Can Digital Transformation Solve the Problem of Arctic Youth Migration Outflow?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The work takes advantage of the rise of online teaching (and telecommuting) due to the pandemic to study the effect that digital technologies could have on the youth migration outflow in the artic cities.

It analyses the results from a survey among college and technical school students to present some technology-based guidelines to stop youth migration.

Despite the work is interesting and well organised, some improvements can be undertaken:

In lines 238-239 it is claimed that there is no sufficient difference by gender factor, given as reference results displayed in Table 2. However, no statistical evidence is given in this table while this point seems to be discussed again in lines 255-258 and table 5, where outputs of chi-square test are given. It seems more logical to merge both paragraphs together.

In tables 4 and 5, the p values should be given because they are more informative than the values of the statistics and the critical value.

The rank in Table 6 is not clear in the way ties are treated. For example, having the same percentage of Yes (67%), why “High physical safety of people in the city...” is in the top of the list when  “Significant expansion of opportunities…” has a higher percentage of “Rather Yes” answers? The same happens with measures 3, 4 and 5 that, with the same percentage of “Yes” answers, the current measure 4 has the highest percentage of “Rather Yes” among these three measures.

Once the representativity of the sample is justified, in the discussion section confidence interval for the main percentages should be given instead of just the percentage in the sample. This gives the reader an idea, not only of the estimate of the percentage, but also the error of that estimate.

Author Response

The answers are in the attached word file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Upon reading the abstract for your study, I was intrigued. The connections made to the global pandemic and the resulting need to establish remote learning environments at all levels, seemed especially timely and held the potential to fill a void in research.

However, the study seemed more focused on problems particular to Russian youth with the artic region and less about the rise of digital learning platforms and delivery systems. Your results and discussions merely substantiate your hypotheses that youth want good jobs, high quality of life, and sufficient opportunities. It wasn't clear how these decisions would have been different without the use of digital learning. In other words, youth would probably have given the same responses if you said what if we could...install high speed, reliable transportation to big cities, or guarantee large corporations opening in your region who would also train/educate you? 

If this study was about digital learning you will need to include more explicit and nuanced information to illuminate this for your readers.

Author Response

Answers are in the attached word file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents an interesting study about the perspectives of arctic youth in general and about their relation with digitalization trends in particular.

I would recommend to expand the conclusions-limitations section to include:

• the relationship between the surveyed sample and the estimated general population that fits the assumed criteria;
• the comparison of the results with other similar studies relating to youth development difficulties, in Russia or other countries, stemming from identical or different limiting factors (e.g. poverty, remoteness, bureaucracy);
• arguments about the impact of digitalization on the sustainability of arctic regions via youth development. 

Author Response

Answers are in the attached word file

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your thoughtful revisions.