A Framework to Design and Evaluate Green Contract Mechanisms for Forestry Supply Chains

The paper is written in a very professional way. Some minor suggestions are listed below:

Thank you!

1. More recent literature need to be added in section 2 and references section.

After considering your comment, we have included two more references in the paper, namely, a recent paper by Benez-Secanho et al. (2022), Martin et al. (2022) and Wu et al. (2023) (see pp. 3, lines 122-132). New articles on tax on financial incentives in green policies have been added (references 24-27).

2. Inspiration behind this article needs to be presented clearly.

Following your comment, we further develop the motivations in the Introduction (see pp. 2, lines 55-61) and we add a table to clearly position our paper with concern to the others (see pp. 4, lines 161-162).

3. In line number 306, ,  should be ,  respectively.

Corrected! Thank you!

4. In line number 312, the authors have mentioned v as the adjustment parameter. The authors are suggested to give some detail about this parameter, its role and how its value is chosen.

In the Conclusion section, we add an explanation of why the value of v is chosen equal to 0.5 explained by referring to a famous work from the literature, which is reference 32 (see pp. 12-13, lines 435 -459).

5. Later, in line number 330-331, the authors have taken the value of v to be 0.5. What would be the change if we choose some other value for this parameter? Please elaborate.

We agree that parameters, including v, have a significant impact on the results. Therefore, this issue is discussed in the Conclusion section. A framework outlined in Figure 2 is recommended to make more general inferences (see pp. 12, the first paragraph).

How are existing results considered in Problem Definition? Before defining the problem, motivations and contributions should be added. 

Following your comment, we further develop the motivations in the Introduction (see pp. 2, lines 55-61).

Results should be deeply explained. 

New descriptions have been added (see pp. 10, lines 365-374).

More case studies should be defined. 

While we acknowledge the importance of including additional case studies to further validate the proposed framework's effectiveness, we must clarify that we do not have access to data for other case studies. However, we have highlighted this limitation in our paper's limitations section, where we discuss potential avenues for future research, including the incorporation of additional case studies. We hope that our proposed framework and the experimental results presented in our study will serve as a useful starting point for future research in this area (see pp.11, the last three paragraphs, pp. 12, the first paragraph)

Overall paper is obvious; the author needs to add more novel results.

Following your comment, we add a table to clearly position our paper with concern to the others (see pp. 4, lines 161-162).

The paper proposes a framework based on multi-attribute decision-making for designing green contract mechanisms for the forestry supply chain. They considered the interests of the parties, such as the profit of the applicant as well as the green goals of the forest owner. They used multi-attribute decision-making techniques like weighted sum, normalized weighted sum, TOPSIS, and VIKOR to evaluate various scenarios.

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Experimental Results section 4. Experimental Results needs to be better explained, there is no adequate discussion of the results presented in Tables 1-4.

New descriptions have been added (see pp. 10, lines 365-374).

The information presented in Tables 1-4 (in the revised version Table 2-5) should be better explained, and how it contrasts with similar results from previous work.

New descriptions have been added (see pp. 10, lines 365-374).

The quality of Figure 1 is not good, it should be improved to make it publishable in a prestigious journal.

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We appreciate your concern regarding the quality of Figure 1. We improved the quality of Figure 1. Also, we would like to inform you that we have sent the original Excel file used to create the figure to the journal to ensure that the highest quality version is used for publication. It contains the newly added Figure 2, too.

In addition, it is suggested to discuss in more detail the applications of this proposed framework for the design and evaluation of green contracting mechanisms for Forestry Supply Chain.

New descriptions have been added (see pp. 10, lines 369-374).

Layout and format
Authors have done a good job with the layout and format.

Thank you!

Language
The article is very well written.

Thank you!

Title
It does clearly describe the article.

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Abstract
It does clearly reflect the content of the article.

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Introduction
It does describe what the authors hoped to achieve accurately, and clearly state the problem being investigated. Normally, the introduction should summarize relevant research to provide context, and explain what other authors' findings, if any, are being challenged or extended.

Thank you! We further develop the motivations in the Introduction (see pp. 4, lines 161-162).

Literature review

The authors need to add more articles to this section to find a better way to synthesize prior knowledge and turn it into a story to support/inform their own research and clearly indicate what makes theirs different from others.

After considering your comment, we have included two more references in the paper, namely, a recent paper by Benez-Secanho et al.(2022), Martin et al. (2022) and Wu et al. (2023) (see pp. 3, lines 122-132). Also, following your comment, we add a table to clearly position our paper with concern to the others (see pp. 4, lines 161-162)

 Method and data
The authors do explain the data the models used carefully and precisely.  

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Results
The results are presented well. The authors do present the appropriate analyses that were conducted.

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Conclusion/Discussion
The claims made in this section do seem reasonable. The authors indicate how the results relate to expectations and to earlier research. The article does support previous theories. The conclusion does explain how the research has moved the body of scientific knowledge forward, including limitations.

Thank you!