Study on Sustainability of Shelter Forest Construction and Protection Behavior of Farmers in the Sandstorm Area of Hexi Corridor, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. The study addresses the important issues of raising environmental awareness and attempts to create and protect shelter forests
2. In the "research area" section, it would be useful to have a map / figure showing the location of the areas described in the study. This is linked to the fact of international publication
3. In the results section, I would suggest creating a figure showing the spatial distribution of the survey results in the area under analysis. This figure would be a kind of spatial synthesis of the analyses presented in the study, as is the case with Figure 2.
Author Response
Dear Reviewers:
We feel great thanks for your professional review work on our article. As you are concerned, there are several problems that need to be addressed. According to your nice suggestions, we have made extensive corrections to our previous draft, the detailed corrections are listed below.
- In the "research area" section, it would be useful to have a map / figure showing the location of the areas described in the study. This is linked to the fact of international publication
Reply: We have added the map (Figure 1) in the study area as you requested, in line 150, to comply with international practice
- In the results section, I would suggest creating a figure showing the spatial distribution of the survey results in the area under analysis. This figure would be a kind of spatial synthesis of the analyses presented in the study, as is the case with Figure 2.
Reply: We have added the regional distribution of the results as you requested (Figure 3) and described the results in line 395 to 406. Since the model is containing three regions together and cannot be illustrated separately similar to Figure 2, we chose to express this result in terms of the distribution of the questionnaire.
Thanks again for your professional comments!
Yours sincerely
Author: Yu-zhong Zhang
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The article studies a valuable topic, worth for publishing in Sustainability. However the full text needs to be seriously restructured and optimized. In many occasions the wording is highly overcomplicated, readers can hardly separate the first thought from another and some sentences are just too technical. Furthermore, its sometimes just too abstract and speculative.
The authors should find someone with high English proficiency to proof-read before re-submittal.
Many sentences that should be in the Materials and methods section are presented in other chapters in the manuscript.
The manuscript suggests a false impression that all readers are familiar with the used complex methods and tools, therefore does not need further explanation: e.g. Cronbach values, or the range of SEM value estimates.
See Table 7 or in line 327: "behavioral responses was 0.337, which was significant and positively correlated at the 1% level". This suggests some "p-chasing" without any explanation whether the estimate indicates a weak or strong association/ explanatory power.
I have not read the manuscript further than line 402, see my specific comments below:
Line 69-70: "forestry is afraid of threatening the land and slow forest efficiency" please make this sentence clear
Line 84: The full chapter (2. Research Area) belongs to the Materials and Methods chapter
Line 96: "there is a degradation of the protection system": How? Explain this more in detail even if citation was provided since this can be useful to understand the background processes!
Line 103: "Minqin must not become the second Lop Nor". Please make clear the "Lop Nor" event since not everyone is up-to-date with this.
Line 117: "75d" means 75 days?
Line 119-121: Please consider to revise this sentence, its too complicated.
Line 134-138: Please consider to revise this sentence, its too complicated.
Line 152-155: Please consider to revise this sentence, its too complicated.
Line 167-168: Format the text of the hypotheses, that help readers to clearly distinguish key hypotheses from the text.
Line 183: Hypotheses H2, H3, H4 H5 were inaccurately defined
You need to define in general which subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, subjective norms in particular influence farmers' choice towards creating and/or protecting the shelter forests!
E.g. H2: You need to obviously define which subjective norms influence positively the behav. responses: increasing social pressure about mitigating climate change effects, / about ecological crisis / catastrophe aftermath ... positively influence farmers behav. response
Figure 1: Place this figure near the beginning of the third chapter, since it is very informative and explains a lot!
The striped bounding box on the left represents that these factors can mixed up (each of them can define subjective norms/attitude or perceived behav. control)?
Define what H1-H5 indicate on the figure (these are the hypotheses of course, but be clear and keep consistency).
Line 228: "significant positive effect"
In function of what? Which factor in particular changed the attitude of farmers toward fallowing?
Chapter 4.1: how many questions were in each questionnaire?
How many possible answers could the farmers choose from?
Questions could be answered on a likert scale? (eg. Very likely - Likely - Neutral - Unlikely - Very unlikely)? These need to be defined here!
Line 255: farmers or household's farmers instead of "households"
Table2: Variable instead of "Item" column name.
Names of column 3 and 4 are too close: only % is enough instead of "Percentage(%)", same in the case "Number" -->"N"
Don't need to report the exchange rate if USD was reported in the table (leave one out).
Line 262: Which software was used for SEM?
Line 266: in our study instead "in the text"
Line 267: "each questionnaire indicator"
Are these the specific answers of farmers?
Line 267:"BA, SN, PBC, BR"
Explain abbreviations here or introduce them at first mention (e.g. line 125)
Line 285-284:
Separate the two clause in the sentence in line 285-286 like: 1) "farmers' willingness to pay ....." ;2) farmers' suggestions. "
Table3 belongs to the results
Table3 BA3 average value 4.285: Even though this question had the highest consensus, the sd is quite large indicating that a minority of responders have different opinions about this. Why was that?
Line 299: "...using SPSS 21.0..."
This belongs to the methods section!
Line 302: "...KMO..."
What does abbreviation mean?
Line 303-304: Majority of the text can be left out only the KMO threshold (KMO>0.6) needs to be reported after the KMO value.
Line 305: "...SEM nested models..."
What was the exact structure that required nested models?
Table 4: One han characher was accidentally left in Table 4 in the 3rd column name.
Explain the abbreviations of the reported metrics in the caption (RMSEA, CFI, etc.)
Table 5: One + character was accidentally left in Table 5 in the 2nd RMSEA value: "0.206+".
One asterisk is enough for indicating significance when significance categories were not specified in detail.
Line 313: "...more restrictive scope of application..."
In what context?
Line 315: "...did not meet the criteria..."
Which criteria? Please explain it more in detail!
Line 327: "...responses were 0.337..."
What does this mean for statistical inference? Is it a weak association? What is the range if these coefficients? 0-1? This should be made clear in the materials and methods section!
Line 330: "...hypothesis 1 is valid."
The word "valid" sounds strange for me here. Do results support H1 or not?
General comments to the conclusions section:
1) Farmers need clear, straightforward messages and various forms of education (workshops, field studies, even personal guidance) to keep the philosophy of shelter forest protection and creation as near to practice as possible.
2) Emphasizing the long-term ecological benefits is not enough: farmers need economic compensation / incentives to ensure the long term protection of the shelter forests, provide a more reliable future to the rural population!
An english version of the questionnaire form can be attached as an appendix to the revised article.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Summary of the article
The study conducted a measurement of farmers' participation in shelter forest construction and protection based on the theory of planned behavior and structural equation modeling in typical wind and sand areas of the Hexi Corridor. The study found that all three dimensions of farmers' perceptions had a significant positive effect on farmers' participation in the construction and protection of shelter forests, with behavioral attitudes having the most significant impact. Farmers had a positive attitude toward compensation, management, and pest control, while the response to adjustment pattern, willingness to pay, and tree species replacement was insignificant. The article recommends enhancing farmers' awareness of forest construction and protection through increasing protection publicity, improving ecological compensation, improving the reward and punishment mechanism, improving the management system, and strengthening farmers' professional knowledge and skills of forest construction and protection to ensure their active participation in forest protection construction and management.
Comments:
I found the research interesting. The following are comments that need to be addressed.
1) In line 12, a comma (,) is needed before this “and sustainable development of agroforestry.”
2) In line 20, the word constructing doesn’t seem to fit this context. Consider replacing it with a “construction.”
3) In line 22 and 23, contains a series of three or more phrases. Consider inserting a comma before and to separate the elements. Consider this throughout the manuscript.
4) In line 27, you have an unnecessary comma after protection. Consider removing the comma.
5) Line 23 to line 28, long sentences and not clear. Please rewrite.
6) Line 36: The ?
7) In line 43, the verb “is” does not agree with the subject. Consider changing the verb form.
8) In line 50, you have an unnecessary comma after the transformation. Consider removing the comma.
9) In line 55, you have an unnecessary comma after the word management. Consider removing the comma. Consider correcting similar issues throughout the manuscript.
10) In line 153, “attitude” may not agree in number with other words in this phrase. Consider replacing it with attitudes.
11) In line 155, the preposition use seems incorrect. Rewrite this sentence like “Positive attitudes farmers are an important ……” to make it clearer.
12) In Line 158, replace towards with toward.
13) Provide the citation for the software/analysis tool you used for data analysis.
14) In Line 410, remove while before the word this study. The conjunction used is incorrect.
15) In Line 437, the sentence “Therefore, we……….. for farmers” is long and has some grammar issues, rewrite it to make it clearer.
16) In line 443, you have an unnecessary comma after the word conservation. Consider removing the comma.
Major comments:
Line 68-80, explain in detail how your research is novel and why it is important?
Line 219 and 235, Are hypotheses 4 and 5 needed? Just a concern.
Line 246, Any specific reason for collecting data in August – September? Add your reasons.
Line 342, can you please explain what factor loading is and why the factor loading data is important or what it signifies in your research?
Overall, a good study with detailed methods and results.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript improved a lot, many terms and definitions are clear now. Some expressions can be refined.
I found some typos in the text, and there are still some points that need to be corrected:
line 157: The explanation of "...abbreviation BR..." is still missing. Update the text with: "The abbreviation BR (Behavioral response) will also be used later..."
line 261-271: The term "punishment mechanisms for shelter forests" sounds strange in hypotheses 2 and 4, since it suggests that farmers are penalized for creating these shelter forests. I understand that this is not the case, and Authors want to express the opposite. Please revise the text of these two hypotheses.
line 346-348: "Cronbach's a" should be 'Crombach's α' (or Crombach's α reliability coefficient); the second part of the sentece ("first named by ....") is not essential.
line 351: 'Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin' instead of "Kaiser_Meyer_Olkin"
line 373: 'were also used' instead of "were used"
Table 4: use 'Crombach's α' and 'Bartlett's test' in the column headers.
Still, one asterisk is enough for indicating significance when significance categories were not specified, or it should be p<0.001
Author Response
请参阅附件
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
