Assessing Integrated Effectiveness of Rural Socio-Economic Development and Environmental Protection of Wenchuan County in Southwestern China: An Approach Using Game Theory and VIKOR

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is oriented to illustrate a multi-criteria analysis methodology to evaluate the effectiveness of ecological construction of the villages of a Chinese region and focuses, in particular, on the advantage that can be obtained by applying game theory and the VICTOR method compared to other methods analyzed although this part could be further expanded.

I will not go into the merits of the methodological issues because I do not have the cognitive basis to do so, but will try to limit my judgment between the consistency of the objectives and the methodology adopted on which I have some doubts:

a)     First, on the meaning of "rural ecological construction effectiveness" because in the European and / or Western literature we use the broader term of "assessment of the socio-economic and environmental quality of the rural territory" because the term "construction" refers to something physical (eg building);

b)     Secondly, on the ability of some chosen indicators to make a cognitive contribution on the subject (for example: the level of education of the village heads) and, in general, perhaps, it would have been appropriate to put a table in which the weight attributed to the different variables was indicated;

c)      Moreover, I do not understand the analysis of spatial correlation what cognitive contribution it can make. Intuitively I believe it indicates that there is a certain influence of the result of a certain space compared to other neighbors ... but in this specific analysis is it plausible that it can happen? How can we say that, for example, the average income of a village is spatially correlated with the average income of neighboring villages or that the percentage of houses with toilet can influence the percentage of houses with toilet of neighboring villages? I believe that, in this case, the analysis of spatial correlation is not only superfluous but also conceptually wrong;

d)     Finally, in my opinion, it does not emerge what the applicative effects of the application of this methodology can be (for policies? to implement actions to improve the quality of rural territory? etc.).

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Assessing integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection of Wenchuan County in southwestern China: An approach using game theory and VIKOR” (ID: land-1905544). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked up using the “Track Changes” function in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responses to the reviewer’s comments are as following:

Responses to Reviewer’s comments

Q1. On the advantage that can be obtained by applying game theory and the VIKOR method compared to other methods analyzed although this part could be further expanded.

Response:

Much appreciated for your insightful comments. We have modified the manuscript accordingly, and presented in Section 4 line 389-404. It should be noted that we have changed the phrase “rural ecological construction effectiveness (RECE)” into “integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection (IERSE)” in the paper. This modification is made according to your suggestion.

Compared with the commonly used multi-criteria decision-making method TOPSIS, VIKOR focuses on both of the group utility and individual regret of the evaluation subjects. In this study, additionally, the group utility is positive correlated with the IERSE and the individual regret indicates the restrictive factor for each village. While TOPSIS pays attention to both positive and negative ideal solutions but without considering their relative importance, which may lead to the so-called problem of “rank reversal”.

In China, horizontal comparison or horizontal competition is a normal and important means used by different level of governments to promote the implementation of varied development and protection initiatives, such as the construction of ecological civilization and beautiful villages. In terms of this study, the assessment results showed different constraints on improving the IERSE for differed villages. Therefore, the study not only proposed a concise and feasible approach to promote the sorting and ranking function of VIKOR toward evaluation research with relatively big samples, but also offered scientific evidence for local decision makers (such as leaders at county level) to make targeted policy on increasing the synergy of socio-economic development and environmental protection in rural areas.

Q2. On the meaning of “rural ecological construction effectiveness” because in the European and / or Western literature we use the broader term of “assessment of the socio-economic and environmental quality of the rural territory” because the term “construction” refers to something physical (eg building).

Response:

Thank you very much for your insightful comments. We have modified according to your suggestion and the connotation of the original phrase (“rural ecological construction effectiveness”), which has been presented in many places of our manuscript, such as Section 1 line 37-40:

Improving the integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection (IERSE) implies full respect for the carrying capacity of resources and the environment, and it reflects the idea of adapting to or eliminating restrictive development by giving play to the subjective initiatives of human society.

Q3. On the ability of some chosen indicators to make a cognitive contribution on the subject (for example: the level of education of the village heads) and, in general, perhaps, it would have been appropriate to put a table in which the weight attributed to the different variables was indicated.

Response:

Many thanks you for your important suggestion. As for the two chosen indicators, “education level of village Party secretary” and “education level of village head”, our considerations are as follows.

In rural China, village self-governance is a basic rule, which affect the implementation of all national laws and regulations. The election of village leaders (the Party secretary and head of administrative) and villagers’ knowledge of relevant policies are major forces in the use of village self-governance rules for improving the synergy of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection. Obviously, this kind of synergy is more related to the overall long-term interests of rural China, which may bring less direct economic benefits to individual villagers. Therefore, it is believed that most villagers have very limited motivation to proactively improve the synergy of socio-economic development and environmental protection around their living context. Meanwhile, as the grassroot implementers of rural development policy in China, the Party secretary and head of administrative village play important roles in promoting IERSE of rural China. Thence, the education level indicators which may reflect the (potential) capability to promote IERSE to a certain extent was chosen to represent the villagers’ autonomy dimension in our evaluation system.

Furthermore, the weight of all indicators has been presented in Table 1 of the paper. Please kindly find it as follows.

Table 1. The indicator system for the IERSE of Wenchuan County.

Q4. I do not understand the analysis of spatial correlation what cognitive contribution it can make. Intuitively I believe it indicates that there is a certain influence of the result of a certain space compared to other neighbors ... but in this specific analysis is it plausible that it can happen? How can we say that, for example, the average income of a village is spatially correlated with the average income of neighboring villages or that the percentage of houses with toilet can influence the percentage of houses with toilet of neighboring villages? I believe that, in this case, the analysis of spatial correlation is not only superfluous but also conceptually wrong.

Response:

Thank you very much for your kind comments. Conducting spatial correlation analysis was based on the following consideration.

In our study, actually, the spatial correlation analysis was applied to display the heterogeneity of IERSE’s spatial distribution. Due to space limitations, we did not mean to discuss the internal mechanism of the spatial correlation among indicators in this paper. In addition, the spatial correlation analysis was carried out according to the standard method proposed by Ord et al (Ord, J.K., Getis, A., 1995. Local spatial auto correlation statistics: Distributional issues and application. Geographical Analysis27(4), 286-306. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1538-4632.1995.tb00912.x). And the final results also passed the significance test.

Q5. In my opinion, it does not emerge what the applicative effects of the application of this methodology can be (for policies? to implement actions to improve the quality of rural territory? etc.).

Response:

Thanks very much for your valuable comments. As for the applicative effects of the application of this methodology, we could explain as follows. In China, horizontal comparison or horizontal competition is a normal and important means used by different level of governments to promote the implementation of varied development and protection initiatives. In terms of this paper, the assessment results of our study could provide specific basis for promoting rural ecological livability in Wenchuan, such as the harmonious coexistence of man and nature and the path of rural green development, and provide more localized guidance on the construction of ecological civilization and beautiful villages. The assessment results showed different constraints on improving the IERSE for differed villages. Therefore, the study not only proposed a concise and feasible approach to promote the sorting and ranking function of VIKOR toward evaluation research with relatively big samples, but also offered scientific evidence for local decision makers (such as leaders at county level) to make targeted policy on increasing the synergy of socio-economic development and environmental protection in rural areas.

Once again, we much appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is interesting but displays major flaws to be corrected, above all re literature review, English standards and research design.

- The abstract is wordy and shall be condensed.

- Invert acronyms and spelled words - e.g. Technique for Order 42 Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS ), etc.

- The language needs substantial improvements.

- The work relies too much on local publications and the bibliography is meagre.

- As a result, the paper needs to engage more with the extant literature on ecological economics, sustainability, indexes and game theory in international journals - see works from Morrow, Gatto, Senatore and colleagues.

- Add the paper's organisation at the end of section 1.

- Specify why the study chose that specific geographical location.

- Why is the rural dimension decisive? This fact shall be explained to build up the research question.

- Discussions and conclusions are scant and need to be expanded. As they stand, the paper looks like a report.

- As a consequence, the research question need to be better defined.

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Assessing integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection of Wenchuan County in southwestern China: An approach using game theory and VIKOR” (ID: land-1905544). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked up using the “Track Changes” function in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responses to the reviewer’s comments are as following:

Responses to Reviewer’s comments

Q1. The abstract is wordy and shall be condensed.

Response:

Thank you for your kind comment. We have modified this part according to your suggestion. It has been presented in our manuscript line 9-28. It should be noted that we have changed the phrase “rural ecological construction effectiveness (RECE)” into “integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection (IERSE)” in the paper. This modification was made according to one reviewer’s suggestion.

Abstract: A scientific and comprehensive evaluation is a prerequisite for clarifying the guiding direction to improve the integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection (IERSE). Through adopting the VIKOR method, as well as the combined weight based on game theory, this paper systematically assessed the IERSE of Wenchuan County in 2018 from the administrative village scale perspective. The results showed the following: 1) Assessing the IERSE through the VIKOR method with combined weight based on game theory, as well as Jenks Natural Breaks Classification, is both scientific and comprehensive, and it is a concise and feasible approach for VIKOR to be applied to large-sample-size evaluation. 2) The general IERSE of Wenchuan demonstrated considerable positive outcomes. The villages with favorable IERSE scores were located along the northwest-central-southeast, whereas unfavorable ones were principally distributing in the northeast and south-central areas. A weak spatial positive correlation and weak agglomeration of the global spatial pattern was found in rural Wenchuan. Local spatial agglomeration of favorable IERSE was only found in Miansi, Wolong, and Sanjiang Town, whereas unfavorable IERSE occurred in Yingxiu and Xuankou Town. 3) The IERSE of Wenchuan is mainly impacted by the constraints of ecological conservation and villagers’ autonomy from the village-scale perspective. Villages with favorable IERSE are chiefly constrained by the education level of village heads or Party secretaries, while villages with unfavorable IERSE are restricted by ecological conservation. To improve the IERSE in Wenchuan, thoroughly taking into account the restrictive factors of local IERSE is an essential step for putting forward differentiated and targeted recommendations connected with ecological environment management, as well as social development initiatives.

Q2. Invert acronyms and spelled words - e.g. Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), etc.

Response:

Thank you for your important suggestion. We have made correction according to your comments. It has been presented in our manuscript line 45, line 51-53, line 86-88:

1. a) Line 45: Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method [4];
2. b) Line 51-53: The PSR model [8], Human Sustainable Development Index (HSDI) [9], and driver–pressure–state–impact–response (DPSIR) [10] have been utilized to quantitatively describe the state of sustainable development.
3. c) Line 86-88: employing game theory combination weighting and the VlseKriterijumska Optimi-zacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method to assess the IERSE.

Q3. The language needs substantial improvements.

Response:

We are sorry for the language problem in the paper. We have tried our best to checked the grammar, spelling, punctuation and phrasing of the paper, and have also used MDPI's Language Editing Service. We really hope that the paper’s readability has been substantially improved.

