An Evaluation of Factors Influencing Urban Integration and Livelihood of Eco-Migrant Families: Quantitative Evidence from Western China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Based on the article received, I feel that the manuscript could be reconsidered for publication after considering all the major revisions attached below:

1.     The policy implications part is missing in the abstract. 

2. In the abstract, I did not find any results regarding children's learning environments' satisfaction. Please revise the abstract or title of your manuscript. 

3.     Please revise the keywords as well. The keywords do not represent the entire research theme properly. 

4.     In the Introduction section, please clarify the justification for this research. The introduction section is too short and failed to show the research gap and novelty of this research. The problem statement is not well organized and not clear to the reader. There is no methodological explanation or reason for choosing logistic regression. Also, there is a considerable gap between the novelty of research and the discussion of existing studies. Please make it as elaborate as you can. Substantial changes and revisions are required in the introduction section. Please make a story and try to find out the importance of this research.

5.     Please add research questions before the research objectives. 

6.   Please merge the introduction and materials and methods sections (up to 2. Theoretical basis and research hypothesis). 

7.     Please add a study area map. 

8.  Please separate the conclusion section from the discussion part. In the conclusion section, please remind the readers about your objective at the beginning of the conclusion section and conclude your result in light of your objective. Please add the conclusion section carefully and make a recommendation based on your research findings.

9.     Please revise the reference style and format.  

Finally, I would like to say that the research topic is important in the present context. Research ideas are also good, but you should focus on the consistency of your writing.

Author Response

Responses to Reviewers

Review 1

1. The policy implications part is missing in the abstract. 

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for this very useful comment. We have added policy implications in the abstract according to your suggestion. We wrote that “local governments and communities should provide immigrant families from rural to urban China with more social and economic resources for their better socio-economic integration.” We have also structured the abstract based on the guidance of the journal. We hope the current abstract is clear and readable.

 

2. In the abstract, I did not find any results regarding children's learning environments' satisfaction. Please revise the abstract or title of your manuscript. 

Response: Thank you very much for pointing out that we missed this part. We have revised the abstract accordingly. The current title is “An evaluation of factors influencing urban integration and livelihood of eco-migrant families: Quantitative evidence from West China.” We hope the current title is clear and can represent the entire manuscript.

 

3. Please revise the keywords as well. The keywords do not represent the entire research theme properly. 

Response: Thank you very much for this suggestion. We have realized that previous keywords are limited and cannot represent the entire research, as you pointed out. We have thus corrected this part and added some new keywords. The current six keywords are: “Rural to urban immigration”; “West China”; “Urban integration”; “Heckman two stages model”; “Endogenous transformation and regression”; “Policy implications.” We hope it is clear and can represent the entire research. Please kindly let us know whether it is clear now.

4. In the Introduction section, please clarify the justification for this research. The introduction section is too short and failed to show the research gap and novelty of this research.

Response: Thank you very much for pointing out this for us. We agree with you that the introduction is short – we have added more information in this part and also in the literature review part to justify our research. Based on your suggestion, we have presented the two gaps in the literature very clearly. As you can see, we wrote:

Under China’s rapid socioeconomic development and transition, eco-migration has become a policy-oriented trend especially for residents in many rural areas in the middle and west part of the country. However, research on the income of ecological immigrant family has not been fully investigated. Based on existing literature in the field, two main research gaps are identified. First, the factors influencing the urban integration of migrants have not been studied enough, especially the internal mechanism of integration. The common point of existing research is that it only analyzes the factors that affect the integration behavior of cities and towns, but does not deeply analyze the process of integration behavior. In fact, the urban integration behavior of ecological migrants involves two aspects: the decision of integration and the degree of integration. Second, the research on income as a result of urban integration is still weak. Most scholars pay attention to the research on the outcome variables of urban integration. Although simple regression analysis is used to estimate the impact of urban integration and income, the endogenous problems of urban integration and income are neglected.

We hope the current writing is clear and has well justified our research.

The problem statement is not well organized and not clear to the reader. There is no methodological explanation or reason for choosing logistic regression. Also, there is a considerable gap between the novelty of research and the discussion of existing studies.

Response: Thank you very much for this very useful comment. We have added a paragraph to present our contributions to the literature. As you can see, we wrote:

Despite there are a few studies focusing on eco-immigration in China, they mainly explored land use (Lu et al., 2015), transition cost (Wu et al., 2020), or environmental payment (Huang et al., 2018; Ma & Ma, 2015). There has been no research that focuses on immigrant integration and changes in their livelihoods. Especially, there lacks attention to eco-immigrant families in western China, where environmental challenges are ignorable.

Please kindly let us know whether the current statement has met your expectations.

Please make it as elaborate as you can. Substantial changes and revisions are required in the introduction section. Please make a story and try to find out the importance of this research.

Response: Thank you for this very constructive comment. We have made changes and revisions on the introduction section and the literature section. We hope the current organization is clear and has met your expectations. Please kindly let us know if you have more comments.

5. Please add research questions before the research objectives. 

Response: Thank you for this very useful and important suggestion. We have added research hypotheses (in blue) after literature review and before the research objectives accordingly. We hope our research questions are clearly presented.

6.Please merge the introduction and materials and methods sections (up to 2. Theoretical basis and research hypothesis). 

Response: Thank you very much for this comment. We have made changes and revision on the introduction and literature review sections under the guidance of your comments and other reviewers’ comments. We hope our revisions are clear and the current manuscript reads better compared to the previous version.

7. Please add a study area map. 

Response: We have added a map of the study area accordingly. We hope it makes our manuscript much better. Thank you for this suggestion!

8. Please separate the conclusion section from the discussion part. In the conclusion section, please remind the readers about your objective at the beginning of the conclusion section and conclude your result in light of your objective. Please add the conclusion section carefully and make a recommendation based on your research findings.

Response: Thank you very much for this helpful comment. We have separated the Conclusion section from the Discussion. We wrote the Conclusion based on your suggestion. Our conclusion is seen as follows:

Eco-immigrant has become a newly emerged social phenomenon during the process of China’s rapid socioeconomic transition; however, its consequences facing immigrant families have not been fully explored. In this research, we aim to address two research gaps in the literature: factors remain unclear that contribute to the social and economic integration of eco-migrant families from rural to urban areas in China and how eco-migrant families would sustain livelihood. We explored the migrant households data in China collected during 2017 and 2018 and identified underlying contributors to social and economic integration among immigrant families.

There are four take-home messages. First, immigrants are willing to integrate into urban life after relocation. Second, age, educational attainment, income, age, and geographic location are significant factors that affect migrants’ decisions in urban integration. Third, the variations in family-level socioeconomic status affect their urban integration to the highest degree, followed by geographical location. Fourth, the degree to which Chinese eco-migrants integrate themselves into urban lives impacts their household income with statistical significance. These findings warrant further efforts targeting the improvement of eco-migrants’ ability for urban integration, especially by offering them more opportunities with social and economic resources.

Despite there exist limitations on the coverage of the data in-use, our research is among the first to explore factors leading to differences in urban integration among eco-immigrants in China. Future research is suggested to focus on a broader geographic range beyond the western part of China. Also, more detailed measurements of social and economic integration among eco-migrants from rural to urban areas are suggested in order to capture a more comprehensive picture of urban integration.

We hope the current conclusion reads clearly. Please kindly let us know if you have more suggestions.

9. Please revise the reference style and format.  

Response: Thank you very much for reminding us on editing the reference style and format under the guidance of the journal rules. The journal says that “Your references may be in any style, provided that you use the consistent formatting throughout. It is essential to include author(s) name(s), journal or book title, article or chapter title (where required), year of publication, volume and issue (where appropriate) and pagination.” So we stick with our reference format which is clear and easy to read.

We hope that the current format is acceptable and has met your requirements. We have revised them accordingly, and we hope the current paper is rigorous regarding its reference style and format.

Finally, I would like to say that the research topic is important in the present context. Research ideas are also good, but you should focus on the consistency of your writing.

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your very helpful and constructive comments that can help us to polish and improve our research. We have carefully addressed all your comments and all comments of other reviewers. We hope these revisions have met your requirements and expectations. We sincerely thank your guidance and assistance, as reflected in your detailed comments, and thank your time and warm consideration during the reviewing process.

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I read your article. The theme is interesting but needs some additions and improvements, as follows:
- in the abstract it must be clearly emphasized: the purpose of the research, the analyzed period, the main results
- the introduction needs major additions. Thus, I propose that part of the information from point 2 Materials and Methods may be moved to the introduction. May be comparisons with other studies are also needed and the novelty of this study may be explained more clearly
- a Literature review section should be added. The research hypotheses must be highlighted more clearly and supported by the scientific literature. The authors may be define the key concepts of this study: children learning environment, the livelihood, eco-migrant families
- the point 2 Materials and Methods must be improved - here may be explained the research methodology used in this study, the period in which the research was done, the explanation of the sample, the explanation of the questionnaire, etc. . Also, citations should be added both to the methodology part and to the Heckman two-stage model. Are there studies that have used this model?
- I recommend adding a table explaining the demographic structure of the sample included in the analysis
- I recommend that the authors add explanations for table 3 as well
- the tables 1 and 2 are too extensive and difficult to read - please improve them
- in the results section, the authors omitted the "children learning environment" component. In fact, I think it was not covered at all in this article.
- the discussion section will be presented separately from the conclusions section
- I recommend adding some explanations regarding the testing of the research hypotheses. Therefore, the obtained results will be presented in comparison with the results of other studies
- I recommend adding some theoretical and practical implications
- it is necesary to be formated the article in according to the recommendations in the authors' guide for the Sustainability Journal.

That's all!

Best wishes!

Author Response

Review 2

Dear authors,

 

I read your article. The theme is interesting but needs some additions and improvements, as follows:

 

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your great help and guidance in providing us with very useful suggestions that help us to polish this paper for publication purpose. We have addressed all of your comments very carefully. We hope the current revised manuscript is clearer and good for publication. Please kindly let us know if you have more comments.

 

- in the abstract it must be clearly emphasized: the purpose of the research, the analyzed period, the main results.

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for this suggestion. We have revised the abstract accordingly. Specifically, we added the purpose of the research in the Background subsection, the time of the survey in the Methods subsection, and four main results as take-home messages in the Results subsection. The current abstract is about 199 words (within 200 English words), as required by the journal guidance.

 

- the introduction needs major additions. Thus, I propose that part of the information from point 2 Materials and Methods may be moved to the introduction. May be comparisons with other studies are also needed and the novelty of this study may be explained more clearly

Response: Thank you very much for this constructive and valuable suggestion. In our previous manuscript, the literature review was presented in the “Materials and methods” section. We have now renamed the title as “Literature review” based on the guidance of your comment and the journal guidance. Also, we have added comparisons with other studies to present the novelty of our research. We hope the current manuscript organization is clearer and more readable.

 

- a Literature review section should be added. The research hypotheses must be highlighted more clearly and supported by the scientific literature. The authors may be define the key concepts of this study: children learning environment, the livelihood, eco-migrant families.

Response: Thank you very much for this very helpful comment. As for the literature review part, we have explained this in the above response. As for the research hypotheses part, we have highlight them with clearer explanations based on more detailed literature review. Moreover, we defined the three key concepts of this study. We hope the current writing has met your requirements and expectations. Please kindly let us know should you have more concerns.

 

- The point 2 Materials and Methods must be improved - here may be explained the research methodology used in this study, the period in which the research was done, the explanation of the sample, the explanation of the questionnaire, etc.

Response: Thank you very much for this insightful comment and suggestion. Based on this and other related suggestions developed by you, we have revised the Materials and Methods section by adding review of previous literature and more explanations on data collection. We hope our current explanation is clear and appropriate. We appreciate your great assistance.

 

Also, citations should be added both to the methodology part and to the Heckman two-stage model. Are there studies that have used this model?

Response: Thank you very much for reminding us to add related references of the Heckman two-stage model. We added the following two references, which can justify the use of this model to solve the endogeneity issue. The first one (Heckman, 1979) is the original paper in which Heckman created this model, and the second reference (Certo et al., 2016) justifies the use of the model from a methodological perspective.

Certo, S. T., Busenbark, J. R., Woo, H. S., & Semadeni, M. (2016). Sample selection bias and Heckman models in strategic management research. Strategic Management Journal, 37(13), 2639-2657.

Heckman, J. J. (1979). Sample selection bias as a specification error. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 153-161.

 

- I recommend adding a table explaining the demographic structure of the sample included in the analysis

Response: Thank you very much for offering this very helpful comment. Our tables have shown the demographic structure of the sample included in the analysis. We hope that the current tables are clear.

 

- I recommend that the authors add explanations for table 3 as well

Response: Thank you very much for this comment. We have added explanations for Table 3. Specifically, we wrote that:

Next, as shown in Table 3, the ATT of high integration is further considered, which indicates the average treatment effect of high integration on the income of immigrant families. After eliminating selective bias by endogenous transformation model, ATT is found to be 1.91, and all of them are significant at 1% level, indicating that after overcoming the endogenous problem of self-selection, high integration contributes to a 23.07% increase in the income of immigrant families.

We hope the current writing is clear and you are satisfied with our revision.

 

- the tables 1 and 2 are too extensive and difficult to read - please improve them

Response: Thank you very much for reminding us to modify Tables 1 and 2. We agree with you that the original tables are a bit extensive. We revised the tables a bit but we cannot delete much information because “coefficients” and “standard deviations” in Table 1 and “ρµ 0(or ρµ1)”, “LR test of indep. eqns.”, and “Log likelihood” in Table 2 are important to the presentation of the tables. We appreciate so much for your suggestion and hope our explanation is acceptable.  

 

- in the results section, the authors omitted the "children learning environment" component. In fact, I think it was not covered at all in this article.

Response: Thank you for this crucial comment that is very constructive and valuable. When we reviewed this manuscript based on your comments, we found that this part is unnecessary to be presented in the title. We thus modified our title and make it more consistent with the text. The current title is “An evaluation of factors influencing urban integration and livelihood of eco-migrant families: Quantitative evidence from Western China.” We hope it is clear and can represent the entire manuscript text.

 

- the discussion section will be presented separately from the conclusions section

Response: Thank you very much for pointing out this. We have separated the conclusion from the discussion section. We added take-home messages and future research directions in the conclusion part. As you can see, we wrote that:

Eco-immigrant has become a newly emerged social phenomenon during the process of China’s rapid socioeconomic transition; however, its consequences facing immigrant families have not been fully explored. In this research, we aim to address two research gaps in the literature: factors remain unclear that contribute to the social and economic integration of eco-migrant families from rural to urban areas in China and how eco-migrant families would sustain livelihood. We explored the migrant households data in China collected during 2017 and 2018 and identified underlying contributors to social and economic integration among immigrant families.

There are four take-home messages. First, immigrants are willing to integrate into urban life after relocation. Second, age, educational attainment, income, age, and geographic location are significant factors that affect migrants’ decisions in urban integration. Third, the variations in family-level socioeconomic status affect their urban integration to the highest degree, followed by geographical location. Fourth, the degree to which Chinese eco-migrants integrate themselves into urban lives impacts their household income with statistical significance. These findings warrant further efforts targeting the improvement of eco-migrants’ ability for urban integration, especially by offering them more opportunities with social and economic resources.

Despite there exist limitations on the coverage of the data in-use, our research is among the first to explore factors leading to differences in urban integration among eco-immigrants in China. Future research is suggested to focus on a broader geographic range beyond the western part of China. Also, more detailed measurements of social and economic integration among eco-migrants from rural to urban areas are suggested in order to capture a more comprehensive picture of urban integration.

We hope the revision has met your requirement.

 

- I recommend adding some explanations regarding the testing of the research hypotheses. Therefore, the obtained results will be presented in comparison with the results of other studies.

- I recommend adding some theoretical and practical implications

Response: Thank you very much for this very useful comment. We have added theoretical and practical implications of this research in the Discussion section. We wrote that:

Our findings contribute to the theory of social integration by adding empirical evidence regarding social integration eco-immigrant families from Western China. All the demographic, socioeconomic, and geographic variables show special characteristics of our research participants and confirm that social integration is closely affected by domestic social, economic, cultural, and environmental contexts.

And:

Speaking practically, the results also indicates that more policy efforts should be conducted by communities where migrants dwell and local governments to enhance the ability of integration for the disadvantaged due to their gender, education, age, family resources, and geographic location.

We hope our revision is clear and has met your requirements.

 

- it is necessary to be formatted the article in according to the recommendations in the authors' guide for the Sustainability Journal.

Response: Thank you very much for reminding us on this point. We have modified the format of our manuscript according to the guide of the journal. Also, the journal says that “Your references may be in any style, provided that you use the consistent formatting throughout. It is essential to include author(s) name(s), journal or book title, article or chapter title (where required), year of publication, volume and issue (where appropriate) and pagination.” So we stick with our reference format which is clear and easy to read. We hope that the current format is acceptable and has met your requirements.

    Reference format rule: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions

 

That's all!

Response: Dear Reviewer, we thank your great assistance in offering us detailed comments that help us to improve this manuscript for publication purpose. Your comments and suggestions are constructive and insightful. They not only focus on the theoretical perspective but also the empirical part of our study; therefore, through addressing your comments we have learnt much and significantly improved our paper. Thank you again for your help. We hope our manuscript is good for publication after all these efforts. Please kindly let us know if you have more concerns.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I would like to congratulate the authors about this really interesting paper about a topic which is not quite widespread in Europe. They have conducted an interesting and useful survey and important results came to the fore. I would like to propose some minor revisions as mentioned bellow:

1. I think that some more information about ecological migration could help readers to be more familiar to the topic. Literature review or Introduction (it should be extended - 1-11/2 paragraphs) sections are ideal parts for such information to be added. Some additional references may be useful, as well.

2. Authors must pay attention to the formation of the manuscript. I am not quite sure that all the (sub-)titles are written according to the Journal's standards.

3. Section 3.1 may be extended. According to my opinion, additional information about the development of the questionnaire, the sample calculation (for being a representative one) as well as the method used to identify participants should be mentioned.

4. In Section 3 a methodological diagram could be incorporated. In that way, readers could easily understand the research design.

5. Directions concerning future research can be added in the last section. 

Author Response

Review 3

1. I think that some more information about ecological migration could help readers to be more familiar to the topic. Literature review or Introduction (it should be extended - 1-11/2 paragraphs) sections are ideal parts for such information to be added. Some additional references may be useful, as well.

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for offering us this very constructive comment regarding revising the Introduction section. Under the guidance of your comment and some comments of other reviewers, we have revised the entire “Material and methods” section by adding a Literature section and by making revisions on some core statements using more related references. We hope the current revision is clear and appropriate that has met your requirements.

 

2. Authors must pay attention to the formation of the manuscript. I am not quite sure that all the (sub-)titles are written according to the Journal's standards.

Response: We appreciate that you have pointed out this crucial point regarding the formation of this paper. We have revised the manuscript very carefully according to the Journal’s standards. According to the journal, “We do not have strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts must contain the required sections: Author Information, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results, Conclusions, Figures and Tables with Captions, Funding Information, Author Contributions, Conflict of Interest and other Ethics Statements. Check the Journal Instructions for Authors for more details.” Now, we have all the required sections after revisions.

Journal format rule:  https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions

We hope the current formation is clear and appropriate for publication.

 

3. Section 3.1 may be extended. According to my opinion, additional information about the development of the questionnaire, the sample calculation (for being a representative one) as well as the method used to identify participants should be mentioned.

Response: Thank you very much for reminding us on this crucial part. We have added related information accordingly. We wrote:

The data in this study comes from the field survey data in China area in the time period of 2017 and 2018. The data collection team developed the questionnaire based on a comprehensive review on prior literature, which helps to identify and confirm what variables to use in order to address research questions. The team discussed the questionnaire and reached a consensus before official survey. At the beginning, the multi-stage sampling method was applied, and finally, three towns have been selected. On the last stage of sampling, the team applied cluster sampling method to identify immigrants. The team finally distributed a total of 550 questionnaires, among which 436 valid samples were obtained. The response rate is 79.27%.

We hope this revision is clear. Please kindly let us know should you have more questions.

 

4. In Section 3 a methodological diagram could be incorporated. In that way, readers could easily understand the research design.

Response: Thank you for this useful and very valuable comment. However, we think our statements and tables are already too many, and readers can tell our research design from our research justifications and research hypotheses, and also from all the tables in the Results section. We thus think a diagram could be a bit too much. We hope you could understand our decision and it is acceptable for you. We appreciate your great assistance and help in offering us this comment.

 

5. Directions concerning future research can be added in the last section.

Response: Thank you so much for this suggestion. We have added future research in the last section of Discussion and also in the Conclusion section. We hope our revision is appropriate and has made our research more comprehensively. We sincerely thank you for this helpful comment.

Dear Reviewer, we appreciate your comments and suggestions that are very of importance to help us in improving our paper for publication purpose. We have addressed your comments and modified the manuscript in the newly submitted version. We hope that our revisions have met your expectations and the paper now is good to go. Please kindly let us know if you have more suggestions and comments.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Based on the article revised, I feel that the manuscript could be reconsidered for publication after considering all the minor revisions attached below:

1. The introduction section is still too short and fails to show the research gap and novelty of this research. The problem statement is not well organized and is not clear to the reader. There is no methodological explanation or reason for choosing logistic regression. Also, there is a considerable gap between the novelty of research and the discussion of existing studies. Please make it as elaborate as you can. Substantial changes and revisions are required in the introduction section.
2. Please merge the introduction and materials and methods sections (up to 2: theoretical basis and research hypothesis).
3. Please add a research framework/conceptual framework to help understand your research workflow.
4. Please add a study area map. The added map is not good-looking. Please follow a good journal to see how they represent the study area map in a scientific journal.
5. Please revise the title results and analysis. You can simply say "Results"

Author Response

Responses to Reviewers

We deeply appreciate the reviewers for their insightful and inspiring comments/suggestions. We tried our best to revise the manuscript. The responses to the reviewer’ comments are listed point-by-point as follows:

Review 1#

Response: Dear Reviewer, we thank your great help in offering us detailed comments that help us to improve this manuscript. Your comments and suggestions are constructive and insightful. They not only focus on the theoretical perspective but also the empirical part of our study; therefore, through addressing your comments we have learnt much and significantly improved our paper. Thank you again for your help. We hope our manuscript is good for publication after all these efforts. Please kindly let us know if you have more concerns. 

 

1.The introduction section is still too short and fails to show the research gap and novelty of this research. The problem statement is not well organized and is not clear to the reader. There is no methodological explanation or reason for choosing logistic regression. Also, there is a considerable gap between the novelty of research and the discussion of existing studies. Please make it as elaborate as you can. Substantial changes and revisions are required in the introduction section.

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for this constructive comment. We have clarified our contributions to the literature in the Introduction section. As you can see, we wrote:

[…] This is worrisome because of two reasons. First, not much attention has been paid to the west part of China, which is, however, a key focus of China's poverty alleviation policy (Yang & Liu, 2021). Also, Western China is facing environmental challenges that are ignorable and more serious compared to other parts of China. Second, existing related studies may have largely ignored the household-level factors, such as household income and the willing of integration of an eco-immigrant family. However, from a sociological perspective, social and economic integration is not only an individual decision but also a family-level decision. In this research, we thus aim to address this gap in the literature through exploring eco-immigrants’ integration and changes in their livelihoods in Western China. Specifically, we aim to investigate the changes in livelihood capital before and after migration, and to study the matching relationship between the livelihood capital and livelihood model of migrants, in order to find out ways and means of sustainable livelihood for eco-migrant families. In addition, methodologically speaking, the correction for sample bias due to the data has been solved by Heckman Correction method by combining the predicted individual rates, the personal heterogeneity, family heterogeneity and environmental heterogeneity of immigrants into an additional acceptance variable.

We hope the current statement is appropriate.

 2.Please merge the introduction and materials and methods sections (up to 2: theoretical basis and research hypothesis).

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for this valuable comment. According to yours and other reviewers’ suggestions, the theoretical basis is merged with the Literature Review section, and the research hypothesis has now been set as a separate section to make our hypotheses clear to the readers. We hope this revision is appropriate.

 

3.Please add a research framework/conceptual framework to help understand your research workflow.

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for reminding us in adding a framework. Our four research hypotheses concentrate on the contributions of individual demographic characteristics, family socioeconomic characteristics, geographic developmental characteristics to eco-immigrants’ integration willing and decision and their socioeconomic integration outcomes. We thus drew a analytical framework (Figure 1) of our research and added it to the manuscript text according to your constructive suggestion. We hope this figure can better clarify and present our research logics. We hope it has made our research better for publication.

Figure1. The analytical framework of our research.

 

4.Please add a study area map. The added map is not good-looking. Please follow a good journal to see how they represent the study area map in a scientific journal.

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your kind reminders. I have searched for some excellent scientific journals containing the study area map and added a new study area map by using the GIS. Now it is able to present the study area completely though it may not be professional enough. Please see Figure 2 on Page 5.

Figure 2 The map of the study area (The southern part of Qinghai province, China)

 

5.Please revise the title results and analysis. You can simply say "Results"

Response: Dear Reviewer, we have revised the title “Results and Analysis” into“Results.” Thank you very much for reminding us on this point.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, thank you for the improved version of this article. There are some aspects that have not been touched in this article: a first aspect is about the verification of the research hypotheses (is it possible to add a table with the results obtained for each hypothesis?). Moreover, the obtained results can be presented in comparison with those obtained from other studies; a second aspect is about formatting citations. Best wishes!

Author Response

Responses to Reviewers

We deeply appreciate the reviewers for their insightful and inspiring comments/suggestions. We tried our best to revise the manuscript. The responses to the reviewer’ comments are listed point-by-point as follows:

Review 2#

Response: Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your very helpful and constructive comments that can help us to polish and improve our research. We have carefully addressed all your comments and all comments of other reviewers. We hope these revisions have met your requirements and expectations. We sincerely thank your guidance and assistance, as reflected in your detailed comments, and thank your time and warm consideration during the reviewing process .

 

-Dear authors, thank you for the improved version of this article. There are some aspects that have not been touched in this article: a first aspect is about the verification of the research hypotheses (is it possible to add a table with the results obtained for each hypothesis?). Moreover, the obtained results can be presented in comparison with those obtained from other studies;

Response: Dear Reviewer, we appreciate your great assistance in providing us with this suggestion to help us in polishing our paper for publication. We agree with you that adding statements in the Results part to show how our research hypotheses have been addressed and answered. We have clarified our verification of each hypothesis in the manuscript text.

As you can see, we wrote:

[…] Our hypothesis one regarding individual heterogeneity has been confirmed by results shown in Table 1.

[…] These results have confirmed our hypothesis 2 regarding family heterogeneity.

[…] According to these results, therefore, our hypothesis 3 regarding geographic regional heterogeneity has been tested and further confirmed.

[…] Lastly, our hypothesis 4 concerning integration outcomes facing eco-immigrant families in the west part of China has been examined with significant evidence.

We hope the current way of presenting the results is suitable and appropriate.  

 

-A second aspect is about formatting citations. 

Response: Dear Reviewer, we have reformatted the manuscript according to the “Type of the paper” of Sustainability. As the references must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including citations in tables and legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript, the form modification is as follows:

1. Ajzen,; Fishbein, M. Attitude-behavior relations: A theoretical analysis and review of empirical research. Psychological bulletin 1977, 84, 888.
2. Ali, S.M.; Paul, S.K.; Chowdhury, P.; Agarwal, R.; Fathollahi-Fard, A.M.; Jabbour, C.J.C.; Luthra, S.Modelling of supply chain disruption analytics using an integrated approach: an emerging economy example. Expert Systems with Applications 2021, 173, 
3. Berry, J.W.; Sabatier, C. Acculturation, discrimination, and adaptation among second generation immigrant youth in Montrealand Paris. International journal of intercultural relations 2010, 34, 191–207.
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks for the improved version of this article!