Regional Differences of Farmers’ Willingness to Grow Grain and Its Influencing Factors in Shandong Province under the Background of New-Type Urbanization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors use a survey and logistic regression to study the willingness of farmers to grow grain in the Chinese Shandong Province based on 15 indicators, categorized in 6 levels. They found differences in sub-regions and cities of the province and show that differences also depend on the level of urbanization.

The topic is up-to-date, and the authors used a new dataset that has been gathered through a self-developed survey. The selection of the case study of Shandong Province is highly relevant as there is an ongoing scientific discussion about its urbanization, agricultural development, and water situation. In addition, it is one of the largest provinces, in terms of population size and GDP. To my knowledge, there has not been a comparable study in English language about this topic related to Shandong Province. The used methods are adequate, and the illustrative figures are useful. Overall, the article is written well, rich in results, and represents high scientific standards.

Overall, I recommend accepting the manuscript, after some minor revisions are done. Here are some comments that might help to improve the quality of the manuscript:

1) There are some formalities that might be related to the reviewer version, but I want to mention it anyway. There are different font types, for example in the abstract and main text. And, for example the word “households” (line 371), and “city” (line 575). It will be good to read the paper carefully and revise this. There might be more cases. In addition, it looks like the figures have a low resolution, so that it looks blurry or slightly pixeled. If possible, it will be good to use images with higher resolution.

2) It will be good to slightly improve the English language by carefully reading and revising it. Example of a sentence that needs to be revised, as it grammatically is not clear (lines 39-40) “As food is the basis for economic development, social stability, and national independence and China is a country with a large population.” Also, the sentence in lines 127-133 should better be split into several sentences.

3) In the introduction, maybe the terminology “new-type urbanization” can be elaborated more, because it is probably not known by researchers who do not focus on China. My suggestion: “Since the beginning of the 21st century, the rapid urban development due to the Chinese new-type urbanization strategy has led to the conversion of a large amount of agricultural land into land for construction, and the rural labor forces have been decreasing due to their transfer to non-agricultural industries. “

4) Methodology: It will be helpful to more precisely describe the methodology of sampling. As far as I understand, it was a multistage cluster sampling approach. How many stages did you use? Did you conduct all interviews by field visits and/or sending surveys by post/online? What does “discovering statistic yearbooks” (line 145) mean? Did you conduct the number of interviews in each region/city depending on the population size? A paragraph elaborating this would be helpful for the reader.

5) What kind of standard errors did you use? Did you take into account the survey design (e.g., stages, primary sampling units, strata, finite population correction, or weights)? This should be addressed in the paper, for example in the paragraph on R2 (lines 318-325).

6) When you explain the expected effects in your hypotheses (lines 232-269), it will be good to refer to previous studies or theory, if existing. Also in the discussion part, it will be good to put the result into the context of previous studies. Do your results support previous findings?

7) As far as I understand, you use specification (2) for your analysis and do the following: In a first step, you use the full sample of 1723 respondents to estimate the determinants of willingness to grow grain (results presented in line 326-338). In a second step, you estimate the same model with subsamples of respondents from 17 cities (results presented in table 3). If I got this right, you do not need to clarify, but if I am wrong, it will be good to precisely mention the samples, before you present the results.

8) When you refer to cities in table 3, do you mean only the actual cities or the whole sub-province administrative division (adm2)? It will be good if this will be clarified somewhere.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In the Research methodology necessary is to explain formulas in more detail way. Authors only explain indicators of formula (1), but how they can be achieved (calculated) ?0, ?1, ??? What does it mean the sign minus against ?0? What means indicator e in the formulas 2,3? Authors did not explain at all.

Accounting the weight of factors is not explained. Research methodology means clear explanation of the order of your research.

And it is not correctly to explain some propositions as an indisputable statement (for example, significance of the factors) even in the introduction, and only then to prove them. The same situation is with the hypotheses. The authors write the propositions as an indisputable statement in the introduction and only then make the same statements as hypotheses. It's not correct to write like that.

I think that every factor authors mentioned must have scientific justification. Some authors are only randomly listed in the introduction, but the information provided does not cover all the factors listed. Authors, justifying the factors, could be listed even in the existing table.

Not all research information is summarized in the conclusions. Maybe it's over-research?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf