Residents’ Willingness to Pay for Forest Ecosystem Services Based on Forest Ownership Classification in South Korea

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript entitled " Preferences of Residents for Forest Ecosystem Services Based 2 on Forest Ownership Classification" explores the residents’ preferences in Jeollabuk-do, South Korea, regarding managing local forest ecosystem services, differentiated by forest ownership. The topic of evaluating different ecosystem services based on forest ownership is interesting and important and the findings from this study are of practical significance. However, I do have several reservations and a number of issues need more clarification.

1)   I would suggest changing the title to include the key word of willingness to pay since this is the major evaluating method in this study.

2)   Line 16: the residents willingness to pay is 21.80 USD, etc. what is the unit? Such as 21.80 USD/household/year?

3)   Line 20: in line with forest classification, includes the specific forest ownership, since use the word classification is confusing in the abstract.

4)   I would suggest adding studies (one paragraph of literature review) that assess landowners' perspectives/attitudes toward ecosystem services provision in the Introduction. For example, the study of “Understanding the Factors Influencing Nonindustrial Private Forest Landowner Interest in Supplying Ecosystem Services in Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee” by Tian et al. (2015) and others.

5)   Page 6, line 233: carbon storage is associated with tree species, growth rate, tree age, etc. Here you only used or assumed ratio canopy density, which needs more justification.

6)   Page 10, line 352: what is the response rate? There are only 400 valid responses, how to deal with the nonresponse bias? This needs more justification.

7)   Table 3, there are many places that your sample is inconsistent with the population such as Marriage and others, you need to justify more for those inconsistent statistics, or else, your sample is nor representative of the population.

8)   Table 6: it should be the table for private forest, right?

9)   Discussion: Page 15: I would suggest adding more comparisons between the estimated WTP for national/public with other studies if any. The same for private forests, so you can justify if higher than other studies, why? If lower, why?

Withstanding all these concerns, I feel that author(s) have done a tremendous scholarly effort to collect data. I encourage the author(s) to provide more details in the comments above.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor edition is needed. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review it amidst your busy schedule.

Please see the attachment.

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript presents a study of the residents preferences on the forest-based ecosystem services in South Korea. The study seems to be a good contribution to the empirical works on the topic.

However, I would stress out some shortcomings that need to be addressed.

1. The subsection on The Tragedy of the Commons looks to be redundant, as the concept is widely discussed and is not central for the study under revision. Please consider to wrap it into a phrase inside the literature review.

2. In the Abstract, you mention that the residents are willing to pay some KRWs for the enhancement of biodiversity. Does that mean a regular payment? The periodicity needs to be revealed explicitly.

3. Maps (Figure 1 and 2) are too small. Please enlarge them keeping resolution as high as possible.

4. The country of study needs to be mentioned in the paper title, as the content of paper is empirical and focuses only on South Korea.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review it amidst your busy schedule. 

Please see the attachment.

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript deals with an interesting area of ecosystems services and forest ownership issues; and I thank you for the hard work done by the Korean authors. However, the authors have some scope to improve the manuscript, and here are my specific suggestions:

1. In the abstract, authors need to include an introductory abstract at the beginning and also need to write the objectives clearly and specifically.  
2. The introduction is very long; I suggest including a sub-heading called Theoretical Frameworks and Placing the Tragedy of Common and Ecosystems Service Valuation is there instead of 1.1. and 1.2. In theoretical framework, the authors may precisely describe the two theories and their valuation techniques, as these theories are well established and known by the scientists. In this way, the authors may reduce the volume of the introduction.
3. The authors need to enlarge the size and resolution of Figure 1, which is small. The legend should be placed in the upper position of the figure.
4. In methodology, tables are preferred over text format for describing parameters.
5. In discussion, the authors need to extend the boundary with citations; I mean, the references are weak.
6. The authors need to avoid the repetition of results that they already described in the discussion section; rather, a good conclusion summarizes the key findings with a future direction for worldwide readers; rewrite the conclusion.

 

Good luck

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review it amidst your busy schedule.

Please see the attachment.

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author addressed my comments. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor edits for language and double-check the typos and grammar. 

Author Response

Thank you for the second review.

I have corrected the overall polish, spacing, and typos. Additionally, I have thoroughly reviewed and corrected the English as pointed out.

I have attached the revised manuscript, with the changes highlighted in blue.

Please see the attachment.

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have made a good progress revising the manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you for the second review.

I have corrected the overall polish, spacing, and typos. 

I have attached the revised manuscript, with the changes highlighted in blue.

Please see the attachment.

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf