Agricultural Supply Chain Financing Strategies under the Impact of Risk Attitudes
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
The paper is interesting and well structured. However, some weaknesses can be identified:
1. The term ‘e-commerces’ is often used. You should preferably use the term ‘e-commerce’, or you could use a more specific term, such as e-commerce applications or e-commerce sites or e-commerce companies.
2. Please explain why the Stackelberg game model is appropriate for exploring and analyzing your research questions.
3. Please also write a paragraph to explain your methodology.
4. Cq2 (1+r) in figures 1 and 2 should be explained
5. The description of some variables used in the equations is missing.
6. The mathematical equations seem very complex for the analysis of the specific research questions. You should consider either to simplify them or focus on the most important ones and thoroughly explain them to make them more understandable for the readers.
7. All equations used need to be explained. For example, explanations need to be added for the equations (4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10), (11), (12), (13), (14).
8. Equations (13) and (14) are written twice.
9. The detailed explanation of the above equations will also contribute to the understanding of the Numerical Analysis.
10. A discussion can be added before the conclusions' section.
11. A survey designed to collect empirical data from real farmers could provide more valid, verifiable and more generalizable results related to the subject of study. You could mention this as one of the limitations of their study.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: The term ‘e-commerces’ is often used. You should preferably use the term ‘e-commerce’, or you could use a more specific term, such as e-commerce applications or e-commerce sites or e-commerce companies.
Response 1: We are very sorry for our incorrect writing. We change " e-commerces " to " e-commerce " in the paper
Point 2:Please explain why the Stackelberg game model is appropriate for exploring and analyzing your research questions.
Response 2: We mainly analyze the agricultural product supply chain composed of an e-commerce and a financially constrained farmer. As the leader, e-commerce decides the purchase price of agricultural products, and farmers, as followers, decide the amount of production input when the purchase price of the e-commerce is known. This decision model conforms to the meaning of the Steinberg game model, that is, the Steinberg game model is suitable for analyzing our research problem.
Point 3:Please also write a paragraph to explain your methodology.
Response 3: We have added a description of the Stackelberg game model in Section 3.1 Model Description.
Point 4: Cq2 (1+r) in figures 1 and 2 should be explained
Response 4: We have added a new explanation of and in 3.2 Assumptions.
Point 5:The description of some variables used in the equations is missing.
Response 5: The descriptions of and are mainly missing, and we have supplemented the missing variable descriptions in section 3.2 Hypotheses.
Point 6: The mathematical equations seem very complex for the analysis of the specific research questions. You should consider either to simplify them or focus on the most important ones and thoroughly explain them to make them more understandable for the readers.
Response 6: We supplement the explanation of equations (8), (9), (10) in the paper.
Point 7:All equations used need to be explained. For example, explanations need to be added for the equations (4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10), (11), (12), (13), (14).
Response 7: We have explained equations (8), (9), (10). However, equations (4), (5), (6), (7), (11), (12), (13), (14) are the optimal decisions and optimal profits solved, as explained earlier The meaning of the symbols will be repeated if explained under the equations. Therefore, the author believes that these equations do not require additional explanation.
Point 8: Equations (13) and (14) are written twice.
Response 8: We have removed redundant equations.
Point 9:The detailed explanation of the above equations will also contribute to the understanding of the Numerical Analysis.
Response 9: We supplement the explanation of equations (8), (9), (10) in the paper.
Point 10:A discussion can be added before the conclusions' section.
Response 10: We have discussed the results in the numerical analysis section of Chapter 5. We thought it would be redundant to add a discussion before the conclusion, so we did not add a repetitive discussion.
Point 11:A survey designed to collect empirical data from real farmers could provide more valid, verifiable and more generalizable results related to the subject of study. You could mention this as one of the limitations of their study.
Response 11: It is really true as Reviewer suggested that a survey designed to collect empirical data from real farmers could provide more valid, verifiable and more generalizable results related to the subject of study. We have made this one of the limitations of the study in the paper
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This paper considers the risk attitudes of farmers, construct the Stackelberg game model under different financing strategies to obtain the optimal decision of e-commerces and farmers, and explore the expected output factors, the degree of farmer's risk aversion, e-commerces' interest rates on the decision-making results. This is an innovative study. But I have some comments about this paper, and list them as follows:
(1) In section 2.1, Assouto et al. [16] also confirmed that weather-induced uncertainty in agricultural output increases market price volatility[16]. Delete [16] at the end of this sentence.
(2) In section 2.1, the sentence:
For example, Liu et al. studied the problem of agricultural supply chain coordination under stochastic output[17-19].
Why are there three references at the end of this sentence?
(3) In section 2.3, Markowitz (1952) first proposed measuring the return using the mean value and measuring the risk using the variance, which made a qualitative leap in the development of financial investment.
Please add the reference Markowitz (1952).
(4) In section 3.1, the decision-making sequence is as follows:
There are five sequences in this section. But, there is no the fourth sequence.
(5) In section 3.2, all the assumptions are listed by A1 to A9.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1:In section 2.1, Assouto et al. [16] also confirmed that weather-induced uncertainty in agricultural output increases market price volatility[16].Delete [16] at the end of this sentence.
Response 1: We have removed redundant sequence numbers in the paper
Point 2:In section 2.1, the sentence: For example, Liu et al. studied the problem of agricultural supply chain coordination under stochastic output[17-19].Why are there three references at the end of this sentence?
Response 2: 17, 18, and 19 are three papers on the coordination of agricultural supply chains, the difference being that different contracts are used or different influencing factors are considered. We modified this including listing the lead authors of the three articles in the paper.
Point 3: In section 2.3, Markowitz (1952) first proposed measuring the return using the mean value and measuring the risk using the variance, which made a qualitative leap in the development of financial investment.Please add the reference Markowitz (1952).
Response 3: We add the reference Markowitz (1952) in the paper.
Point 4: In section 3.1, the decision-making sequence is as follows:There are five sequences in this section. But, there is no the fourth sequence.
Response 4: We add the fourth sequence in the paper.
Point 5: In section 3.2, all the assumptions are listed by A1 to A9.
Response 5: We made changes to this in the paper
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
You have improved the paper and successfully addressed most of my suggestions. Nevertheless, you could still add a short discussion section to compare the results of your study with those of previous literature.
