Factors Explaining the Willingness of Small-Scale Private Forest Owners to Engage in Forestry—A German Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review this article. The paper presents a good contribution to show that the parameters influencing the willingness to engage in eight different forest management activities. The research perspective of the article is relatively novel applying the lifestyle segmentation approach of Sinus milieus established in German market research. I have enjoyed reading it, and it is well written but still more improvements are required.

1. The introduction is nicely written but I think more references still  are needed to add with more description about the forest management in developing countries besides European countries.

2. The authors should explain the theoretical background and theories before “Conceptual framework”. I could not see the research hypothesis. Then, you may also list a table in section 2 to make it easier for readers to understand.

3. The abstract have referred “the lifestyle segmentation approach”，however it couldn't be described in section 2.

4. I consider that Economic variables are important factors for forest management activity and income variables may be included.

5. Although there are 1009 small owners were filtered from the dataset for further analysis, the sample size is not same in eight different forest management activities. It may affect the empirical results directly.

6. The results in column 3 of table 3 were not been displayed totally. Please pay attention to formatting issues.

7. The description of empirical results in line 474-485 is somewhat simplistic and need to increase theoretical analysis proving research hypotheses.

8. I suggest updating the literature review by adding more papers published in 2023.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have read the manuscript by Stockmann et al., about the willingness of small forest owners to be engaged in Forestry. It is an interesting paper and have valuable data for the journal readership. I have minor suggestions and after that it can be accepted for publications.

1. First two paragraphs of introduction could be merged into one.

2. The authors can consider to mention a bit about the forest land use change and species lost.

3. The results of this study can be more compared with some other nations under-developed and developed word. This can help in formulating a broader policy.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Minor comments:

Expressions in the title should not be repeated among the keywords: ‘small-scale private forest owners’ and ‘willingness to engage’.

Starting an article by „Forests are important for the provision of a number of ecosystem services that affect life on Earth and, in particular, human well-being” is very trite and unoriginal. Not all forest related articles need to start from scratch.

In line 216 ‘prominent and influential’ is not a particularly strong argument for a model to be used in research. I suggest rewording.

In line 346 ‘forsa marplan’ could be in italic to let the reader know this is the name of something (a company in this case).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Research article is nice combination of social methods used in solve practical forestry subject. It is based on previously published research and is adding new value and new angle. But, in my opinion, is too long. Starting from abstract. Tables are not easy to read and they are too long to. Methods and results are repetition of information from table. Please think it over and: 1. Shorten tables or text. I suggest table 2 change to series of graphs but not all data, only most interesting from the point of view of answer to research questions.

Also, please, scan text for delete repeated information e.g. information about residence is at page 9 (footnote) and on page 12 (line 403-405).

Fragments like lines 632-639 (and in other places) is unnecessary and only adding to length of article.

I like discussion very much and division into section. I believe shortening the article will make it easier to read and help to be more often read and citied.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf