Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

GENERAL COMMENTS

This paper is generally well-written and addresses an interesting issue: the proposal for an evaluation mechanism for a pilot national park in China to determine its performance and future management. The methodology applied is quite solid, although it suffers from a certain subjectivity that the authors mention in the conclusions. Apart from this, its main problem is that in the introduction it announces that it will address an issue that, in the end, is never really analyzed. This is the exit mechanisms, i.e. that process which should be applied when a pilot site from the Chinese national park network has finally not been selected for formal designation. This issue, which is fundamental and highly relevant in the process of developing a formal National Park System in China, is not tackled in the discussion or conclusions. It is proposed to remove this topic from the introduction or include new text that specifically addresses this complex policy challenge.

Aside from this fundamental issue, there are other improvements that need to be addressed, which are described in the following section and in the PDF sent as a supporting document.

SPECIFIC COMMENTS

1) It is important that we always use the same terms in scientific papers to avoid errors and confusion. In this case, certain terms are inconsistent throughout the text. I give two examples:

A) The category names in lines 194-196, Table 5, and lines 260-261 vary: objective/target, sub-objective/sub-target, criterion/sub-criteria.

B) The way of referring to the three dimensions considered in the article is also changing. Line 20, summary: Ecosystem Integrity, Management Effectiveness, and Public Service Provision. Table A34 and lines 182-183: Ecosystem, Management system, Public service system. Table 5: Ecological protection system, Management system, Public service system. Lines 398-415 (paragraph titles): Ecosystem Integrity, Management Capacity, Public Service Delivery.

These are small differences in the way the categories are named, but they can lead to confusion. The problem in the first example has been identified everywhere it occurred (I believe), and the correct text has been proposed. The inconsistencies in the second example have not been corrected because the authors must decide which terms are most correct and where others can be used as synonyms.

2) There are several errors and typos throughout the text that are identified in the attached PDF. Please review them.

3) Figures design and resolution must be improved. Specific comments also in the attached PDF file.

4) A new figure should be added to the paper with the result of multiplying the weight and score for each indicator (Figure 8?). This information is used to obtain the total score for the assessed protected area (lines 240-243) but is not displayed anywhere.

5) Current and consistent references with the contents, nothing to change.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript addresses a timely and policy-relevant question—how to decide which remaining pilot areas should be formally incorporated into China’s national-park system and which should be retired. Developing a transparent, evidence-based evaluation framework is a crucial step toward adaptive governance, and the authors’ effort to integrate ecosystem integrity, management effectiveness and public-service provision into a single tool is commendable. The paper therefore deserves publication after major revision.

Major concerns

1. Research design: weighting procedure and sensitivity analysis  
The AHP–expert consultation process is described only at a procedural level. The authors report a consistency ratio (CR) for every matrix, but they do not examine how sensitive the final scores are to (a) the removal or down-weighting of individual experts, (b) alternative judgment scales, or (c) small perturbations in pairwise comparisons. Without a one-at-a-time or Monte-Carlo sensitivity test it is impossible to know whether the 0.387 weight placed on “Ecosystem Integrity”, for example, could just as easily have been 0.25 or 0.50 under equally plausible expert assumptions. 

2. Case-study transparency: from data to the 87.77 score  
The Nanshan pilot receives 87.77 points and is rated “good”, yet the reader is never shown the raw value of a single quantitative indicator (e.g., km of ecological corridor per 100 km², number of interpretive trails per 10 000 visitors, or household income change). All that is provided are aggregated, fuzzy scores such as “landscape connectivity = 75”.  
- Provide an appendix that lists every third-level indicator, its metric, the data source, the year, and the normalized value before fuzzy transformation.  
- If an indicator is genuinely subjective (e.g., “regional integration”), explain how inter-rater reliability was assured and publish the scoring sheets of the reviewers.  
- If no hard data exist, the authors must state this limitation explicitly and discuss how the absence of objective monitoring biases the exit decision.

3. Transferability to marine national parks  
The indicator set is strongly biased toward terrestrial ecosystems (habitat fragmentation, terrestrial corridor width, forest cover, etc.). Several criteria—especially those under Landscape Connectivity and Recreational Product Diversity—are difficult to operationalise in a marine setting where “patches” are fluid and visitor access is boat-based.  
- Include a short section that tests the framework against a marine pilot (e.g., Nanji Islands) or at least maps every indicator onto its marine equivalent.  
- Where no equivalent exists, flag the indicator as “terrestrial-only” and discuss whether a separate module is required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This new version has included all our comments and suggestions, improving the paper and correcting previously detected weaknesses. Well done! It is almost ready to be published. Only two very small details:

• Line 376, please insert 'Table 9' after 80% in order to quote this table in the main text.
• Line 464, add 'and' before 'Untapped' as this is the last challenge listed.

Even the latter is optional.

Congratulations to the authors. All the best

Author Response

We sincerely thank you for the encouraging and positive feedback, which has greatly motivated us. The two minor details you kindly pointed out have been carefully corrected. We are deeply grateful for your meticulous guidance and valuable support throughout the revision process.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Firstly, I appreciate the careful attention the authors have paid to the earlier comments. The revised manuscript has clearly improved. However, the authors’ response still treats “marine applicability” as a future add-on rather than an integral design criterion. Since the pilot stage is finished, the evaluation framework would better target China’s National Park Candidate Areas (NPCAs)—not merely the ten original pilots—the exclusion of marine systems is no longer justifiable. Several coastal candidate sites (e.g., Nanji Islands) are already on the Ministry of Ecology & Environment’s 2022–2030 preparatory list. Refusing to test the framework against these imminent marine NPCAs undermines the paper’s stated goal of providing “a universal evaluation tool for all Chinese national parks.” It is better to clarify this limitation. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf