Examining the Adoption of Drones and Categorisation of Precision Elements among Hungarian Precision Farmers Using a Trans-Theoretical Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is fairly well-written, structured, and referenced. Some of the study results may add to the existing knowledge. However, the following comments may add to the quality of this manuscript:

11.       The introduction section is too lengthy and occupied 6 pages out of the total 17 pages. Some condensation (to about 2-3 pages) of information such as the literature review and hypotheses section may be suggested.

22.      Some statements concerning the methodology may be shifted to the method section.

33.       The last paragraph of the introduction section is redundant.

44.     All acronym names, such as PF, should be defined when first appear.

55.      An English error in Line 63, “A European…”.

66.    Please avoid beginning a sentence with number such as “79%”.

77.     All the Hs (H1…H9) seem to be the parameters (variables) selected to categorize adoption, not hypotheses.

88.     Is “PA” the same as “PF”?

99.    The correct form is “et al.”, not “et al”.

110.   A better heading for Table 1 is “< 300 ha”, “> 300 ha”.

111.   Table 2 is better fitted in the results and discussion section.

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript. We appreciated the timeliness of the review process and this opportunity to develop our manuscript further. Thank you for your

recognition of our manuscript and work, and we have further refined it with your encourage.

We did our best to improve the manuscript and made many changes. We appreciate your work earnestly and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper is fairly well-written, structured, and referenced. Some of the study results may add to the existing knowledge. However, the following comments may add to the quality of this manuscript:

11.      The introduction section is too lengthy and occupied 6 pages out of the total 17 pages. Some condensation (to about 2-3 pages) of information such as the literature review and hypotheses section may be suggested.

Many thanks for the comment, we fully agree and deleted 6 references as well as the general part of the introduction and literature. However, considering the recommendation of Reviewer 2, we added some relevant and up-to-date references. Hypothesis and research questions with relevant explanations are also highlighted in a separate sub-section, re-allocated to the chapter „2. Hypothesys, Material and Methods”

22.     Some statements concerning the methodology may be shifted to the method section.

We reorganised this section of the article with all the  methodological statements (hypothesys, structure) from the literature section.

33. The last paragraph of the introduction section is redundant.
34.    All acronym names, such as PF, should be defined when first appear.
35.     An English error in Line 63, “A European…”.
36.   Please avoid beginning a sentence with number such as “79%”.
37.    Is “PA” the same as “PF”?
38.   The correct form is “et al.”, not “et al”.
39. A better heading for Table 1 is “< 300 ha”, “> 300 ha”.

Thank you for the careful work and all the comments. We corrected all of the requested formal errors mentioned above. PF means precision farming, PA means precision agriculture. However, we transcribed from „PA” to „PF” in all occurance.

77. All the Hs (H1…H9) seem to be the parameters (variables) selected to categorize adoption, not hypotheses.

We highly appreciate your remark. We reorganised this section of the article, re-allocated it to the methodological chapter and added some statements related to the structure. We would be happy and thank if you agree with this new structure.

Due to historical and economic factors, the intention of German farmers to use drones expected to be very similar to the behaviour of Hungarian crop farmers. For this reason, we chose the article by Pierpaoli et al. (2013) [19] and Michels et al. (2020) [23] as a sample for the design of our questionnaire. We thought that the expected re-sults could provide a good basis to understand the drone use intention of Hungarian farmers in addition to the behaviour of German farmers.

Michels et al. (2020) [21] identified that the farmers’ age, precision agriculture technology literacy and farm size affect farmers’ drone adoption process. The authors have also formulated the main areas of drone application and the reasons that oppose the usage of drones by German farmers.

Michels et al. (2020) [21] hypothesis:

• Cultivated land size has a positive effect on the adoption process.
• Age has a negative effect on the drone adoption process.
• Higher education has a positive impact on the process of adoption of drones.
• Being a male farmer has a positive effect on the adoption process.
• Being a full-time farmer has a positive effect on the adoption process.
• Drone technology literacy has a positive impact on the adoption process.
• Increasing perceived job relevance of drones for operational procedures has a positive effect on the adoption process.
• Increased confidence in the process of working with drones has a positive effect on the process of acceptance.

Our extended hypothesis:

• Higher education in agriculture has a positive effect on the adoption process.

111. Table 2 is better fitted in the results and discussion section.

Thank you for your suggestion. Table 2. has been moved to the next section.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper made some statistics and analysis for the adoption of drones in PA farms. The results were meaningful for future development and regulations. Some suggestions were as follows.

1 According to the hypothesis, how about the price of drones for the adoption influences of PA intelligent equipment?

2 According to the drones production, made in Hungary or other countries? How many percentage was made in Hungary? Did this influences the adoption?

3 I thinks the authors could give some suggestions to accelerate the adoption of drones for PA.

4 Only ordinal logistic regression method was applied for the analysis, I suggest the authors adding more analytical models for comparison.

5 If possible, could the authors made an weight factor for H1 to H9 for the adoption of drones in Hungary. 

Author Response

Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript. We appreciated the timeliness of the review process and this opportunity to develop our manuscript further. Thank you for your

recognition of our manuscript and work, and we have further refined it with your encourage.

We did our best to improve the manuscript and made many changes. We appreciate your work earnestly and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper presents the use of drones in Hungary and their future penetration using a 3 Trans-theoretical Model. The topic is certainly worthy of investigation nowadays, but the manuscript suffers from the following shortcomings:

• The research question and has not been put forward clearly.

• Both the level and context of the introduction would only benefit researchers who have just started working in this subject. Importantly, some of what is presented in not being correlated to on-going research and technology developments.
• Section 1 (Introduction) is too long, so, it should be separated from the literature review (Section 2 Related Study).
• It is recommended to present the importance of the 4 Industrial Revolution and highlight the drone applications, briefly. Here some references:

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/57703

 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/5908

 https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9781003272328-50/drone-automation-smart-irrigation-pranjal-jaiswal-nikita-rajput-rajnish-kumar-sandeep-bhatia-rakesh-kumar

Lots of thanks for your comments above, related to each other, they were very useful and made the manuscript better. We fully agree each of them and deleted 6 references as well as the general part of the introduction and literature. We added the recommended excellent references a nd some more relevant and up-to-date ones. Literature section has been separated from the Introduction section. Hypothesis and research questions are also highlighted in a separate sub-section, re-allocated to the chapter „2. Hypothesys, Material and Methods”

• A comparison table between the proposed system and other related studies is highly recommended to be added in Section 2 (2 Related Study). Then, motivations can be easily drawn.

 We added a new table summarising the previous literatures related to our research questions. (Table 1: The influencing fators and their effects on adoption of precision farming, or using drones). It can be found in the end of the subchapter „Agricultural education”.

• The 3 Trans-theoretical Model should be explained and justify why has been selected?

Thank you for your suggestion. We supplemented the original paper with an explanation of the model and why we chose this model type as the tool for our analysis.

The process of the gradual adoption can be characterized as

y’ = Xβ + ε

where y’ is the unobserved dependent variable and X is the vector of independent variables. The vector includes the regression coefficients to be estimated. The parameter ε is the error term.

The Trans-theoretical Model provides a gradual measure of farmers' decision making with respect to the adoption of drones, which gives more detailed insight into farmers' adoption processes than the more common approach of applied binary classifications.

• The manuscript would greatly benefit from proofreading, as there are lots of grammar errors, vague statements and claims, and typos.

Many thanks for the comment, we made it proofread.

• Figures could be improved from size and resolution perspectives.

Thank you for your comment. Figure 2. was created in excel and inserted into the text. We will try to adjust the resolution of the figure as requested.

• Overall, the manuscript suffer from serious issues, so it is recommended to be a major revision.

Thanks again for the useful comments, we really appreciated them.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper presents the use of drones in Hungary and their future penetration using a 3 Trans-theoretical Model. The topic is certainly worthy of investigation nowadays, but the manuscript suffers from the following shortcomings:

 ·         The research question and has not been put forward clearly.

·         Both the level and context of the introduction would only benefit researchers who have just started working in this subject.  Importantly, some of what is presented in not being correlated to on-going research and technology developments.

·         Section 1 (Introduction) is too long, so, it should be separated from the literature review (Section 2 Related Study).

·         A comparison table between the proposed system and other related studies is highly recommended to be added in Section 2 (2 Related Study).  Then, motivations can be easily drawn.

·         It is recommended to present the importance of the 4 Industrial Revolution and highlight the drone applications, briefly. Here some references:  

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/57703

 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/5908

 https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9781003272328-50/drone-automation-smart-irrigation-pranjal-jaiswal-nikita-rajput-rajnish-kumar-sandeep-bhatia-rakesh-kumar

·         The 3 Trans-theoretical Model should be explained and justify why has been selected?

·         The manuscript would greatly benefit from proofreading, as there are lots of grammar errors, vague statements and claims, and typos.

·         Figures could be improved from size and resolution perspectives.

·         Overall, the manuscript suffer from serious issues, so it is recommended to be a major revision.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

Thanks a lot for your time and effort in reviewing our manuscript entitled “Examining the Adoption of Drones and Categorisation of Precision Elements among Hungarian Precision Farmers using a Trans-theoretical Model”. We provide this cover letter to explain, point by point, the details of our revisions in the manuscript and our responses to the comments as follows. In order to make the changes easily viewable for you, in the revised paper, we marked the revision with yellow color. Besides, we have carefully checked through the whole manuscript and corrected some grammar mistakes. We hope the revised paper would be suitable all of you.

Best wishes,

Dr Boldizsár Megyesi

Reviewer 3

Thank you for taking the time to review this manuscript. We appreciated the timeliness of the review process and this opportunity to develop our manuscript further. Thank you for your

recognition of our manuscript and work, and we have further refined it with your encourage.

We did our best to improve the manuscript and made many changes. We appreciate your work earnestly and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper made some statistics and analysis for the adoption of drones in PA farms. The results were meaningful for future development and regulations. Some suggestions were as follows.

1 According to the hypothesis, how about the price of drones for the adoption influences of PA intelligent equipment?

 Prices of drones surely effect on the market of drones, that is the reason why markets and typical price have been shown in the Introduction section (2rd and 3th paragraphs). Ratios of prices of drones, of agricultural products, of their raw materials and of the availability of supports are significantly influence the demand for drones. However, it was not a part of our research and the related and cited literatures, that is the reason, why we did not make any statements about it in this manuscript, but plan to analyze it in our next manuscript.

2 According to the drones production, made in Hungary or other countries? How many percentage was made in Hungary? Did this influences the adoption?

According to the information available for us, there is no drones production in Hungary. However, in case of some food and industrial product, Hungarian products may have priorities for some consumer segments, drones should not expected to be one of them if they are available.

3 I thinks the authors could give some suggestions to accelerate the adoption of drones for PA.

We really appreciate your remark and added some suggestions to the Conclusions section regarding adoption of drones.

4 Only ordinal logistic regression method was applied for the analysis, I suggest the authors adding more analytical models for comparison.

Thank you for the suggestion but in order to study the process of adoption of drones by farmers, we used only the modified method by Michels et al.et al. (2020) of trans-theoretical model of behavioural change (TTMC) called the trans-theoretical model of adoption (TTMA) for drones in agriculture. This model form accounts for more than two stages in the adoption process.

We supplemented the original paper with an explanation of the model and why we chose only this model type as the tool for our analysis.

The process of the gradual adoption can be characterized as

y’ = Xβ + ε

where y’ is the unobserved dependent variable and X is the vector of independent variables. The vector includes the regression coefficients to be estimated. The parameter ε is the error term.

The Trans-theoretical Model provides a gradual measure of farmers' decision making with respect to the adoption of drones, which gives more detailed insight into farmers' adoption processes than the more common approach of applied binary classifications.

5 If possible, could the authors made an weight factor for H1 to H9 for the adoption of drones in Hungary.

Thank you very much for the suggestion, but there was no similar analysis in the German article we followed and that was the reason why we used this method..

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors answered all my concerned questions. One more suggestion, the authors should revise the format of references.

Reviewer 3 Report

Happy with the revised version. Accept in present form