Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript "Household Characteristics, Regional Heterogeneity and the Consumption Structure of Livestock Products among Rural Residents: Evidence from rural China" deals with a topic of great interest and newsworthiness, especially in a context where the economic planning of the People's Republic of China in recent decades has led to huge processes of socio-economic development in such country, significantly increasing the available food resources and the quality of life of its inhabitants. The study provides information of great interest for understanding how these development processes have impacted on very significant advances in food security, which are unevenly and diversely manifested in the different regions or territorial areas within China. The Introduction to the article is well written and provides a good overview of the starting point, contextualizing the subject of the research and providing an adequate review of the works and publications that are precursors to the present study. The tables and figures are adequate and very useful in showing what they are intended to reveal. Likewise, the text as a whole is well organized, in such a way that some previous considerations lead to the following ones, while the order of the different sections that make up the article is well sequenced and interlinked. The sections on the theoretical framework and the methodology are explained in detail (especially regarding the methodology) and are well-founded. Moreover, what is stated in these two sections is consistent with what is empirically investigated. As a whole, the manuscript is written clearly, so that, far from being one of those texts that, no matter how many times you read and reread its paragraphs, you do not quite understand what they are really saying, this is a text that is easy to read and that allows you to understand everything that is stated in its different sections. For all these reasons, it is an article that deserves to be taken into account. However, in order to improve the work done, I would like to make the following suggestions and recommendations to the authors:

1) The title of the article is appropriate, but it should be shortened somewhat.  A possible alternative title might be: "Household Characteristics, Regional Heterogeneity and the Consumption Structure of Livestock Products Among Rural Chinese Residents".

2) The subsection "3.4. Robustness Tests" should be included in the Methodology section, perhaps as a subsection of that section. As for the heading "Empirical tests and analysis of results", it should be renamed something like "Analysis of results" and continue to include the remaining subsections contained therein.

3) Between lines 509 and 511 it says: "It indicates that rural residents who raise hogs and broiler chickens at home are more inclined to the consumption of meat and milk, while showing less interest in egg consumption". I think this paragraph is not properly explained. As I understand it, it may not be that these people are less interested in consuming eggs, but that they probably find it easier to eat meat and /or milk and more difficult to obtain eggs.

4) The Conclusions section is too short and could be lengthened somewhat. In addition to what is currently stated under this heading, the Conclusions should evaluate the research results achieved according to the methodology used.

5) The Recommendations section that the authors include at the end of their article is very interesting and useful especially for policymakers. What is missing, however, is an additional section that focuses on highlighting the limitations of this study, as well as in making suggestions for possible future research along the same lines as this one.

I hope that the above recommendations, which are fundamentally constructive, will serve as a guide for the authors to improve their work.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank You for the interesting research. Despite that I noted a few observations for improvement:   

 

1. It is necessary to correct the title of the article. The main object of the study is the structure of consumption of livestock production by rural residents and its dependence on household characteristics and regional heterogeneity, etc. This should be emphasized in the title.

2.  The abstract should clearly state the purpose of the study.

3.  The limitation of empirical research is that meat is not differentiated by the type. Obviously, different types of meat have different characteristics and affect the nutritional status differently.

4.  It is great that the authors of the article managed to reveal regional differences in the consumption structure of livestock production. Perhaps more attention should have been paid to the analysis of their causes. I found some at the end of discussion part, but it’s not enough.

5. The beginning of the Discussion section duplicates the abstract and beginning of Introduction.

6.  The Discussion section should include a comparative analysis with research conducted by other scientists.

 

 

 

7. The recommendations are significant, but not all based (e.g., the last sentence) on the results of the research conducted.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This study analyses the key factors affecting the consumption structure of rural residents' livestock products from the perspective of household characteristics and regional heterogeneity. It uses the survey data of 4529 rural residents across 10 provinces in China. The introduction needs to be revised focusing more on the aims of this study. The methodology can be improved, providing more details about the data sources and measurement units of variables. Need to provide the interpretation of the results. Most of the results have been reported, but need to explain the implications of them. Conclusions can be improved more by concentrating on the major findings which have direct policy relevance.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf