Determinants of Adoption and Dis-Adoption of Integrated Pest Management Practices in the Suppression of Mango Fruit Fly Infestation: Evidence from Embu County, Kenya

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript relates to attitude of farmers toward using or not using new techniques against Flies (or pathogens of plants). The manuscript is written well and presented well and would be important for people having trials or new products to be used in fields. I think it is important for people working in this area. And I suggest the paper to be published as such.

 

Author Response

Reviewer #1

Comment: The manuscript relates to attitude of farmers toward using or not using new ; techniques against Flies (or pathogens of plants). The manuscript is written well and presented well and would be important for people having trials or new products to be used in fields. I think it is important for people working in this area. And I suggest the paper to be published as such    

Response: Thank you for taking time to read our paper and  for the positive feedback 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript title "Adoption and Dis-adoption of Integrated Pest Management Strategy for Suppression of Mango infesting Fruit Flies: Evidence using panel data from Kenya" evaluates the drivers of the adoption and disadoption of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for suppression of mango-infesting fruit flies in Kenya. This study will be of reference significance for local governments to formulate policies on IPM. The promotion of IPM helps to reduce the use of pesticides and plays a positive role in human health and environmental safety.

However, there are several problems in this study:

1. As a whole, especially the method part is too verbose, it is suggested to delete it. 

2. The method is mixed in the results, and the discussion is mixed in the results. 

The structure of the article is a little confused. 

3. The title is adoption and dis-adoption, but the text analyzes adoption, dis-adoption and non-adoption. 

4. The theme of this article is the influencing factors of using / not using IPM method, but the innovation of this article is to classify seasonal / non-seasonal use of IPM and farm partial / full use, but these two parts are simply written, with only a little data, which feels like a forced addition of two parts, which leads to confusion in the logic of the article. 

But without these two parts, there is no innovation in the article. 

5. London comma problem

The specific comments are as follows：

The title mentions "adoption" and "dis-adoption", but the text introduces "adoption", "non-adoption" and "dis-adoption" 

The keyword suggests adding "determinant". 

Line 79: what is the significance of evaluating these two elements? 

Lines 81-83: this sentence is not appropriate here. 

Lines 103-105: this belongs to the method section. 

Lines 105-109: this belongs to the results and discussion section. 

Lines 110-112: extra paragraphs' 

Line 114: do not understand why this part should be written separately and should not be put in the preface? 

Line 265-312: the explanation of variables is too verbose, in fact, these variables are easy to understand variables. 

Line 383: fruit fly IPM. 

Lines 399-404: this belongs to the method section. 

Lines 406-411: results without data support.

Lines 425-427: this belongs to the discussion section.   Lines 447-453: this belongs to the method section.

Lines 458-477: the result is mixed with discussion.

Author Response

My co-authors and i are very grateful for taking your time to read our paper. Thank you for the insightful comments and suggestions that have improved the quality of our manuscript. We have addressed your comments point by point (see attached file) and revised manuscript . We hope you will be satisfied with our responses and have our paper considered for publication. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The lines 14-17: please, the sentence needs to be rephrased

18-19: The impact of farm size and IPM quality should be written in a more comprehensible language and more detailed

30: What do you mean with exchange earnings?

36: you can write like following: the pupa stage of these pests in the soil is to prevent to get positive results from chemical control with insecticides.

43: You can write in capital letters “ Icipe” and it is better if you add the location of this institution.

46: please, describe the IPM more comprehensive

61: decrease in mango yield instead of “ decrease in mango losses”

65: please, explain which kind of technological equipment and tools could be used in IPM

69: mango group membership?

97: do you have any kind of hypothesis? Please, add some similar studies into  this paragraph. You can extend by adding part 2 into introduction part

110-113: You don´t need to show the structure of the manuscript, you can delete the last paragraph

116: do you have another decription instead of ex-post adoption?

165: please give thewhat are the  β+ε

185:  Please give the abbreviations of Fixed Effects Logit Model and a Correlated Random Effects Probit Model

192-200: the descriptions of models belong to introduction section

250: It would be great, if you explain how you collected data and which parameters/variables were measured  instead of definitions

373: table 2 – why you take into consideration the males as gender?

Author Response

Thank you for taking your time to read our paper. We are grateful for your comments and suggestions that have improved the quality of our manuscript. We have addressed your comments point by point (see attached file) and revised manuscript . We hope you will be satisfied with our responses and have our paper considered for publication. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for taking the suggestions into account and making the corrections. Your manuscript looks better, but moderate English changes are required, especially in the section on conclusions.

Author Response

Comment: Thank you for taking the suggestions into account and making the corrections. Your manuscript looks better, but moderate English changes are required, especially in the section on conclusions.

Response: Thank you for the positive comments. We have revised the conclusion section of the paper following your recommendations. See track changes in the entire manuscript, particularly the conclusion section.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf