Environmental–Socioeconomic Factors and Technology Adoption: Empirical Evidence from Small-Scale Salt Farmers in Improving Technical Efficiency in the Madurese Coastal Area, East Java, Indonesia

Comments 1: The article has sufficient data, and the research topic is interesting, but the use of the DEA model lacks innovation.

First Point: The keywords are too many; it would be best to limit them to five. "Adoption of production technology" and "Indonesia" can be removed. For geographical terms, "Madurese coastal area" is more precise.

Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have removed two keywords, “Adoption of production technology" and "Indonesia".  The updated text in the manuscript can be found on line 28 and 29.

Comments 2: Second Point: The formatting of Equation 4 on lines 163-166 is somewhat odd and needs to be reviewed.

Response 2: Thank you for reminding us and assisting in improving our article. We agree. We really apologize for our mistake in equation 4, which is used in the meta-frontier DEA. We have corrected it in our updated manuscript at line 165.

Comments 3: Third Point: On line 145, I believe "efficient" should receive a score of one, not zero.

Response 3: Thank you for your correction. We Agree. We have revised this point. The updated text in the manuscript can be found on line 148.

Comments 4: Fourth Point: There are no graphs in the data results, only tables. Consider adding corresponding graphs.

Response 4: Agreed. We have included two figures (Figures 5 and 6) to visually represent the data from Tables 1 and 5. These figures are supplemented with references that substantiate and clarify our research findings. The updated text in the manuscript can be found on line 248 and 380.

Comments 5: Fifth Point: The results are rather simplistic, consisting mainly of descriptive statistical tables. There is a lack of deeper analysis.

Response 5: Thank you for your suggestions. The results and discussion we have presented are clearly shown in the provided table and two additional figures, you can find this out in line 248 and 380. We also completed them with some new references. This is a valuable lesson for us and we will make improvements in the future.

Comments 1: Manuscript: Environmental-Socioeconomics Factors and Technology Adoption: Empirical Evidence from Small-scale Salt Farmers in Improving Technical Efficiency in Madurese Coastal Area, East Java, Indonesia

Objectives: This research aims to determine the determinants of adoption decisions for salt production technology called geomembrane and estimate the adoption impact on technical efficiency.

Manuscript presents a good contribution to the research area. Introduction, objectives, research question, methods and discussion are clear and in a good form. I also suggest some specific points to improve the manuscript quality.

Introduction

Introduction is well structured and has important information to justify the manuscript. Sometimes there is repetitive information along introduction section – ex. Considering the differences between the salt production in a traditional way and using geomembrane. Please check it.

See line 82 – after a period, there is a word starting with low case. Check if should be a comma instead of a period.

Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have revised it. The updated text in the updated manuscript can be found on line 85.

Comments 2: Materials and Methods

Research data.

I suggest authors to present references to demonstrate the importance of analyzed regions in salt production.

I suggest authors to present what kind of information was used in the survey. And also, to present some references used to define the questions applied in the survey.

I suggest moving research question (line 233) to manuscript introduction.

Response 2: Thank you for your suggestions and correction. We have revised it by adding a paragraph regarding the need for research at this location and several supporting references (can be found in the updated manuscript lines 135-140) and Figure 4.

Then we also added a paragraph regarding the data in the questionnaire that we asked respondents as well as several supporting references (can be found in the updated manuscript lines 144-148).

For last correction, we have changed the sentences. The revised sentences can be found on line 273-275.

Comments 3: Results

I suggest splitting metric variables and dummy variables in table 1, and do not present standard deviations for dummy variables.

Response 3: Thank you for your recommendation. We have revised it. Find it out in the updated manuscript Table 1 line 269.

Additional clarifications

Dear Journal Editor and Reviewer, we have addressed all the reviewers' questions.

Comments 1: The study shows that salt production technology should be promoted more to increase productivity, especially geomembrane adoption, through outreach and dissemination of information, including for landowners involved in the profit-sharing system. This study has certain value, but there are also the following problems.

1. Which type of software to use for analysis in this study?

Response 1: Thank you for reminding us about this. The research uses DEAP version 2.1 software as mentioned in line 178 in calculating technical efficiency values. To analyze factors influencing salt farmer’s decisions, we used SPSS version 25 software and then to assess the impact we used STATA version 15 with a propensity score matching approach (have been mentioned on line 181 and 245).

Comments 2: Please add two columns for maximum and minimum values in Table 1 for data characteristics.

Response 2: Thank you for your recommendation. We have revised it. Find it out in the updated manuscript Table 1 line 269.

Comments 3: Line 234, Please modify Result to Results and Discussion.

Response 3: Thank you very much for you attention and correction. We have corrected it.

Comments 4: In the Section of Result and Discussion, please add more discussion to compare and analyze with previous research results.

Response 4: Thank you for your suggestions. The results of this study have been presented in full and have also been discussed by comparing them with previous studies in this section. We have included two figures (Figures 5 and 6) to visually represent the data from Tables 1 and 5. These figures are supplemented with references that substantiate and clarify our research findings. The updated text in the manuscript can be found on line 248 and 380.

This is a valuable lesson for us and we will make improvements in the future.

5. Additional clarifications

Dear Journal Editor and Reviewer, we have addressed all the reviewers' questions.