Typological Features and Determinants of Men’s Marriage Expenses in Rural China: Evidence from a Village-Level Survey
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a methodologically strong and well-written study that has been well executed and appropriately written up in line with journal standards. A comprehensive model is proposed to identify the trends, typological features, and the determinants of male’s marriage expenses in rural China under the guidance of marriage exchange theory. However, I have a number of concerns that I think should be addressed before considering this manuscript for publication.
1. The author needs to further explain the specific criteria for the sample to be divided into the four categories “bride price & marital house”, “mixed”, “bride price biased”, and “marital house biased”. The current description might confuse the readers.
2. Category dimension on abscissa was not written correctly. The right column ought to be type 4 instead of type 3.
3. Applicability analysis of hierarchical linear regression methods should be added, for example, the author had better report the intra-class coefficient (ICC) of the null model.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Many thanks for your review and recognition of our study. Your comments are very valuable to us, and contribute substantially to the refinement and improvement of our manuscript. We have studied them very carefully and try our best to revise the manuscript. We also make some revisions according to other reviewers’ suggestions. A very detailed response to each suggestion from you has been made as below. Please see the revised versions for more details that have been highlighted. When you check the revised manuscript, please adjust the mode of “Display for Review” to “Simple Mark-up” so that the line numbers below are correct.
Point 1: The author needs to further explain the specific criteria for the sample to be divided into the four categories “bride price & marital house”, “mixed”, “bride price biased”, and “marital house biased”. The current description might confuse the readers.
Response 1: Thanks for your suggestions. 1) We have introduced more about why we want to identify the typological features of marriage expenses, since the meanings of relevant items of marriage expenses are different, and the reclassification of their proportions will help us understand the economic pressure of marriage faced by rural men more clearly. Please see lines 399-403. 2) In Table 2, the results show that when the number of categories is increased in turn, the AIC and BIC values decrease continuously, while the Entropy reaches the maximum in the four categories, and the BLRT value reaches a significant level. This shows that it is the most appropriate to divide the cost of marriage for rural males into four categories. Please see lines 416-417. 3) We add Table 3 to show the mean values of 4 types of marriage expenses to reflect the different economic pressures of different types, and describe the results. Please see lines 435-443.
Point 2: Category dimension on abscissa was not written correctly. The right column ought to be type 4 instead of type 3.
Response 2: Thanks for your suggestions. We have revised the name of the right column on abscissa to Type 4 in Figure 2. Please see line 433.
Point 3: Applicability analysis of hierarchical linear regression methods should be added, for example, the author had better report the intra-class coefficient (ICC) of the null model.
Response 3: Thanks for your suggestions. Based on the comments of another reviewer, our statement of the methods used here is wrong, the names of the methods have been changed to multinomial logit analysis and OLS analysis. The hierarchical regression is no longer used in this study.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Many thanks for your review and recognition of our study. Your comments are very valuable to us and contribute substantially to the refinement and improvement of our manuscript. We have studied them very carefully and try our best to revise the manuscript. We also make some revisions according to other reviewers’ suggestions. A very detailed response to each suggestion from you has been made as below. Please see the revised versions for more details that have been highlighted. When you check the revised manuscript, please adjust the mode of “Display for Review” to “Simple Mark-up” so that the line numbers below are correct.
Point 1: First, I would assume that readers of this paper are fairly familiar with the rational choice theory, status exchange theory or other similar theories. All these theories have their respective pros and cons, but none of them could fully explain the empirical problem facing rural men in China: the fierce competition for a wife and associated investment in buying very expensive gifts, bridal price, marital houses, wedding banquet. Many of such customs are simply non-existent in the western countries. Therefore, I would suggest condensing the theoretical discussion a bit, making way for a fuller discussion of the actual situation in rural China. For instance, among young men of marriageable ages (say 25-35), what proportion are working in cities? What proportions are working in the local area (same country) or on their own farms? How much money do they tend to make each year? If their own labour market earnings from various sources make up only a small proportion of the total marriage expenses, how do their parents manage to help them? Perhaps the authors could condense the theory part by one or two paragraphs and expand the rural situation by one or two paragraphs.
Response 1: Many thanks for your comments. (1) We have simplified the elaboration of the existing theories, and only sorted out their development context and drawbacks. Please see lines 88-128. (2) We add a discussion of the actual situation in rural China. Under the background of urbanization, the current marriageable rural men in China are facing completely different marital statuses. The vast majority of them leave the rural area to go out to work, gain financial independence, and increase their sense of personal autonomy. They have the opportunity to meet young people from all over the country and gain autonomy in love and marriage. Their individual resources have become an important factor in mate selection in the marriage market. Here we will not discuss how rural men's families help them get married, which is more related to intergenerational relationships, but this study only focuses on the impact of rural men's individual resource matching with their spouses on the cost of marriage he pays. Please see lines 129-160.
Point 2: As for the methods, the authors use LPA which they say is similar to LCA. I am not an expert of LPA but sociologists tend to use the term LCA. In this regard I would think that the methods part could be made leaner and stronger (lines 459-503), assuming that readers are more interested in the substantive issues than in the technicalities. A more succinct account of the modelling procedure could be given, such as by following existing examples (Li, Y., Savage, M. and Warde, A. (2008) ‘Social mobility and social capital in contemporary Britain’, British Journal of Sociology. 59(3): 391-411.)
Response 2: Many thanks for your suggestions. Indeed, the LPA method is similar in principle to the LCA method, except that the LPA method is suitable for latent type identification of continuous variables, which is in line with the situation in this paper (the amount of marriage expenses for rural males is a continuous variable). We also realized that the introduction of methods in the previous manuscript was too long and complicated. Following your suggestions, we have simplified the Methods section and introduced more in the Results section. Please see lines 368-380 for a check.
Point 3: In the results part, Table 3 is said to be using ‘Multi-classification and hierarchical regression’ but it seems to me a straightforward multinomial logit analysis. Hope that the authors correct it and in the text. Similarly, Table 4 is said to use ‘Hierarchical linear regression’, which is actually OLS. Hope that similar occurrences are corrected in the text.
Response 3: Many thanks for your valuable suggestions. We have revised the names of methods in two tables to multinomial logit analysis and OLS analysis... We also revise all related names of the methods throughout the manuscript. Please see lines 473 and 517.
Point 4: The writing is generally good but there are occasions where native English readers who do not know Chinese or China’s situation might find it difficult to follow. For instance, line 38 ‘spiritual burden’ might be better put as ‘mental pressure’; the sentence on lines 105-107 need to be made clearer; line 183: ‘American colonies in the Middle Ages’ must be corrected: Did America have colonies in the Middle Ages? Line 200: ‘a series of materials and spirits’ reads alright to a Chinese but awkward to a non-Chinese; Table 1’s data under ‘Value range’ and ‘Mean’ are redundant; line 454 has two ‘unemployed’. It would be a good idea for the authors to find a native English speaker to go over the paper and make it more idiomatic. This does not need too much effort.
Response 4: Many thanks for the comments. Following your suggestions, we have made the following modifications, and also read and improved the quality of English throughout the manuscript. (1) We change ‘spiritual burden’ to ‘mental pressure’. Please see line 35. (2) As mentioned in response 1, we have rearranged the sentences in the Theoretical Analysis. (3) We revise the time, mainly referring to the period when European powers colonized the American continent in the 17th and 18th centuries. Please see line 166. (4) We have changed the content to make it easier for English readers to understand. Please see lines 181-182. (5) We removed the redundant part in Table 1. (6) We remove the word ‘unemployed’. Please see line 366.
