Performance Environment, Contract Binding, and the Contract Structure of the Farmland Transfer Market
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The author takes some provinces and cities in China as examples to study the relationship between social trust and legal systems on the contractual binding force of agricultural land transfer markets, which has strong reference significance. It is recommended that the author consider the following opinions：
1.Please provide some schematic diagrams, such as: (1) a schematic diagram of the data source area; (2) In the second part, the theoretical analysis framework diagram is added, and the relationship between social trust, legal system and contract binding force under the Factor market is illustrated
2.Social trust indicators, solely based on whether to lend to friends and neighbors who are not relatives, are not enough and involve a relatively narrow range of aspects. Friends and neighbors who are not relatives cannot represent the entire society, and farmers should be asked about social trust to characterize social trust variables.
3.When building a model, do you consider building a structural equation model to increase its credibility.
4.When building a model, do you consider building a structural equation model to increase its credibility.
very good
Author Response
The author takes some provinces and cities in China as examples to study the relationship between social trust and legal systems on the contractual binding force of agricultural land transfer markets, which has strong reference significance. It is recommended that the author consider the following opinions：
Q1：Please provide some schematic diagrams, such as: (1) a schematic diagram of the data source area; (2) In the second part, the theoretical analysis framework diagram is added, and the relationship between social trust, legal system and contract binding force under the Factor market is illustrated.
Response: We appreciate the valuable comments and believe that these corrections will make the paper more concise. Based on your comments, we have supplemented the theoretical analysis framework diagram ("The effect mechanism of performance environment and contract binding force on the contract structure of the farmland transfer market") in the second part. The details are presented in the revised section of the resubmitted manuscript.
Also, we have checked the data survey area and found that the survey regions were too small to clearly depict on the country map. Therefore, we haven’t provided the schematic diagram of the data source area. Instead, we made a list of survey cities, which are listed in the footnote.
"The sample of cities are as follows: Ning 'an, Tangyuan, Zhaodong, and Longjiang are in Heilongjiang provinces; Xiayi, Anyang, Xiping, and Xuchang are in Henan province; Shengzhou, Wuyi, Wenling, and Xiuzhou are in Zhejiang province; Zhongjiang, Nanbu, Yanjiang, and Linshui are in Sichuan province."
Q2：Social trust indicators, solely based on whether to lend to friends and neighbors who are not relatives, are not enough and involve a relatively narrow range of aspects. Friends and neighbors who are not relatives cannot represent the entire society, and farmers should be asked about social trust to characterize social trust variables.
Response: We appreciate the valuable comments. Based on these comments, we have searched more literature on social trust. The indicators, based on whether to lend to friends and neighbors who are not relatives, were not enough to measure social trust and involved a relatively narrow range of aspects. However, combined with the research theme of this paper, it mainly concerns the economic interests exchange in the farmland transfer, which is generally concentrated among neighbors and friends. Therefore, for the measurement of social trust, we focused on the relationship between neighbors and friends in this research.
Q3：When building a model, do you consider building a structural equation model to increase its credibility. are not enough and involve a relatively narrow range of aspect
Response: Thank you for this suggestion. It would have been interesting to explore the structural equation model used in the research. However, in our study, we just empirically tested the impact of social trust and legal institutions on the binding force of contracts, and then calculated the proportion of paper and long-term contracts in the farmland transfer market step by step. The steps and relationships are relatively clear. If the structural equation model were adopted, the analysis process would become complicated and the relationships unclear. The suggestion was not implemented because the analysis process was more complicated.
Q4：When building a model, do you consider building a structural equation model to increase its credibility.
Response: The review comment repeats the previous comment Q3. Please see our response above.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors, nice manuscript, but I have some comments
57. List several "Scholars" you named
83. Explain more about oral and short-term contracts. Are there more types of contracts?
86. Detail several of the literature you named
127, 128. Review and adjustment to the results and discussion
139. Explain more and support.
150. Explain yourself better. Institutional?? Support more.
186, 188. References or further support.
242, 249, format references, Land style.
It is necessary to include statistics (index) on contracts in the study area. All types of named contracts must be explained (verbal, on paper, term, long-term…), in the most convenient way for the market for the transfer of agricultural land or from farmers to the least convenient.
It should be discussed regarding the postulated model. Is it a good way to evaluate?
Similar works are not named for discussion, this section needs to be further supported. Try inserting more references.
Author Response
Dear authors, nice manuscript, but I have some comments
Q1：57. List several "Scholars" you named
- Explain more about oral and short-term contracts. Are there more types of contracts?
- Detail several of the literature you named
127, 128. Review and adjustment to the results and discussion
- Explain more and support.
- Explain yourself better. Institutional?? Support more.
186, 188. References or further support.
242, 249, format references, Land style.
Response: Thank you for your detailed review. We apologize for the errors you pointed out above. Based on the comments, we have checked and revised the problems one-by-one.
â‘ The sentence, "Scholars...", is a generalization. The following several sentences introduced the relevant research conclusions separately, and the scholars were listed in references 13-20 (Line 57).
â‘¡ This paper mainly focused on the form and term characteristics of contracts. The contract forms include oral and paper contracts, and the contract terms include short-term and long-term contracts. The explanation of oral contracts and short-term contracts was added as a footnote (Line 83).
â‘¢We supplemented the relevant research literature to introduce a detailed analysis (Line 86).
â‘£ We supplemented the discussion of the review and adjusted the results. In the revised manuscript, we added the following discussion: “Second, the paper reveals the impact and mechanism of the performance environment on contract binding and market contract structure from the perspectives of social trust and legal institutions, which is helpful in analyzing the relationship between factor market development and rural social governance in the current factor marketization context. The paper also investigates the impact of rural legal system construction on the market resource allocation of farmland transfers” (Line 127, 128).
⑤ We added an explanation that the “the implementation and execution of contracts cannot be separated from specific constraints”, to improve the readers’ understanding (Line 139).
â‘¥ We apologize for this mistake. The word “Institutional” was used incorrectly and we have deleted it (Line 150).
⑦ We supplemented the relevant literature to support the analysis (Line 186, 188).
⑧ We have corrected the references carefully to ensure consistency in the format (Line 242, 249).
Q2：It is necessary to include statistics (index) on contracts in the study area. All types of named contracts must be explained (verbal, on paper, term, long-term…), in the most convenient way for the market for the transfer of agricultural land or from farmers to the least convenient.
Response: We believe this is an excellent suggestion. The explanation of all types of named contracts helps with understanding the details of contract classification. Based on the existing correction, we added the explanation of paper contracts and long-term contracts on page 2.
Q3:It should be discussed regarding the postulated model. Is it a good way to evaluate?
Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have tried our best to choose a reasonable and reliable model for analysis. Also, we measured contract binding force from the contract execution rate and dispute resolution rate perspectives, respectively. This was helpful to improve the reliability of the evaluation. In addition, we added a discussion of empirical analysis results in section 4.2.2.
Q4：Similar works are not named for discussion, this section needs to be further supported. Try inserting more references.
Response: We appreciate the valuable comments. We searched the related literature carefully and cited more references on the influence of social trust and legal institutions on contract binding in the section of 2.1.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
