Efficiency Evaluation of a Forestry Green Economy under a Multi-Dimensional Output Benefit in China—Based on Evidential Reasoning and the Cross Efficiency Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I declare that I do not have any interest conflicts with the authors. The article proposes an order entropy conditional aggregation model as an alternative methodology for evaluating the efficiency of the forestry green economy in 31 Chinese provinces. The authors proposed this methodology given that the most commonly used methodologies only focus on space-time efficiency, production indicators, and efficiency improvement. The authors did an appropriate analysis of the generally accepted methodologies. The stochastic Frontier Approach and the Data envelopment analysis demonstrate the limitation that they found in these methodologies, as well as the lack of consideration of the cross perspective among different decision-making units. They also present an analysis of the cross-efficiency models, used in the literature to fix some problems that the DEA has, i.e. multiple DMUs cannot be distinguished in DEA. The authors support correctly and appropriate the limitations they are commenting along their paper. In the third part, the authors develop their model. It is consistent and robust, well explained, and allows the reader to understand the proposed methodology. The only suggestion would be, for the Associate Editor, the quality of figure 1, it is difficult -impossible in some boxes- to read the words. Figure 2 is difficult to read -minor suggestion, the authors should define each indicator and organize the second-level indicators as they are presented in the text (p.11-12). The authors apply their proposed methodology to data from 31 provinces of China, obtained from the China Statistical Yearbook and the Chinese Forestry and Grassland Statistical Yearbook. The authors present their results and properly analyze them. They elaborate on their findings and the impact. Minor suggestion, why do the authors re-start numbers on page 16, from 5.4.1 Empirical analysis… they start from “1” which can confuse the readers. Adjust to the journal’s author’s guidelines. The conclusions and suggestions are appropriate and remark on the author’s contribution and support their methodology and findings.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I am sending my comments to the article:

Efficiency Evaluation of Forestry Green Economy Under Mul-ti-dimensional Output Benefit in China-- Based on Evidential Reasoning and Cross Efficiency Model

1. In the abstract, please specify the research period 2. When writing about forestry, the authors mention a number of benefits in the
introduction. It is all very well written.
However, please write about the dangers that arise when the development of forest management is uncontrolled
and not properly secured.
In my opinion, some information about forest fires and the costs of prevention should be written.
There are many publications on the economic impact of fires. Sample article below:

Sadowska, B., Grzegorz, Z., Stępnicka, N., Forest fires and losses caused by fires – an economic approach, WSEAS Transactions on Environment and Development, 2021, 17, pp. 181–191, 18

3. Conclusions. The authors describe the conclusions very well, but in my opinion they should refer to the research of other authors.
Conduct discussions in a few sentences.
Compare your results with the research of other authors 4. The introduction of new literature to the conclusions will improve the bibliographies,
some new items should be added.

 Sincerely

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx