Evaluating the Impact of the Highway Infrastructure Construction and the Threshold Effect on Cultivated Land Use Efficiency: Evidence from Chinese Provincial Panel Data
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper evaluated the impact of highway development on cultivated land use efficiency among different provinces in China. The paper is well organized, the methodology is clear, and the results are presented well. It is recommended to publish once the following issues are addressed;
1) the paper used highway density instead of highway length by pointing out the different sizes of provinces but ignoring the land terrain differences among them. Is it possible to use highway length and cultivated land ratio instead of density? If not, please discuss this in the limitations.
2) it is recommended to integrate the policy implementations and limitations with the discussion of the results to avoid unsoundable policy suggestions.
3) the highway density map is hard to read in the current printed version and the axis name of the figures need to be revised to fully reflect what they mean. Figure 4, the x-axis is "highway", but what? Figure 5, w * highway? In figure 3 the year axis is hard to read. Figure 6, indicates "Average of highway density over time", is hard to follow.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
1. The paper discussed the impact of the highway infrastructure construction on cultivated land use efficiency at provincial level in China. I suggest the title of the paper should taking the provincial level into consideration.
2. It seems like the relevance of each paragraph of introduction part is not strong. I suggest the authors improve the introduction part by making the logic more fluent.
3. The impact mechanism of highway infrastructure construction on CLUE in figure 1 seems not detailed enough, especially the spatial spillover effect.
4. The formula (5) is missing.
5. The information in figure 6 is fuzzy that need to be replaced.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
The article seems interesting. However, after reviewing the methods, data, research results obtained and the authors' conclusions, it seems that incorrect assumptions are made.
Agricultural machines have no access to highways and express ways. Special technical roads are built to ensure the movement of such machines.
It should be clearly defined what the authors understand by the term "highway infrastructure", "first-second highway" and "third-fourth highway".
On the other hand, the emergence of linear infrastructure in rural areas, disrupts the existing layout of agricultural land plots and crops. This is why, e.g. in Poland, land consolidation works and exchange of agricultural land (so that the agricultural land of one farmer is on one side of the motorway) is very important at the stage of designing and building motorways and expressways. The authors only mention the loss of agricultural land for the construction of new roads.
Could the authors refer to the importance of land consolidation work in China, is this a widespread phenomenon?
I suggest you read the publication on the rational distribution of producers and processors using agricultural biomass as an example. Distance was not considered in the article. I think the quality of the road is very important, but distance has a very strong influence on production costs:
Kurowska, K., Kryszk, H., & Bielski, S. (2014, May). Determinants of biomass production for energy purposes in North-Eastern Poland. In Proceedings of the International Conference Engineering for Rural Development, Jelgava, Latvia (pp. 29-30). http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1038.9975&rep=rep1&type=pdf
and examples of publications concerning land consolidation:
Balawejder, M., & Leń, P. (2016). The realization of complex work of consolidation and exchange of land in the villages divided by a highway. Geomatics and Environmental Engineering, 10(3). http://dx.doi.org/10.7494/geom.2016.10.3.27
Balawejder, M., & Noga, K. (2016). The influence of the highway route on the development of patchwork of plots. Journal of Water and Land Development, (30). DOI: 10.1515/jwld-2016-0015
Dudzińska, M., Bacior, S., & Prus, B. (2019). Motorway Route Planning with Regarding the Adverse Effects on Agricultural Production Space. Sustainability, 11(23), 6770. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11236770
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
Ernan Rustiadi's Review
1. The research is quite interesting because it discusses the impact of highway infrastructure on CLUE in China through a spatial statistical approach
2. The serious weakness of this article is the framework of this research. This research mainly discusses the impact of highway infrastructure on rural development related to agricultural development issues. However, this rural and agricultural development framework does not appear explicitly in the introduction, keywords, and article titles. The inaccuracy of the framework can cause this article to be misleading because the discussion does not cover much of the field outside of rural areas and agriculture, namely the urban system, the manufacturing industry system, and the service sectors, which also have inter-regional relationships that are influenced by highway infrastructure. Nevertheless, the narratives on lines 173-184, 187-191, 208-231, and others emphasize rural and agricultural contexts. It can also be seen from the selection of CLUE-related variables in table 1.
3. The authors should provide a more precise and explicit theoretical basis for the relationship between CLUE and rural and agricultural development.
4. The authors must also explain to what extent the CLUE concept is relevant to a universal context outside China? Is the CLUE concept also relevant for urban development and the context of the tertiary sectors and the manufacturing industry (non-agricultural sectors)? For this reason, the author needs to be more explicit in conveying the limitations of the scope of the research.
5. In order to provide sufficient understanding for readers from outside China, the author needs to provide basic information regarding the condition and development of transportation infrastructure in China in general and the role of highway infrastructure in China in transportation and logistics systems. In addition, the author also needs to provide information related to highway infrastructure in China and the specificity of highway conditions in China compared to other countries in the world.
6. An explanation is needed regarding the units or units of each variable/parameter of each equation and graph/Figure. For example, the x-axis in Figures 4 and 5 must be accompanied by units.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors have made significant improvements in response to criticism and suggestions from reviewers. However, the authors have yet to refine the conclusion section. The conclusion section should focus more on the basic meaning of the results of this study and not emphasize too much the technical figures of the research results. Conclusions should also convey the limitations of the study and suggestions and implications of the results of this study.
Author Response
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