Adoption of Renewable Energy Technology on Farms for Sustainable and Efficient Production: Exploring the Role of Entrepreneurial Orientation, Farmer Perception and Government Policies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Adopting renewable energy sources by farmers is an important issue, considering climate change the energy prieces volatility. The factors that affect the level of adoption should be identified, and this research brings us closer to the answer. In general, the paper is interesting logical and clear in most of the paragraphs.

It would be good to add a short literature review about adoption of innovations (in general and among farmers). It could include paragraph now written in lines 247-263. The questionnaire design is well-described. In this case, logistic regression was a good choice. There are some minor issues that can be improved – they are written below.

Introduction

·         My impression is that sometimes the text is a bit blurred and too general. In my opinion it would be good to add one or two examples (for example in lines 85-86 and 90-91).

 

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Study area and sampling techniques

·         Lines 140-141. “The province's counties were first classified based on their topography, which included plains, mountains, and hills. The two counties that would form each group were chosen in the second stage.”. I am not sure if I understand well the method. Were two counties from each group selected, or just two counties? On what basis? Why did you need to classify the counties?

·         Lines 141-142.  “At the third step, all the towns were also grouped based on their topography, and later, 4 towns were randomly selected.” If his was just pure random sampling, why was the grouping of towns needed?

·         Line 144. “four villages from each town were selected”. I do not understand. Towns have districts, and not villages. Please, explain it.

2.2. Questionnaire design

·         Line 157. What do you mean by “farm income share” in this sentence? Is it farm income share in total household income, as written in table 1?

·         Please, write somewhere in the text that the variables are described in Table 1.

2.3.3. Institutional characteristics

·         What do you mean by measuring the “government support”. Do you mean its importance to the farmer or the availability? From the remaining part of the text, I understand that this is government financial support, but I am not sure if it means the sums of money received or some other variable. Please, write it clearly.

2.3.4. Perception of renewable energy technology

·         How did you measure the “household knowledge of environmental benefits”? Was it farmers’ self-evaluation of his/her knowledge, or were the farmers’ answers compared with some expert knowledge? In table 1 the questions suggest that it was rather perception than knowledge.

Table 1.

·         There is a misprint in word ”farming”

·         Is education represented only by farming experience? No formal education?

 

 

·         Lines 268-271. “Solar energy is a renewable energy technology with environmental benefits over non-renewable energy sources [16, 17]. The adoption of solar energy technology at farms decreases greenhouse gas emissions from the fields.”. I think that these sentences do no fit here. Here the method is described, and not the environmental importance of the dependent factor.

2.4. Principal component analysis (PCA)

·         To be honest, I do not understand why you have decided to use the PCA. What is the purpose of using this method in your study? Was it to confirm that the questions used for describing entrepreneurship form certain groups?

 

2.5. Empirical analyses

2.5.1. Exploring the factors affecting renewable energy technology adoption

·         Have you checked the correlation between explanatory variables?

2.5.2. Measuring technical efficiency

·         Please, explain why you have decided to look for minimising inputs for given outputs. Intuitively, in a short term a farmer has a fixed amount of land and machinery, and is trying to maximise the output. Why have you assumed that the income is fixed, and the inputs are easier to manipulate? Why is land not included?

2.5.3. Comparing Farm Technical efficiency

·         This description is not very clear – please, try to make it easier to follow.

·         How many farmers were finally in the control group, after applying the propensity score matching procedure? Were all the farmers from the “treated” group included, or did some of them have to be excluded from the analysis?

·         Did you check the correlation between variables that were compared?

3. Results and Discussion  

·         Where do your results refer to the use of propensity score matching technique?

3.1. Descriptive summary

·         Lines 353-359. “Statistics indicate that 40% of China's population still 353 lives in rural parts of the country [83]. In developing countries, an adequate agricultural labor force is essential for adopting new technologies and performing farm activities efficiently. Almost one-quarter of the total Chinese population is directly or indirectly involved in agriculture for their livelihoods [84].”  […] “Different farming organizations work as catalysts for the diffusion of new farming technologies on farms.“ These sentences do not fit here, as they do not describe the sample.

3.2. Sources of farmer information about renewable energy technology

·         Line 396. “It was utilized by more than one of the farmers” There has to be a misprint.

·         Figure 2. I suggest presenting the data from the most popular to the least popular answer.

3.3. Adoption status of renewable energy technology

·         Can you name few examples of the most popular renewable energy sources?

3.4. Factors affecting adoption of renewable energy technology at farm level

·         Please, explain in few words how few questions concerning risk-taking were transformed into one variable used in logistic regression.

·         Please, write it clearly that the questions concerning risk taking concerned only renewable energy adoption and use.

 

3.4.2. Farm characteristics

·         Lines 443-444. “This result is contradictory to that reported by Uematsu and Mishra [91], who reported a negative association between formal education and technology adoption.” This sentence is in a wrong section, or there is a mistake, as this section concerns farm size.

4. Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

·         Line 535. Why do you think that “Renewable energy solutions could help improve […] gender equality”?

Author Response

I would like to thank you for taking out time from your busy schedule to comment on our manuscript. We have tried to include your every comment and suggestion in the revised manuscript. We hope that we successfully addressed your concerns. We also hope it will surely improve the quality of our research work.

Please look at the attached file for our responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

There is good work done in the overall paper.

However, it seems a bit too simple the theoretical framework.

The whole rationale is based on the assumption of the following statement as an absolute truth: 

Renewable energy solutions could help improve energy and food security, as well as job creation, gender equality, and the ability to deal with and adapt to climate change.

It could be more meaningful to explain a bit more about those preassumptions. 

There is an important amount of literature which questions all those mentioned benefits assigned to renewable energies. Giving aside climate change mitigation and concerning, job creation and gender equality, it is more a wish than a fact that renewable energies can improve these two aspects.

You could consider the following paper, among others:

https://www.mdpi.com/1253906

In the above paper, you can find a general overview of the benefits of renewable energies for rural development.

I suggest reducing some rhetorical and repetitive sentences and using that saved space, including some references to the above-mentioned debate on renewable energies and rural development.  

 

 

 

Author Response

I would like to thank you for taking out time from your busy schedule to comment on our manuscript. We have tried to include your every comment and suggestion in the revised manuscript. We hope that we successfully addressed your concerns. We also hope it will surely improve the quality of our research work.

Please look at the attached file for our responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper presents the predictors influencing the integration of RES in farms, particularly 801 farms were studied.  As a conclusion one fourth of the total farmers adopted RES. It also suggests that government plays a vital role in adoption of RES. I recommend publishing it after fine adjustment (maybe use acronim for renewable energy (RE), renewable energy sources (RES), etc.).

Author Response

I would like to thank you for taking out time from your busy schedule to comment on our manuscript. We have tried to include your every comment and suggestion in the revised manuscript. We hope that we successfully addressed your concerns. We also hope it will surely improve the quality of our research work.

Please look at the attached file for our responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf