How Do Support Pressure and Urban Housing Purchase Affect the Homecoming Decisions of Rural Migrant Workers? Evidence from Rural China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments: How do support pressure and urban housing purchase affect the homecoming decisions of rural migrant workers? Evidence from Rural China
I have read the paper with great interest. It presents an interesting account of dynamics and factors affecting the return decisions of urban migrants from rural places. The context and problem as well as the objectives are aptly put forth to build interest among readers. It really advances knowledge and understanding of decision-making as well as trade-offs between economic gains and psychological costs.
The introduction of the article conveys a very lucid message and gives details on theoretical and economic underpinnings of the subject under investigation. There is a long list of factors that influence return decisions of rural workers from within China including family and personal ones. However, one would also need to keep in mind the gains, not just economics ones in the form of income, but the leisure, the access to amenities such as health, transport, networking, banking and improved working conditions as well as timings. This could have been addressed in the methods and equation setting the costs and gains and net gains, for example, equation 1 in the manuscript. One similar aspect that I think has not been covered by this work, but could be highlighted for future work and in the theoretical setting of this paper to not to confuse readers about the significance of improved infrastructure and services in cities and the sense of satisfaction of the family back in villages on the better prospects of increased earnings with of course better prospects of family living with that money coming from an urban migrant family member(s). This psychological gain might offset the psychological cost as noted by the authors.
The literature review section is more descriptive than abstract. There is no question on the suitability of the method and analytical approach as well as the presentation of the findings and implications. From section 3 onwards, there are very few studies that are cited in relation to methods, results comparison/contrast/agreement while the discussion section too is devoid of any citation of relevant work to support or contradict the implications.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors provide an interesting discussion to map out the push/pull effects that form the decisions of rural migrant workers to return to rural China. There is a series of points that the authors should take into account.
1. Sustainable development is crucial for balanced development between cities and rurality. The authors should briefly discuss the term sustainable development in their introduction to catch the interest of the journal’s readers. In this vein, the following two papers should be included. (a) Manioudis, M. & Meramveliotakis, G. (2022) "Broad strokes towards a grand theory in the analysis of sustainable development: a return to the classical political economy", New Political Economy, 27(5), pp. 866-878, and (b) Tomislav, K. (2018) "The concept of sustainable development: From its beginning to the contemporary issues", Zagreb International Review of Economics & Business, 21(1), 67-94.
2. Rural talent revitalisation should be associated with the eve of creativity. An interesting piece here is Bell, D. & Jayne, M. (2010) “The creative countryside: Policy and practice in the UK rural cultural economy”, Journal of Rural Studies, 26 (3): 209-218.
3. I found the authors’ critique on economic man (lines 59-60) interesting. The neoclassical theory cannot explain why migrants “return home”. I think that the authors should expand their argument here.
4. A citation should evidence the sentence in lines 70-71.
5. What about house prices in urban areas? Is this a factor that functions as a pull effect of rural areas
6. The authors should provide a section with the limitations of their study.
Minor editing of the English language required.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors addressed my previous comments and improved their manuscript.
Minor editing of English language required.
