Research on Government Subsidy Strategies for the Development of Agricultural Products E-Commerce

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for an interesting paper. One of my research area is also e-commerce but from different point of view. That is why I was very curious of your paper.

The structure of the paper is ok, the topic important. Abstract explain the paper content. All sections are needed. However, I found elements that should be improved:

Check the journal template, sometimes you did not follow it.

Abstract: At the beginning add 2-3 sentences about the background of the research.

Introduction: Maybe a bit of comparison to the rest of the world? MDPI is popular all over the world, readers can be from different countries, so there must be any connection with other countries.

In point 3.2: you can't put in the section only the table of Figure without any explanation, short introduction or description.

In Point 3.3: also here, you can't list anything without any explanation. Check also template requirements in this case.

Sometimes text is moved on left.

Check Table 4, 5, 6, some equations moved and can’t be checked.

Figure 1: bad quality of the text on functions.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

This study focuses on the agricultural product online shopping supply chain composed of the farmer cooperative, e-commerce platform and consumers The impacts of different strategies of government’ subsidising among these three supply chain members in terms of freshness and sales efforts is analyzed. 
In article are presented many matehematical models, many calculations and derivation of formulas. This research aims to develop a profit model and apply Stackelberg game theory to determine which type of subsidies and decision-makings can provide the maximum benefits for agricultural products e-commerce supply chains. 
Numerical experiments show that the government’s strategy of subsidizing the Farmer cooperative is better than subsidizing to consumers and no government subsidies, and centralized decision-making is better than decentralized decision-making.
The article is well written, it deals with the current problem.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The paper as a whole is balanced and it gives an appropriate emphasis to the theoretical aspects and opens to the empirical potential of the study. furthermore, the application of the Stackelberg game theory to this field of study has the potential to stimulate interesting conclusions.

I suggest that the following minor considerations be taken into account: The paper shows a literature overview on the subsidy discourse. However, its strategies could be better highlighted and connected to the scientific hypothesis of the work. Since the dynamic context of the e-commerce dimension, it would be appreciable a more detailed justification about the method used. in addition, even if mentioned within the conclusion section, it will be appreciable a more detail with regard to the originality and innovative aspects of the work.

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The authors of Research on government subsidy strategies for the development of agricultural products e-commerce, present a relevant topic, namely a "profit model and apply the theory of Stackelberg games to determine what kind of subsidies and decision-making can provide maximum benefits for the chains supply of e-commerce with agricultural products ”, all the more so as the impact of e-commerce with agri-food products is assessed globally, which makes the typical work to create the effect of multiplication globally.

Concepts, bibliographic sources and citations are appropriately mentioned in the paper. For example, the authors mention and justify through bibliographic sources that e-commerce contributes to "improving the efficiency of logistics and distribution, reducing losses of agricultural products and increasing sales of agricultural products [11, 12]".

The research methodology is appropriate, the authors use tools and models that support "consumer behavior affected by (a) selling price, (b) freshness of agricultural products and (c) e-commerce platform sales efforts", such as "symbol model".

The results of the research are presented by the authors of the research, respectively claim "the fact that for both centralized and decentralized decisions, the subsidy of the agricultural cooperative is better than the subsidy of consumers and no subsidy". The results are presented and demonstrated more from an applicative point of view, including from the point of view of the recommended policies to be applied, which is why we suggest the authors of the research to present in a separate paragraph the personal scientific contributions to the literature.

The conclusions show that the authors analyze "improving the quality and sales of agricultural products through online shopping channels." Moreover, we suggest to the authors of the research to highlight as we mentioned in the chapter results and personal scientific contributions, as well as the presentation of future research.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx