Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Revise attached document

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English language should be reviewed

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript needs to be revised and improved in the following ways:

1. In the last part of the introduction, the structure of the manuscript needs to be explained.

2. In section 3.1. Data Source, the authors introduce sampling and surveys, but not how to ensure the quality of the survey data, the specific implementation of the survey and the need for quality assurance needs to be emphasized and detailed here.

3. The questionnaire needs to be provided as an appendix with the main text.

4.In section 3.2.1. Endogenous Switching Regression Model, it is clear that the authors did not take into account the spillover effects and interactions between neighbors in the agricultural areas. There is already a lot of evidence that farmers take into account not only their own situation but also the behavior of neighboring farmers when making decisions. Therefore, there is a need to take such neighbor spillover effects into account. The authors need to systematically collect and add to this body of literature and consider neighbor effects in their model. This is a fatal shortcoming of this paper.

5.There is a need to add 5.3 Research limitations and future research directions to the conclusions sect

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is well written. The only problem I detected was:

1) The use of acronyms of abbreviations should be done with the full explanation of meaning the first time it is used in the text. When authors do not do it, the make much more dificult for readers to understand. Specially the ones not familiar with the meaning.

2) Conclusions are too long and includes the description of the results. Authors must reduce conclusion considerably. Around 10 to 20% of its original size. The description of results should go the result section and conclusion should be reserved to describe the conclusion. Please be straightfoward in this section. Do not divide the conclusion in subsections. 

In the manuscript in the attachment there is some other minor suggestions.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I did not notice big problems in the English. However, a review done by a specialize service might help to reduce the text size. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Los autores han tenido en cuenta mis sugerencias, por lo que acepto el artículo.

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper has been revised and is ready for publication.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper mainly studies the impact of farmers' green production behavior on economy and environment. The author mainly focuses on farmers' rice production, measures farmers' green production behavior by reducing agricultural fertilizer, and uses DEA-SBM model and endogenous conversion model to test the economic and environmental effects of farmers' green production behavior. The study found that farmers' green production behavior increased farmers' net profit per mu and helped to improve the environment, and the effect was different in different quantiles. However, there are still the following problems in this study to be discussed with the author:

1. Summary. The beginning of this part points out the theme and evaluates the economic and environmental effects of farmers' green production behavior, but the last sentence of the summary of the summary "attaching importance to improving the quality supervision system of agricultural products under the market circulation mechanism" is a little vague and not in line with the theme of this article.

2. Introduction. The literature review of this part is not smooth enough. The first paragraph firstly explains the importance of green agricultural development; the second paragraph introduces the importance of environmental pollution caused by excessive use of fertilizers, and the government attaches great importance to the comprehensive prevention and control of agricultural pollution; the third paragraph again introduces the importance of agricultural production behavior. The logic is somewhat confusing.

In addition, this part describes the research contributions of this paper, but it overelaborates the shortcomings of existing literature, without focusing on the main contributions of this paper, such as the model construction and the innovation of research perspective.

3. Theoretical hypothesis part. The part of my own thinking is less, and the literature citations are not enough. It is suggested to add some more of my own thinking and cite some literatures to make the theoretical basis of this paper more sufficient.

4. Model building part. In this paper, the DEA-SBM model of poor yield was used to represent the AGP of agricultural environmental effects, and nitrogen and phosphorus contents in fertilizer were subtracts from those in grain and rice to obtain the emissions of nitrogen and phosphorus. However, the residual amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in land was also included in the difference between the two, and this model only controlled individual characteristics and agricultural production characteristics. The effect of time on the model is not shown, so the setting of the model is not rigorous enough.

5. Conclusion. The part of policy suggestions should be closely related to the conclusion of this paper and correspond to the research results one by one, which can make the policy suggestions of the article more purposeful and increase the practicability of the article.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors address an interesting topic, and present an articulated analysis based on an extended survey. These strengths makes the prospective paper  of potential interest to the readers of Land. Nonetheless, some weaknesses and omissions call for major edit of the manuscript in the present form.

Please, find some notes and highlights (yellow: pay attention; purple: fix the text; green: interesting point to be further explained) in the attached pdf.

As more general remarks, I would suggest authors to focus on some enhancements:

1. Since the claim that “This study aims to further expand existing research”stated in the introduction, the Discussion (included in section 4) deserves a distinct and extended sub-section about the comparisons with existing scientific literature on the topic and similar published results;

2. About the models adopted, it would be highly beneficial pointing readers to some suitable references (on the methodology, not simply similar applications) especially with reference to advanced statistical methods that are not customarily applied in the scope of Land Science (viz., ESRM, PROPENSITY MATCHING, ATT/ATU estimation);

3. Since the editorial collocation, it would be better sticking to metric units about surface, thus converting the presented figures to square meters for making it possible any comparison with similar studies;

4. About reproducibility of the results: I do appreciate the inclusion of data and code in the supplementary material supplied, but would strongly advice to mention in the manuscript the version of the Stata software used to implement and perform the analysis.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Only minor edits are suggested where the purple highlights have been included in the pdf file.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article analyzes the economic and environmental impacts of reduced fertilizer application (RFA) by rice farmers. The analysis results found that farmers' RFA behavior has a significant positive impact on their net profit per acre (NPPA), and the analysis showed that farmers' income increased by about 2.05% to 6.54%. In addition, farmers' RFA behavior contributes to agricultural green productivity (AGP). The article provides empirical evidence for the positive economic and environmental impacts of reducing chemical fertilizer application (RFA) by rice farmers, and provides substantial policy suggestions.

However, some issues still need to be revised in the manuscript.

1. Literature citations need to be confirmed again. In column 81 of the text, the marked document shows that the source cannot be seen "[Error! Reference source not found.]".

Reference No. 12 "[12]" is not attached in the manuscript.

2. Multiple models are used in the article, and the author needs to pay attention when writing the models. For example, the first mention of SBM-DEA should be accompanied by the full name of the model (Slack-Based Measure Data Envelopment Analysis).

The model used in the empirical analysis should be clearly explained in the chapter "3.2. Model Setting" where the model is used. For example, "3.2. Model Setting" does not mention PSM regression.

3. Problems with variables in the model. The author divides Education level into different levels such as 1, 2, and 3, but this is more like a dummy variable. If the author wants to calculate it as a continuous variable, it should be converted into years of education.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Unfortunately, your replies do not satisfactorily address the request made by the reviewers.