Analysis of the Efficiency of Forest Carbon Sinks and Its Influencing Factors—Evidence from China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

This paper evaluates the input-output efficiency of forest carbon sink in China and the role of different influencing factors. It uses a data envelopment analysis method to estimate efficiency values across 30 provinces of China from 2005 to 2018, which are then used as the dependent variable in a linear regression model to evaluate the effects of pressure, state and response subsystem variables on forest sink efficiency. The authors find that the national level efficiency in China is low at 0.29, which indicate significant room for improvement but found that there is considerable variation across provinces, as well as across regional aggregates of these provinces. In terms of the influencing factors the regression estimates found that, apart from the uniformly positive role of investments, all other factors have heterogenous effects across regions i.e. positive or negative. Based on the analysis, the authors make recommendations to enhance forest carbon sinks in China. The paper is overall well-written and organized, and many of the conclusions are supported by the analysis. However, the authors need to address the following items:

1.       Perform a thorough edit of the paper. There are many cases where punctuations, such “.”, are missing throughout the text. Similarly, there are cases of missing words, such as “to” or “for” in the Abstract statement about “financial support forests”. Still more, there are cases where statements are repeated e.g. “BEF is the biomass expansion factor, and D is the basic wood density.” is repeated on page 3 of the paper. There are many more that would need to be corrected.

2.       On page 3, use of the statement “measuring the forest sink increment” should be changed to “evaluating the forest sink efficiency” as the paper did not perform any measurements but used existing data to evaluate efficiency levels.

3.       Add reference for the source of data shown in Table 1

4.       Provide more discussion of the DEA model in section 2.1.2 so that the average reader can understand the definitions of DEA, radial, relaxation, SBM, CCR, BCC (which need to be fully defined when they are first mentioned). The model presentation is too short.

5.       Equation (2) needs to be revised to appear properly and subscripts in the equation should also be shown as subscripts in the definition given in that paragraph e.g. “xik”

6.       This statement on page 3 is not clear “The objective function ρ satisfies 0 < ρ ≤ 1, which is currently valid only when ρ = 1.” Is it that it is not valid when less than one or that it is not “fully efficient”? Use of valid/invalid is unclear. Also, use “;” to join the following statement “ρ < 1 indicates that the evaluation unit is invalid and there is room for improvement and optimization.” to the previous one to prevent starting the sentence with a symbol.

7.       The statement “The conditions are relaxed from CRS to GRS to VRS after Figure 1 should be moved to the paragraph before and linked with the statement “scale payoff variability qualification”. What conditions are relaxed? This should be explained.

8.       Why select GRS and not VRS – do the lower values for GRS vs. VRS not matter?

9.       The last two statements on page 6 about Table 2 are repetitive and probably not needed since the previous paragraph already discussed the results of Table 2. May be this was supposed to reference Figure 2?

10.   Why does this statement “By looking at Figure 2, we can find that, nationwide, the average forest sink enhancement efficiency is basically below 0.4 in each year” refer to 0.4 instead of 0.29 mentioned in the Abstract and shown in Figure 2.

11.   The results for the influence of urbanization appears to be quite controversial because it suggests positive effects on forest sink efficiency in some cases. This result and similar ones may be because the forest output data used by the authors include both primary and secondary forestry products. The authors attempted to link the role of urbanization to the share of the primary forestry sector, but this is problematic since urbanization and economic growth generally leads to the clearing of land.

12.   The authors should use only data for forest sink and primary forestry output data if available. Otherwise, the results on urbanization and economic growth should be qualified as tentative due to lack of the ability to separate primary and secondary forestry outputs. Similar issues arise with the conclusion that the frequency of forest natural disasters has a positive effect on carbon sink efficiency.

13.   Can the name of “Explanatory Variables” be included in Table 5, along with the symbols?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have failed to engage in important aspects of the various issues raised in the paper and have not provided sufficient (in some cases any) empirical or academic evidence supporting central and/or controversial points. The manuscript requires major revisions to contextualize the merits of the study and potential uses of its methodology in future studies. The research idea is not properly contextualised, as there is a need of offering a detailed review of relevant literature that help the authors developing the key arguments that support their proposed research. Additionally, the research aims, objectives and questions do need to be identified. Research questions and hypotheses must be constructed based on specific supporting sources, preferably as recent as possible. A Literature review section is missing. Equations must be standardized in style. 2019–2022 updates are needed. A Discussion section is needed. The main contributions of the paper should be presented as part of the empirical discussions or critical assessment on the core research outcomes. Please provide more details regarding the study limitations and strengths and what this means for the study findings. You should compare your results with others in terms of concrete data for better research integrative value. The Conclusions section should clarify the main contribution of the paper and the value added to the field. The reference list is too short, does not follow the journal’s style, is poorly edited, and a lot of sources are incomplete. Also, too many old references.

The relationship between environmentally responsible behavior and sustainability management as regards the efficiency of forest sink enhancement has not been covered, and thus such sources can be cited:

Lăzăroiu, G., Ionescu, L., Andronie, M., and Dijmărescu, I. (2020). “Sustainability Management and Performance in the Urban Corporate Economy: A Systematic Literature Review,” Sustainability 12(18): 7705. doi: 10.3390/su12187705.

Obadă, D.-R., and Dabija, D.-C. (2022). “‘In Flow’! Why Do Users Share Fake News about Environmentally Friendly Brands on Social Media?,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19(8): 4861. doi: 10.3390/ ijerph19084861.

Lăzăroiu, G., Ionescu, L., Uță, C., Hurloiu, I., Andronie, M., and Dijmărescu, I. (2020). “Environmentally Responsible Behavior and Sustainability Policy Adoption in Green Public Procurement,” Sustainability 12(5): 2110. doi: 10.3390/ su12052110.

Pocol, C. B., Stanca, L., Dabija, D.-C., Pop, I. D., and Mișcoiu, S. (2022). “Knowledge Co-creation and Sustainable Education in the Labor Market-Driven University–Business Environment,” Frontiers in Environmental Science 10: 781075. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2022.781075.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have revised the paper based on previous comments. The paper still requires English and typographical edits. With respect to the latter, there are many cases where spacing is missing between two sentences or between items in a list. Sentence on line 335 to 341 (~6 lines) is too long and should be reduced or broken into smaller pieces.

Author Response

"Please see the attachment." 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This revised version can be published.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review the manuscript again and giving your "approval for publication".