How Does the Stability of Land Management Right (SLMR) Affect Family Farms’ Cultivated Land Protection and Quality Improvement Behavior (CLPQIB) in China?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors, you are addressing a topic highly relevant not only in China, but many parts of the world with land tenure issues. However, I identified a couple of issue I suggest to address before publication. Although not a native speaker myself, I also suggest language editing to increase readability and handle numerous minor wording and grammar issues. Please find my detailed comments below.
Abstract: May I suggest 1-2 introductory sentences to provide readers with at least some context for land tenure and CLPQI / SLMR / CLPQIB.
L. 11: Are farmers really "subject" of land protection? My impression is that they are rather key actors or agents. Please revise wording.
L. 17: the term "transfer-in land" should be clearly defined and potentially revised by a native speaker.
L. 29 ff Introduction: A key pressure adding to the need for QLPQI is missing: the loss and convertion of fertile land to settlement and transportation areas is a key challenge in hina and many other countries with ongoing urbanisation. Please add this aspect to introduction and discussion.
L. 32: "Cultivated land protection and quality improvement" is a very broad and very fuzzy term. So when introducing CLPQI, I strongly suggest that the authors clearly define the term and provide concrete examples of land protection AND of quality improvement measures. The same applies for the cited references, which should clearly and concretely address identifiable CLPQI measures.
L. 50 - 55: Again definitions needed here. Differnces between farm types such as family or smallholder or others are unclear and should be defined. Then readers may have a better chance to understand why the number of family farms is growing and why the government wants to have 1 Mio. of them and seems to prefer them over other farm types. Please explain.
L. 61 - 64: Here some "cultivated land protection and quality improvement techniques (CLPQIT)" are mentioned, without really introducing them nor informing the readers what they are good for, or in other words which processes or problems related to Cultivated land protection and quality improvement do they address? May I suggest to introduce a short table to more clearly present CLPQIT, processes, intended contribution to protection or quality improvement.
L. 92-93: The key information "Family farms possess more resources than smallholders, and may pay more attention to the quality of cultivated land" should be presented already in the introduction including typical sizes (in ha) if possible. The same applies for other farm types mentioned in the introduction.
L. 96: please delete "often", which is not part of this theory.
L. 104 - 173: Key aspects of land management rights and land transfer presented here, should already be mentioned more clearly in the introduction, to better enable readers to understand key-aspects and boundary conditions of this study. I really appreciate the detailled information presented here, but on the other hand I miss links to and references from other parts of the world, as the topic land tenure / land rights and willingness to invest has been discussed for decades.
L. 176: H3: Why H3? References 29 and 30 cited above, clearly show the positive effects of duration on CLPQIB. Thus, I suggest to delete H3, as this question has already been answered by 29 and 30 (and many other papers in other regions).
L 180-184: Important statements for the selection of studysites. Please briefly explain the strategy "focusing on the development of resources and the environment, and achieving high-quality development" (including what shall be protected and how) provide evidence by 2-3 references.
L. 188-189: Please explain "According to the level of economic development in Hubei Province, three counties were selected...". Why? Which criteria were applied?
L. 229-230: I don't understand "screen the least variables that should collect easily and the majority of variation can be explained in the survey data". Could you please explain in other words.
L. 230-251: In this section a lot of information about farm management aspects is provided in a somewhat unstructured fashion. E.g. it remains unclear for readers which measures are suggested for which farm types, which harmful impacts of agro-chemicals the authors want to avoid, as no concrete processes are presented. Additionally it remains unclear where the organic fertilizers would come from, and whether they match the demands of the areas on which they shall be applied (e.g. would other fields be depleted, when providing organic material for CLPQIB fields?).
The selection of the 12 independent variables remains unclear. Why these and not other explanatory factors? Please explain.
L 252 Table 1:
L. 255 ff
To my understanding as applied in the suggested model the use of organic fertilizer or a reduction of pesticides of 1% would produce the same results as a 99% reduction. Please explain whether my assumption is correct and explain this in section 3.3
L. 259-260: Unclear whether the statement "The positive effect of organic fertilizer has been recognized by many farmers promoted by Chinese central government" is a result based on the survey or rather a conclusion. If it is a conclusion please shift to the discussion or conclusion section and provide a reference.
L 291: Table 4: Did all factors contribute significantly to explain the dependent variables? Table 4 suggests they did not. The authors also state that OF, PR and PB were influenced by differently by different variables. Why were then the insignificant factors kept in the models? All questions should be addressed by the authors to enable readers to better understand the regression approach and the results.
254-330 Results section:
Here I would have expected clear links between results and the central hypotheses H1-H4. Besides the fact that H3 has been answered before by refs 29 and 30, I found only very brief and not very convincing statements confirming the hypotheses (except h2, which has been confirmed by others). Please explain in more detail why you think that the hypotheses are all confirmed. I suggest only to use H1,2,4 and skip H3, or better explain why you need to test H3 again. Please also adress H1,2,4 in the discussion section.
L 348, 374, 377-378: incomplete references. Please complete. (Especially: Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and Alfred Marshall)
L. 366-369: You are making very important statements here. Please provide evidence from your study or the literature.
L. 413: "micro entities" introduced here. Please define. If used for family farms, please stick to the term family farms to avoid confusion and ambiguities.
L 412 ff Conclusions.
Daer authors in this section you present many isues, which are not conclusions, but summarizing your results (l 421-436), which should be deleted or integrated into the results section, or introducing interesting facts (l. 437 ff) which should be shifted to the discussion section. Please focus on conclusions here, which in most papers requires half a page or less including recommendations and next (research) steps if relevant.
References: Multiple references (examples: 1, 3, 10, 13) in the list are incomplete. Please revise and use MDPI's citation format.
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Reviewer 2 Report
This paper analyzed the influence of SLMR on family farms’ CLPQIB from the perspectives of the ratio of transfer-in land, transfer contract types and duration. Findings showed that ratio of transfer-in land, contract types and duration of contract affect family farms’ CLPQIB significantly. This research signifies a step forward in joint research about stability of land management right. However, there are important issues that need to be improved prior to publication.
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Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors
Thank you very much for your contribution about How does the stability of land management right (SLMR) affects family farms’ cultivated land protection and quality improvement behavior (CLPQIB) in China?. However, authors need to address some issue to improve the quality of the manuscript .
- Try to reduce the abbreviation in the manuscript.
- Review the global issue and challenges of cultivated land loss in developing and developed country. Not only developed country are committed to protection of cultivated land. So please address the issue of food security in developed and developing country. Review other land use policy and address the impact of SLRM, CLPQIB in china. Please try to make introduction part very clear for reader.
- Both figures (The logical frame work and Location of study area) are clear please prepare high resolution map and insert in the main text not only supplementary file. Provide more details about the study area, population, geographical extension and gap why authors conducted this work in this area in section 3.1
- If possible, prepare a graph of respondent showing age, education and understanding level of CLPQIB.
- Please add the year in citation ex Line 348 (Zhang et al 2019), 374, 378. Please merge the second and third paragraph of conclusion part and describe your finding evidently.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
you did a great job in improving the MS. Just one issue related to your 4 hypotheses remains, I suggest to adapt or change.
In your response you nicely explain to me how your study results verify H1 - H4. However, the MS remains without changes, which means the readers do not benefit from your explanations. I still have the impression that H1 - H4 do not receive the attention they should. May I suggest 2 options to handle this issue:
1) Expand your verification arguments e.g. based your explanations to me.
2) Repalce hypotheses by research questions: Delete H1-H4 and rewrite section l. 103 - l. 109 to phrase 2 major research questions, which you answer in this paper. Would require some rewriting to link your results to the questions. My impression is that this option better reflects the study.
My personal preference is option 2, but I think both options are viable.
Sorry to say, but also in the new text sections some minor wording and grammar issues remain, plus a non SI unit "mu" in l. 32. Please revise.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
I appreciate the authors’ revisions and improving the manuscript. Most of my remarks from the previous round of revision has been addressed. Yet, there are some issues and remaining comments from the previous revision that should be addressed.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors
Thank you very much for your revised version of Manuscript. Please check legend of figure 2 an change the font in English language.
Author Response
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