How Can China Resolve the NIMBY Dilemma in a Network Society? Government and Society-Negotiated Decisions Based on Evolutionary Game Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The review comments are listed as follows.

1. It had better for the authors to ask a professional English editor to revise the manuscript.
2. What are the differences between “society” and “network society”? The authors should define the network society clearly in the manuscript. Also, the authors should explain the reasons why the network society, instead of the society, can resolve the NIMBY dilemma in China.
3. The authors should have more literature reviews related to the network society.
4. The referenced punctuation should be " ", instead of ‘ ‘.
5. The authors should have more detailed literature discussions related to the evolutionary game.
6. It had better for the author to have a table to explain the definitions of all symbols used in Section 3. It would be easy for readers to understand the proposed evolutionary game model with the table.
7. The authors should simplify the content of Section 3. The dynamic evolutionary process of four sub-situations can be reduced.
8. The authors should assign the titles to the X-axis and the Y-axis in Figure 1 ~ Figure 11.
9. The authors only used a description way to explain the 3 case studies in Section 4; however, in those 3 case studies, the authors should use their proposed evolutionary game model with some real data to demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of the proposed model.
10. The authors should have some supplemental explanations on how to obtain the conclusions in Subsection 5.1 ~ 5.4.
11. The authors should summarize the study conclusions in the conclusion Section; instead of exploring study conclusions. It had better for the authors to arrange Subsection 5.1 ~ 5.4 to Section 5, named “Discussion”. Then, the authors should summarize the study conclusions in Section 6.
12. The “necessary” in line 683 should be “is necessary” or “needs”.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

[Abstract] I think you should explain what case 1 and situation 2 refer to right here, because by reading the abstract, the readers should be fully informed in brief without any ambiguities.

[Examples] Can you identify a NIMBY facility that squarely fits into case (1)?

[58] What is interest compensation?

[81] Negotiate with whom? Which operation management mode do you refer to?

[82] What is benefit sharing method? Any literature on this to back up your claim?

[94] You should mention information asymmetry in addition to incompleteness.

[107] Do you mean gaming relationship instead of game relationship here?

[126] “the” central and local governments

[130] I think it merits further mentioning of what “Hobbesian jungle” means here.

[145] What are the differences between group interests and collective self-interest in line 138?

[165] Why must the government lead it? I find historical and strategic uncertainty unwarranted. Besides, as you mentioned before, the different levels of government (agencies) have disperse interests. So, can you specify which level and branch of the government should take the lead?

 [179] Think-tank should be one word of hyphenated.

[185] What is demonstration meeting? Are people taking to the streets for demonstration?

[203] Why your font for y(t) is narrowed? Please fix all notations using consistent fonts.

[218] Can you clarify what is “punished” here? Are the dissidents put to jail?

[224] Please add a space after the Greek word omega and before the opening parenthesis.

[229] I think you should normalize rather than record it to zero, because players can have positive outside option value, but it does not lose generality to normalize it to zero.

[497] Do you mean public-use vehicles rather than the so-called “social vehicles” here?

[552] I would be hesitant to call them “illegal personnel”. Please paraphrase it.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Summary 

This paper proposes an evolutionary game model of negotiated decisions based on the bounded rationality hypothesis, and simulates the process and results of the evolution of the subject’s strategy, in which the authors consider the government and society as the main bodies of the game. The paper concludes that the stable state of system evolution depends on the initial state of the dual populations and the comparative relationship between the changes in revenue and cost. Finally, the authors point optimisation strategies for decision making regarding NIMBY facilities.

General comments

NIMBY dilemma is an important research part. This paper considers the government and society as the main bodies of the game, builds an evolutionary game model of negotiated decisions based on the bounded rationality hypothesis, and simulates the process and results of the evolution of the subject’s strategy. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are relevant. In addition, the network society in government and society-negotiated decisions have received more attention from practitioners and academics than ever before. The authors' diversity of thinking about the problem is fully demonstrated, showing their mastery of the field. Therefore, from this perspective, the paper certainly deserves to be published in Sustainability. Finally, some other specific and editorial comments for this paper are listed below.

Specific and editorial comments

1. 1. The references of NIMBY dilemma are poor to explain the motivation of this paper in Introduction.
2. 2. How to consider the information of a network society in the proposed evolutionary game model of negotiation and decision making between government and society.
3. 3. Please further explain why replicator dynamics mechanism is used to analyse the dynamic evolutionary path of subject behaviour.
4. 4. Figure 1 is composed of three graphs. Please explain the relationship between the three sub-graphs. Similar problems also exist in Figures 2-11.  
5. Please check whether the first letter of “system I” in line 266 need be uppercase.
6. 6. Section 3.3 discusses in depth two types of situations. In Situation I,but in subsituation 2,this inequality is converse. Please explain the relationship between Situation 1 and subsituation 2.  

Recommendation

The ideas in the paper merit publication in Sustainability, but the authors should revise the manuscript to address the general and specific issues mentioned above.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

It had better for the authors to arrange the response of point 9 in the last paragrahp of Section 4. 

Author Response

The response of point 9 has been arranged in the first and the last paragrahp of subsection 4.3.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have cleared all of my concerns. So I think this paper can be accepted now.

Author Response

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.