Q4. The work relies too much on local publications and the bibliography is meagre.

Response:

Much appreciated for your suggestion. We have added 10 related international publications as references in the paper. Please kindly find them in Introduction section (Line48-59), Materials and Methods section (Line101-103,184-186,191-193).

• Introduction section (Line 48-59)

International scholars have paid more attention to sustainable development and the connection between the environment and economic development. In terms of indicators, the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have received a lot of attention [5-7]. The PSR model [8], Human Sustainable Development Index (HSDI) [9], and driver–pressure–state–impact–response (DPSIR) [10] have been utilized to quantitatively describe the state of sustainable development. The traditional approach to exploring and understanding the relationship between environmental conditions and economic development is the examination of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) [11]. The introduction of the ecological footprint, which evaluates the environmental impacts associated with human activities, has made this type of assessment more realistic and useful [12,13]. Some scholars use the ecological footprint as an indicator of environmental degradation to investigate the EKC hypothesis [14,15].

• Materials and Methods section
• Line 101-103: After equilibrium, the advantages of subjective and objective weights were integrated [22], and the optimal index weight value was obtained.
• Line 184-186: The combined weighting based on game theory was founded on the independent calculation of each weight value, by pursuing weights’ equilibrium to achieve the optimal weight combination [21,34].
• Line 191-193: Specifically, the subjective weight was obtained by the AHP method [35] and the objective weight gotten through the Criteria Importance Though Inter criteria Correlation (CRITIC) method.

The Additional references as follows:

[5]. Nations, United. Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. New York: United Nations, De-partment of Economic and Social Affairs. 2015 Oct 21.

[6]. Hák, T., Janoušková, S., Moldan, B., 2016. Sustainable Development Goals: A need for relevant indicators. Ecological indi-ca-tors60(2016), 565-573.

[7]. Huan, Y., Liang, T., Li, H., Zhang, C., 2021. A systematic method for assessing progress of achieving sustainable development goals: A case study of 15 countries. Science of the Total Environment752 (2021), 141875.

[10]. Malekmohammadi, B., Jahanishakib, F., 2017. Vulnerability assessment of wetland landscape ecosystem services using driver-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) model. Ecological Indicators82(2017), 293-303.

[11]. Esen, Ö., Yıldırım, D.Ç., Yıldırım, S., 2020. Threshold effects of economic growth on water stress in the Eurozone. Environmental Science and Pollution Research27(25), 31427-31438.

[12]. Wackernagel, M., Rees, W., 1996. Our ecological footprint: reducing human impact on the earth. New society publishers, Philadelphia, PA.

[13]. Nautiyal, H., Goel, V., 2021. Sustainability assessment: Metrics and methods. In Methods in Sustainability Science, 27-46.

[14]. Charfeddine, L., Mrabet, Z., 2017. The impact of economic development and social-political factors on ecological footprint: a panel data analysis for 15 MENA countries. Renewable and sustainable energy reviews76, 138–154.

[15]. Destek, M.A., Sinha, A., 2020. Renewable, non-renewable energy consumption, economic growth, trade openness and ecological footprint: evidence from organization for economic Co-operation and development countries. Journal of Cleaner Pro-duction242, 118537.

[22]. Wang, Y.M., Parkan, C., 2006. A general multiple attribute decision-making approach for integrating subjective preferences and objective information. Fuzzy Sets and Systems157(10), 1333-45.

[34]. Roger, B.M., 1991. Game theory: analysis of conflict. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA, 66.

[35]. Forman, E.H., Gass, S.I., 2001. The analytic hierarchy process—an exposition. Operations research49(4), 469-486.

Q5. As a result, the paper needs to engage more with the extant literature on ecological economics, sustainability, indexes and game theory in international journals - see works from Morrow, Gatto, Senatore and colleagues.

Response:

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. We have modified the manuscript accordingly, and the added content was presented in line 49-60. Specifically, we carefully checked the articles of Morrow, Gatto and Senatore, and properly cited their related works in our manuscript as following [reference 33(Line 183-184)] [ reference 31(Line 160-162)] [ reference 47(Line 261-262)].

• reference 33(Line 183-184)：Game theory is the mathematical analysis of the "both encompassing and reconciling conflicts where possible"[33].
• reference 31(Line 160-162)：The human or villagers’ autonomy level has a substantial impact on villagers’ participation in improving the IERSE [31].
• reference 47(Line 261-262)：Spatial analysis is an important complementary tool for showing regional variations [47].

The Additional references as follows:

[33]. Morrow, J.D., 1994. Game theory for political scientists. Princeton University Press.

[31]. Gatto, A., 2020. A pluralistic approach to economic and business sustainability: A critical meta‐synthesis of foundations, met-rics, and evidence of human and local development. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Manage-ment27(4), 1525-1539.

[47]. Montesanto, A., Passarino, G., Senatore, A., Carotenuto, L. and De Benedictis, G., 2008. Spatial analysis and surname anal-ysis: complementary tools for shedding light on human longevity patterns. Annals of human genetics72(2), 253-260.

Q6. Add the paper’s organization at the end of section 1.

Response:

Considering the Reviewer’s suggestion, we have added line 91-93:

The rest of this paper is arranged as follows. Section 2 covers the materials and methods used in the paper. Section 3 gives the results, and the discussion of results is represented in Section 4. Section 5 summarizes the conclusions.

Q7. Specify why the study chose that specific geographical location.

Response:

Thank you for your important suggestion. Actually，the reason of study area selection was described in Section 1 and 2.1 of the paper. Here we would like to briefly summarized as follows:

1. a) Wenchuan is a typical county in northwest Sichuan Province with important ecological status in China. It sits in the ecological security barrier of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Against the background of rural revitalization and beautiful countryside construction in China, the rural development of Wenchuan County is facing the complex contradiction between high-quality economic development and environmental protection.
2. b) The Wenchuan Ms8.0 Earthquake (May 12, 2008) caused overwhelming disturbances to local surface and geological environment, especially increasing the vulnerability of ecosystems and economic systems in rural area. It makes sense to quantitatively portray the integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection after 10-year recovery and reconstruction in Wenchuan.
3. c) It is believed that many regions in the world are also facing the contradiction between high-quality economic development and natural ecological protection. Facing the challenges of sustainable development, the evaluation IERSE has certain reference significance for other regions with similar development circumstance.

Q8. Why is the rural dimension decisive? This fact shall be explained to build up the research question.

Response:

Thank you for your suggestion. Actually, the reason was stated in Section 1 of the paper. Here again, we would like to briefly summarized as follows:

1. a) Compared with urban area, the rural area is supposed facing much more challenges of comprehensive development of social economy and environmental protection after decades of city-oriented development model in China. As mentioned in the Response to Q7, national rural revitalization and beautiful rural countryside construction initiative is being implemented in China. Against this context, how to understand the integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection is an topic worthy of further consideration.
2. b) The existing research literature pay little attention to the comprehensive development of rural social economy and environmental protection at microscale territorial spaces, such as administrative villages or rural community. However, this provides us a deserving chance to build up a holistic assessment approach to exam the comprehensive progress of certain rural area’s integrated effectiveness of socio-economic development and environmental protection.

Q9. Discussions and conclusions are scant and need to be expanded. As they stand, the paper looks like a report.

Response:

Thank you for your kind suggestions. We have modified the manuscript accordingly, and presented in Section 4 line 389-404:

Compared with the commonly used multi-criteria decision-making method TOP-SIS, VIKOR focuses on both of the group utility and individual regret of the evaluation subjects. In this study, additionally, the group utility is positive correlated with the IERSE and the individual regret indicates the restrictive factor for each village. While TOPSIS pays attention to both positive and negative ideal solutions but without con-sidering their relative importance, which may lead to the so-called problem of “rank reversal” [41].

In China, horizontal comparison or horizontal competition is a normal and im-portant means used by different level of governments to promote the implementation of varied development and protection initiatives, such as the construction of ecological civilization and beautiful villages. In terms of this study, the assessment results showed different constraints on improving the IERSE for differed villages. Therefore, the study not only proposed a concise and feasible approach to promote the sorting and ranking function of VIKOR toward evaluation research with relatively big sam-ples, but also offered scientific evidence for local decision makers (such as leaders at county level) to make targeted policy on increasing the synergy of socio-economic de-velopment and environmental protection in rural areas.

Q10. As a consequence, the research question needs to be better defined.

Response:

Thanks for your kind suggestion. This paper quantitatively evaluated the IERSE by based on game theory combination weighting and VIKOR method, focusing on two aspects:

1. a) At the methodological level, game theory combination weighting obtains more objective index weight values. VIKOR combined with Jenks Natural Breaks Classification provides decision makers with classification results that comprehensively consider group benefits and individual regrets, which will make the evaluation results more objective and scientific. At the same time, the approach used in this study was believed expanding the sorting and ranking function of VIKOR toward evaluation research with relatively big samples.
2. b) In terms of policy guidance, the assessment results will provide a concrete basis for the promotion of rural ecological livability in China's national policy on rural revitalization, such as the harmonious coexistence of man and nature and the path of rural green development, and provide more localized guidance for ecological civilization moving forward and beautiful countryside construction in the region (for example, Maidi (YM) Village can improve the quality of living environment by strengthening the centralized treatment of domestic waste ).

Once again, we much appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Assessing integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection of Wenchuan County in southwestern China: An approach using game theory and VIKOR” (ID: land-1905544). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked up using the “Track Changes” function in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responses to the reviewer’s comments are as following:

Responses to Reviewer’s comments

Q1. Column 3 (Table 1): on the third column, the acronyms (NDVI; WET; LST; NDSI) should either be removed or “translated”. Column 4 (Table 1): Attribution instead of Arribution.

Response:

Thank you for your kind suggestion. We have made correction according to your comments. The revised Table 1 is presented as follows. It should be noted that we have changed the phrase “rural ecological construction effectiveness (RECE)” into “integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection (IERSE)” in the paper. This modification is made according to one reviewer’s suggestion.

Table 1. The indicator system for the IERSE of Wenchuan County.

Q2. The added value brought by game theory in combination with the VIKOR method should be presented a bit more clearly (as well as that of using the Jenks algorithm).

Response:

Thank you for your valuable comments. We have rewritten this part according to your suggestion. It has been presented in our manuscript Section 2 line 101-106:

After equilibrium, the advantages of subjective and objective weights were integrated [22], and the optimal index weight value was obtained. Additionally, the VIKOR model combined with Jenks Natural Breaks Classification provides decision makers with accurate classification results that comprehensively consider group benefits and individual regrets, and ultimately makes the evaluation results of IERSE more objective and scientific.

Q3. The use as a variable of the education level of the party secretary or the village head is not convincing and, moreover, raises certain ethical issues.

Response:

Thank you for your important suggestion. The use as a variable of the education level of the party secretary or the village head further illustrates as follows:

In rural China, village self-governance is a basic rule, which affect the implementation of all national laws and regulations. The election of village leaders (the Party secretary and head of administrative) and villagers’ knowledge of relevant policies are major forces in the use of village self-governance rules for improving the synergy of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection. Obviously, this kind of synergy is more related to the overall long-term interests of rural China, which may bring less direct economic benefits to individual villagers. Therefore, it is believed that most villagers have very limited motivation to proactively improve the synergy of socio-economic development and environmental protection around their living context. Meanwhile, as the grassroot implementers of rural development policy in China, the Party secretary and head of administrative village play important roles in promoting IERSE of rural China. Thence, the education level indicators which may reflect the (potential) capability to promote IERSE to a certain extent was chosen to represent the villagers’ autonomy dimension in our evaluation system.

Q4. Perhaps it should also be specified whether the behavior of local leaders is in accordance with the basic principle of the VIKOR method.

Response:

Thank you for your valuable suggestion. Regarding to the basic principle of the VIKOR method, we learn it from "The distances considered by VIKOR and TOPSIS are illustrated in Fig. 2. An alternative  is better than  as a TOPSIS result, but  better than  ranked by VIKOR because  is closer to the ideal solution. " and "The VIKOR method introduces an aggregating function representing the distance from the ideal solution. This ranking index is an aggregation of all criteria, the relative importance of the criteria, and a balance between total and individual satisfaction. The TOPSIS method introduces the ranking index in Eq. (6), including the distances from the ideal point and from the negative-ideal (nadir) point. These distances in TOPSIS are simply summed in Eq. (6), without considering their relative importance. However, the reference point could be a major concern in decision making, and to be as close as possible to the ideal is the rationale of human choice. Being far away from a nadir point could be a goal only in a particular situation, and the relative importance remains an open question (see Section 3). The TOPSIS method uses n-dimensional Euclidean distance that by itself could represent some balance between total and individual satisfaction, but uses it in a different way than VIKOR, where weight v is introduced in Eq. (3). "(page 450 and 451 in  Opricovic, S., Tzeng, G.H., 2004. Compromise solution by MCDM methods: A comparative analysis of VIKOR and TOPSIS. European Journal of Operational Research156(2), 445-455. DOI: 10.1016/S0377-2217(03)00020-1. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0377-2217(03)00020-1).

The profit and risk in the formulas of TOPSIS and VIKOR are embodied by positive ideal solution and the negative ideal solution of a certain index. In this study, we understand that each of the 19 evaluation indicators has its own positive ideal solution at administrative village level. Further, 19 positive ideal solutions correspond to the highest values as per 19 indicators of 117 administrative villages. Likewise, we could identify the 19 negative ideal solutions. In addition, each of the 117 villages has its own group utility and individual regret. For each village, the group utility is to measure the comprehensive gap of 19 indicators to their own positive ideal solutions. While the individual regret of each village refers to the maximum gap of the one out of 19 indicators to its own positive ideal solution.

TOPSIS pays attention to both positive and negative ideal solutions but without considering their relative importance, which may lead to the so-called problem of “rank reversal”. While VIKOR focuses on both of the group utility and individual regret of the evaluation subjects. In this study, additionally, the group utility is positive correlated with the IERSE and the individual regret indicates the restrictive factor for each village.

In China, horizontal comparison or horizontal competition is a normal and important means used by different level of governments to promote the implementation of varied development and protection initiatives. In terms of this paper, the assessment results showed different constraints on improving the IERSE for differed villages. Therefore, it offered scientific evidence for local decision makers (such as leaders at county level or prefecture-level) to make targeted policy on increasing the synergy of socio-economic development and environmental protection in rural areas.

Accordingly, we understand that the decision starting point or behavior of different level local leaders is supposed to be in accordance with the basic principle of the VIKOR method.

Once again, we much appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have partially improved their paper. I recommend to follow more attentively this round's indications:

- the abstract is still wordy and needs to be shortened.

- some acronyms have not yet be spelt.

- the language still needs substantial improvements, please contact a native speaker. The authors declared that they have used mdpi language service, so they shall provide proofs for this.

- the bibliography has been improved but still relies too heavily on local publications.

- the authors did not engage with the right authors and publications, please check the previous comment. Only ref 31 is pertinent, the other 2 are not.

- check additional related references from the right authors - Nathan Morrow, Andrea Gatto and Luigi Senatore and colleagues.

- improve the reply to Q8.

- keep expanding and improving discussions and conclusions, which received minor amendments.

- the remainder of the requests have been adequately addressed.

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewer:

Thanks again for your letter and for the Reviewer’ 2^nd round comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Assessing integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection of Wenchuan County in southwestern China: An approach using game theory and VIKOR” (ID: land-1905544). We are sorry that we haven't made a complete modification to the valuable comments of the Reviewer 2. Once again, we have studied the comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval this time. Revised portion are marked up using the “Track Changes” function in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responses to the reviewer’s comments are as following:

Responses to Reviewer’s comments

Q1. The abstract is still wordy and needs to be shortened.

Response:

Much appreciated for your suggestion. We have modified the manuscript accordingly, and was presented in our manuscript line 9–27.

Abstract: A scientific and comprehensive effectiveness evaluation is a prerequisite for clarifying the guiding direction of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection. By VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method and weight combination based on game theory, this paper systematically assessed the integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic development and environmental protection (IERSE) of Wenchuan County in 2018 from the administrative village scale perspective. Results showed that: 1) VIKOR with combined weight and Jenks Natural Breaks Classification is both comprehensive and feasible for large-sample-size evaluation, such as IERSE assessment. 2) The general IERSE of Wenchuan demonstrated considerable positive outcomes. The villages with favorable scores were located along the northwest-central-southeast, whereas unfavorable ones were principally distributing in the northeast and south-central. Local spatial agglomeration of favorable IERSE was found in Miansi, Wolong, and Sanjiang Town, whereas the agglomeration of unfavorable IERSE was seen in Yingxiu and Xuankou Town. 3) The IERSE of Wenchuan is mainly constrained by ecological conservation and villagers’ autonomy from the village-scale perspective. Villages with favorable IERSE are chiefly constrained by the education level of village heads or Party secretaries, while villages with unfavorable IERSE are restricted by ecological conservation. To improve the IERSE in rural Wenchuan, thoroughly taking into account the restrictive factors of local IERSE is an essential step for putting forward differentiated and targeted recommendations connected with ecological environment management, as well as social development initiatives.

Q2. Some acronyms have not yet be spelt.

Response:

Thank you for your suggestion.

a) Firstly, we find 3 places (line 10–12, line 123) that have not been fully spelled. I do not know whether to include the questions you said. If not, please do not hesitate to tell us.

• Line 10–12: By VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method and weight combination based on game theory;
• Line 123: Figure 1 contains DEM of Wenchuan. Considering that DEM has been a consensus for geographers to reflect regional elevations, it was not fully spelled here.

b) Secondly, some abbreviations have changed their position in the text according to the reference adjustment, specifically in line 45, line 186–187 and line 220–221.

• Line 45: The ''Pressure-State-Response'' (PSR) model [6]
• Line 186–187: the subjective weight was obtained by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method [33] and …
• Line 220–221: Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and …

c) Finally, the existing abbreviations were checked.

• CRITIC was modified in line 187–188: the objective weight through the CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) [34] method.

Q3. The language still needs substantial improvements, please contact a native speaker. The authors declared that they have used mdpi language service, so they shall provide proofs for this.

Response:

Thanks for your comments. This article has been certified by MDPI English language editing (please see the picture in the Word). We are very sorry for not showing the language editing proofs in last response.

Q4. The bibliography has been improved but still relies too heavily on local publications.

Response:

Much appreciated for your suggestion. We have replaced the 14 local publications with 14 international articles, and please kindly find them in Introduction section (Line34, 43, 65, 73–77), Materials and Methods section (Line96–97,112,142,154,171,194). Additionally, we also have added two more international papers, please see them in the Discussion section (Line393,397).

• Introduction section (Line34, 43, 65, 73–77)
• Line 34: The integrated development of socio-economic and environmental protection is an era proposition and major action in accordance with China's national conditions [1].
• Line 43: Many of the existing IERSE evaluation have focused on the quantitative examination of the change characteristics of the ecological system structure, quality, and service before and after the development of national level ecological projects [2].
• Line 65: lack of consideration on the active role of human actors in the process of improving the IERSE [14];
• Line 73–77: As the economic tourism center and agricultural production base of Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in the southwest of China [16], Wenchuan County has achieved remarkable progress in social and economic development after more than ten years of post-disaster reconstruction and development [17]. Against the background of rural revitalization and beautiful rural construction in China, the rural development of Wenchuan County is facing the complex contradiction between high-quality industrial development and natural ecological protection [18,19].
• Materials and Methods section (Line96–97,112,142,154,171,194)
• Line 96–97: with a concise, objective, and inclusive calculation process [21]. After equilibrium, the advantages of subjective and objective weights were integrated [22], and the optimal index weight value was obtained.
• Line 112: Wenchuan County is an earthquake and geological disaster-prone area. Under the du-al impacts of climate change and human activities, regional ecological vulnerability has increased in the past decades [23].
• Line 142: Specifically, the ecological conservation status was characterized by the re-mote-sensing-based ecological index (RSEI), which can objectively and comprehensively demonstrate ecological quality [27].
• Line 154: It should be emphasized that relying on unique natural landscapes and humanities resources and actively promoting the integrated development of agriculture and tourism by local government has led to impressive economic benefits in rural Wenchuan [28].
• Line 171: The advantage of combined subjective-objective weighting has been increasingly recognized [30].
• Line 194: build the judgment matrix, realize the hierarchical single sorting and consistency check, and obtain the indicator subjective weight [35].
• Discussion section (Line393,397)
• Line 393: This urbanization process was city-oriented with land-centered and land finance, which greatly promoted China’s economic and social development at the expense of agriculture and rural environment, thus increasing the inadequate rural development [46].
• Line 397: such as depopulation, industrial blight, cultural disinterest, ecological environment deterioration, et al. was outlined by Chinese government in October 2017 [47].

The added international publications are listed as follows:

[1]. Li, C.; Yuan, B.L.; Zhang, Y.P. Effect Assessment of Ecological Construction in China from 2008 to 2014. Polish Journal of Environmental Studies2019, 28(3).

[2]. Huang, L.; Shao, Q.Q.; Liu, J.Y. Forest restoration to achieve both ecological and economic progress, Poyang Lake basin, China. Ecological Engineering2012, 44, 53–60.

[14]. Morrow, N.; Mock, N.B.; Gatto, A.; LeMense, J.; Hudson, M. Protective Pathways: Connecting Environmental and Human Security at Local and Landscape Level with NLP and Geospatial Analysis of a Novel Database of 1500 Project Evaluations. Land2022, 11(1), 123.

[16]. Zhou, Y.; Su, Q.H.; Li, Y.L.; Li, X.W, 2022. Spatial-Temporal Characteristics of Multi-Hazard Resilience in Ecologically Fragile Areas of Southwest China: A Case Study in Aba. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health2022, 19, 12018.

[17]. Zhang, X.J.; Wang, Z.Q. How does paired assistance to disaster-affected areas (PADAA) contribute to economic sustainabil-ity? A qualitative analysis of Wenchuan County. Sustainability2019, 11(14), 3915.

[18]. Wang, H.; Zhuo, Y. The necessary way for the development of China’s rural areas in the new era-rural revitalization strategy. Open Journal of Social Sciences2018, 6, 97.

[19]. Xiao, Y.; Tian, K.; Huang, H.; Wang, J.; Zhou, T. Coupling and coordination of socioeconomic and ecological environment in Wenchuan earthquake disaster areas: case study of severely affected counties in southwestern China. Sustainable Cities and Society2021, 71, 102958.

[21]. Liu, T.Y., Deng, Y.; Chan, F.L. Evidential supplier selection based on DEMATEL and game theory. International Journal of Fuzzy Systems2018, 20(4), 1321–1333.

[22]. Wang, Y.M.; Parkan, C. A general multiple attribute decision-making approach for integrating subjective preferences and objective information. Fuzzy Sets and Systems2006, 157(10), 1333–1345.

[23]. Cui, P.; Lin, Y.M.; Chen, C. Destruction of vegetation due to geo-hazards and its environmental impacts in the Wenchuan earthquake areas. Ecological Engineering2012, 44, 61–69.

[27]. Xu, H.Q.; Wang, M.Y.; Shi, T.T.; Guan, H.D.; Fang, C.Y.; Lin, Z.L. Prediction of ecological effects of potential population and impervious surface increases using a remote sensing based ecological index (RSEI). Ecological indicators2018, 93, 730–740.

[28]. Xu, P.; Lu, X.L.; Zuo, K.L.; Zhang, H. Post-Wenchuan earthquake reconstruction and development in China. In Disaster and development. Springer, Cham,2014, 427–445.

[30]. Peng, J.Q.; Zhang, J.M. Urban flooding risk assessment based on GIS-game theory combination weight: A case study of Zhengzhou City. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction2022, 103080.

[35]. Wu, Z.N.; Shen, Y.X.; Wang, H.L. Assessing urban areas’ vulnerability to flood disaster based on text data: A case study in Zhengzhou city. Sustainability2019, 11(17), 4548.

[46]. Liu, Y.S. Introduction to land use and rural sustainability in China. Land use policy2018, 74, 1–4.

[47]. Liu, Y.S.; Zang, Y.Z.; Yang, Y.Y. China’s rural revitalization and development: Theory, technology and management. Journal of Geographical Sciences2020, 30(12), 1923–1942.

Q5. The authors did not engage with the right authors and publications, please check the previous comment. Only ref 31 is pertinent, the other 2 are not.

Response:

Thanks for your kind suggestion, we have added the paper of Morrow as reference 14, which is in line 65.

• reference 14(Line 65)：lack of consideration on the active role of human actors in the process of improving the IERSE [14].

The added reference is as follows:

[14]. Morrow, N.; Mock, N.B.; Gatto, A.; LeMense, J.; Hudson, M. Protective Pathways: Connecting Environmental and Human Security at Local and Landscape Level with NLP and Geospatial Analysis of a Novel Database of 1500 Project Evaluations. Land2022, 11(1), 123.

Q6. Check additional related references from the right authors - Nathan Morrow, Andrea Gatto and Luigi Senatore and colleagues.

Response:

Thank you for your comments. We have tried our best to modified the manuscript according to your suggestions.

a) We have added the paper of Nathan Morrow as reference 14 presented in line 65.

• reference 14(Line 65)：lack of consideration on the active role of human actors in the process of improving the IERSE [14].

b) During the last revision, the paper of Andrea Gatto as reference 29 had been presented in line 157:

• reference 29(Line 157)：The human or villagers’ autonomy level has a substantial impact on villagers’ participation in improving the IERSE [29].

c) We carefully searched the work of Luigi Senatore in WOS and Google Scholar, and only found three papers attached which might be related with our study. Further, we cannot see even one piece of paper with first or corresponding author of Luigi Senatore.

1. Fiorillo, D. and Senatore, L., 2016. Self image and environmental attitude and behavior. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/74888/
2. Fiorillo, D. and Senatore, L., 2020. Pro-social behaviours, waste concern and recycling behaviour in Italy at the end of the 1990s. Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, 22(2), pp.127-151. https://sci-hub.st/10.1007/s10018-019-00251-9
3. Barra, C., Bimonte, G. and Senatore, L., 2019. Cooperation, diffusion of technology and environmental protection: a new index. Quality & Quantity, 53(4), pp.1913-1940. https:/ /link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11135-019-00848-y).

However, after careful reading and scrutinizing the above papers, we prudently understand that all the three papers are actually not relevant to the research topic of our study. Therefore, we have to say, up to now, that the work of Luigi Senatore seems not proper to be the references of our study. We sincerely hope that you can kindly understand and support our revision as for the reference.

Q7. Improve the reply to “Why is the rural dimension decisive? This fact shall be explained to build up the research question.”

Response:

Thank you for your suggestion. We would like to explain the decisive role of rural China as follows:

a) Over the past few decades, an unprecedented rapid urbanization growth was witnessed in China, the largest developing country in the world. This urbanization process was city-oriented with land-centered and land finance, which greatly promoted China’s economic and social development at the expense of agriculture and rural environment, thus increasing the imbalance between urban and rural area and inadequate rural development. The imbalance development mode further drives the long-term exclusion of rural areas, of which the economic development, infrastructure construction, environmental protection and public services supplication are markedly restricted. Compared with urban area, the rural China is supposed to be facing much more challenges of comprehensive development of social economy and environmental protection.

b) In light of the challenges, many national policies such as “overall planning between urban and rural areas” and “urban–rural integration” have been successively carried out by the central government of China, which have undoubtedly realized positive results. In the new era, however, these policies are confronting increasingly difficulty to responding the major structural social contradictions and urban-rural relationship reconstruction. Therefore, a “rural revitalization strategy”, targeting at solving serious rural issues, such as depopulation, industrial blight, cultural disinterest, ecological environment deterioration, et al. was outlined by Chinese government in October 2017. One year later, the government issued the “Rural Revitalization Strategic Plan (2018–2022),” putting forward the “20-word” general requirements of industrial prosperity, ecological livability, rural civilization, effective governance, and quality of life. From then on, China’s rural revitalization strategy has been officially advanced to the implementation stage.

c) Against this context, how to understand the integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic and environmental development is a topic worthy of further consideration, which might benefit to formulate differentiated recommendations connected with ecological environment management and social development initiatives for rural China. However, through literature reviewing, we found that the existing research papers pay little attention to the comprehensive development of rural social economy and environment at microscale territorial spaces, such as administrative villages or rural community. There hence, this literature gap provides us a deserving chance to build up a holistic assessment approach to exam the comprehensive progress of certain rural area’s integrated effectiveness of socio-economic development and environmental protection.

Q8. Keep expanding and improving discussions and conclusions, which received minor amendments.

Response:

Thank you for your suggestion. We have modified the manuscript accordingly, and was presented in our manuscript line 375–421.

VIKOR focuses on both of the group utility and individual regret of the evaluation subjects. This makes a compromise solution obtained acceptable for the decision maker, who is unable to or unaware of expressing his/her preference at the outset of system design. In this study, additionally, the group utility is positive correlated with the IERSE and the individual regret indicates the restrictive factor for each village. For local decision makers, different assessment results can be obtained by adjusting these two aspects of attention, and revealing restrictive factors can also provide directions for future integrated development of rural society and environment. While compared with VIKOR, TOPSIS as the commonly used multi-criteria decision-making method, pays attention to both positive and negative ideal solutions but without considering their relative importance, which may lead to the so-called problem of “rank reversal” [37]. This means that the sample with the highest ranked alternative by TOPSIS isn't always the closest to the ideal solution. For decision makers who are concerned about the assessment results, this phenomenon does not provide a good basis.

Over the past few decades, an unprecedented rapid urbanization growth was witnessed in China. This urbanization process was city-oriented with land-centered and land finance, which greatly promoted China’s economic and social development at the expense of agriculture and rural environment, thus increasing the inadequate rural development [46]. Compared with urban area, the rural China is supposed to be facing much more challenges of comprehensive development of social economy and environmental protection. In light of the challenges, a “rural revitalization strategy”, targeting at solving serious rural issues, such as depopulation, industrial blight, cultural disinterest, ecological environment deterioration, et al. was outlined by Chinese government in October 2017 [47]. One year later, the government issued the “Rural Revitalization Strategic Plan (2018–2022),” putting forward the “20-word” general requirements of industrial prosperity, ecological livability, rural civilization, effective governance, and quality of life [47]. From then on, China’s rural revitalization strategy has been officially advanced to the implementation stage. Against this context, how to understand the integrated effectiveness of rural socio-economic and environmental development is a topic worthy of further consideration, which might benefit to formulate differentiated recommendations connected with ecological environment management and social development initiatives for rural China. However, through literature reviewing, we found that the existing research papers pay little attention to the comprehensive development of rural social economy and environment at microscale territorial spaces, such as administrative villages or rural community. There hence, this literature gap provides us a deserving chance to build up a holistic assessment approach to exam the comprehensive progress of certain rural area’s integrated effectiveness of socio-economic development and environmental protection.

In China, horizontal comparison or horizontal competition is a normal and important means used by different level of governments to promote the implementation of varied development and protection initiatives, such as the construction of ecological civilization and beautiful villages. In terms of this study, the assessment results showed different constraints on improving the IERSE for differed villages. Therefore, the study not only proposed a concise and feasible approach to promote the sorting and ranking function of VIKOR toward evaluation research with relatively big samples, but also offered scientific evidence for local decision makers (such as leaders at county level) to make targeted policy on increasing the synergy of socio-economic development and environmental protection in rural areas.

Q9. The remainder of the requests have been adequately addressed.

Response:

We gratefully thank you for your time spend making your constructive remarks and useful suggestions, which has significantly raised the quality of the manuscript and has enable us to improve the manuscript.

Once again, we much appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with both of your approval this round.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Green light!

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewer:

Thank you for your approval of our modification. We gratefully thank you for your time spend making your constructive remarks and useful suggestions, which has significantly raised the quality of the manuscript and has enable us to improve the manuscript.

Once again, we much appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm work earnestly.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf