses is a p-value but what is the value outside parentheses? Please mention it clearly.

Point 3: I still am not able to read figures 1,2, and 3. Could you please make it readable?

Author Response

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Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, 

 

please find below an excerpt of the details on research involving humans -  this information is available online (https://www.mdpi.com/ethics): Please see section - 

Research Involving Human Subjects (paragraph 3 below)

For non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys, questionnaires, social media research), all participants must be fully informed if the anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used and if there are any risks associated. As with all research involving humans, ethical approval from an appropriate ethics committee must be obtained prior to conducting the study. If ethical approval is not required, authors must either provide an exemption from the ethics committee or are encouraged to cite the local or national legislation that indicates ethics approval is not required for this type of study. Where a study has been granted exemption, the name of the ethics committee which provided this should be stated in Section ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ with a full explanation regarding why ethical approval was not required.

The description on lines 164 to 170 is not sufficient. Please provide a copy of the ethics approval or an exemption. How was the anonymity of households ensured?

If anonymity was not ensured this data is not suitable for publication -  or may lead to misleading conclusions.

In addition to this: The discussion does not consider higher payouts for landowners. Could an increase in compensation improve program success? Was the rate of compensation selected adequately? 

Please provide the ethics approval or exemption or cite the relevant literature -  kindly consider an update of the discussion.

 

Sincerely

 

 

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you, authors, for revising the manuscript. The manuscript has been improved significantly. However, a few things need to be clarified before publishing the manuscript.

1. The study employed quota sampling. It means the sampled households were not random. So results can be unrepresentative of the population. How did the authors claim that the findings are unbiased? 

2. Please double-check grammatical errors. Especially, section 3.1. Samples and Data Sections.

Author Response

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Round 4

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thanks for providing an updated manuscript and especially for updating the ethics section according to journal standards. 

Sincerely