The Effect of Uncertainty of Risks on Farmers’ Contractual Choice Behavior for Agricultural Productive Services: An Empirical Analysis from the Black Soil in Northeast China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This research is too similar to another paper, Intentions of Farmers to Renew Productive Agricultural Service Contracts Using the Theory of Planned Behavior: An Empirical Study in Northeastern China, and the research structure is almost the same. It is suspected of violating academic ethics.

Please change reviewers to review this article.

Author Response

Thank you for giving us a chance to improve the manuscript, entitled “The Effect of Uncertainty of Risks on Farmers' Contractual Choice Behavior for Agricultural Productive Services: An Empirical Analysis from the Black Soil in Northeast China” (ID: agronomy-1989208). We appreciate the constructive comments from anonymous reviewers, which are very helpful for us revising and improving our paper. We have studied the comments carefully and have made necessary explanation accordingly.

 

Point: This research is too similar to another paper, Intentions of Farmers to Renew Productive Agricultural Service Contracts Using the Theory of Planned Behavior: An Empirical Study in Northeastern China, and the research structure is almost the same. It is suspected of violating academic ethics.

Response: We sincerely thank you for your precious comments. Although this article is similar in structure to our previous paper "Intentions of Farmers to Renew Productive Agricultural Service Contracts Using the Theory of Planned Behavior: An Empirical Study in Northeastern China", there are distinct differences in the design of the content and the construction of the theoretical framework. We will compare the differences between the two articles in detail from seven aspects: research perspective, main problem, concern, theoretical basis, logical framework, research content and main findings, as shown in the table below. Thanks!

Table. Thesis discrepancy statement.

Items	Intentions of Farmers to Renew Productive Agricultural Service Contracts Using the Theory of Planned Behavior: An Empirical Study in Northeastern China.	The Effect of Uncertainty of Risks on Farmers' Contractual Choice Behavior for Agricultural Productive Services: An Empirical Analysis from the Black Soil in Northeast China.
Research Perspectives	This study focuses on farmers' contract renewal behavior after purchasing productive agricultural services. That is, farmers, as limited rational actors, continue to make decisions on whether to continue the cooperative relationship with the service provider after the service purchase. Through the analysis of the formation process of this psychological mechanism, the stable cooperative relationship between farmers and business is further promoted as a way to stimulate the high-quality development of both parties.	The perspective of this study focuses on the normality of productive agricultural service transactions under risk intervention. By investigating mechanical substitution services in the agricultural production chain, we further clarify the important factors influencing the type of contracts (informal or formal) that farmers conclude. In this way, we promote the regularity of the trading market and better safeguard farmers' legal rights.
The main target problem	How do farmers make decisions about renewing their contracts after receiving productive agricultural services? How do you ensure a stable relationship between the two parties of interest? What are the factors and mechanisms at play that influence the parties to maintain cooperation?	What are the main factors that influence the type of covenants farmers enter into in their transactions? How does the uncertainty of risk in the transaction process affect farmers' choice of contract type? How can risks be minimized? What are the mechanisms of their influence?
Points of interest in the article	Farmers' willingness to continue services (stability of cooperation)	The act of signing normative contracts by farmers (normative nature of cooperation)
Theoretical basis	Theory of planned behavior (psychological perspective)	Transaction cost theory (economic perspective)
Logical Framework	Two phases of "contract-renewal"	Two phases of "service purchase - contract type selection
Research Content	This study systematically analyzes farmers' decision-making process for renewing their subscriptions to productive agricultural services, identifies the main factors that influence farmers' willingness to generate this cooperative relationship, and reveals the mechanisms of influence between variables at different levels.	This study highlights the impact of risk uncertainty on farmers' contract type choice and focuses on the moderating role played by individual trust levels. The decision-making process of farmers in concluding contracts is systematically analyzed, the main factors influencing the normativity of contracts are identified, and the mechanisms of action among the variables are revealed.
Main findings	Perceived behavioral control is the main motivation for farmers to renew their contracts, and this psychological factor has both a "stimulus" and a "constraint" logic. In addition, behavioral attitudes and service satisfaction are effective systems that influence farmers' decisions to renew their contracts for productive agricultural services.	Uncertainty of risk is the main factor that influences farmers' choice of contract type. Transaction risk, business risk and opportunity risk have an "inducing" effect on the choice of contract specification and are effective systems for influencing farmers' choice of formal contracts. In addition, the level of personal trust has a positive moderating effect on the choice behavior of contract type.

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper overall is well argumented but needs some clarifications and improved form.In general it requires shorter paragraphs and sentences to better point out the objectives and important outcomes.
Please find below some clarifications required:

Line 94 CCB is mentioned for the first time and as abbreviation. Need to state the full description beforehand

Line 100 It is stated that "two major aspects" though four are mentioned. Is this a typo?

Line 193 Black Earth region. It needs to use a uniform name for the area. In other lines it is described as "black soil". Please clarify

Line 273 "RU has a positive and positive effect on farmers' CCB" . Is there duplication or typo for "positive"?

Line 513 The sentence is not clear and needs rephrasing.

Line 681 Please rephrase "extant" with existent

Lines 776-777 "Third" is duplicated. Please clarify

Author Response

Thank you for giving us a chance to improve the manuscript, entitled “The Effect of Uncertainty of Risks on Farmers' Contractual Choice Behavior for Agricultural Productive Services: An Empirical Analysis from the Black Soil in Northeast China” (ID: agronomy-1989208). We appreciate the constructive comments from anonymous reviewers, which are very helpful for us revising and improving our paper. We have studied the comments carefully and have made necessary corrections accordingly. We believe the manuscript has significantly improved.

 

To better show what has been changed, we enclose the manuscript in "Track Changes" mode. In addition, we summarize the point-by-point response as below. Note that the Lines numbers mentioned in the following responses are according to the revised manuscript. And our responses are marked in Blue.

 

Detailed responses to the reviewer’s comments:

 

 

Point 1: Line 94 CCB is mentioned for the first time and as abbreviation. Need to state the full description beforehand.

Response 1: Good point. We have revised this sentence exactly as you put（line94）.

Point 2: Line 100 It is stated that "two major aspects" though four are mentioned. Is this a typo?

Response 2: We appreciate this comment. We have revised this sentence accordingly (line99-103).

 “Specifically, it can be divided into two aspects: on the one hand, the three main factors affecting farmers' CCB, namely farmers' preference characteristics [25,26], personal characteristics [27] and family characteristics [28,29]; and on the other hand, the subsequent effects of CCB, including farmers' economic efficiency and production efficiency [30-32].”

Point 3: Line 193 Black Earth region. It needs to use a uniform name for the area. In other lines it is described as "black soil". Please clarify.

Response 3: Thanks for the suggestion. We have modified the text accordingly (line 195-196).

 

Point 4: Line 273 "RU has a positive and positive effect on farmers' CCB". Is there duplication or typo for "positive"?

Response 4: Thanks for this suggestion. We revised this sentence in Line 276.

Point 5: Line 513 The sentence is not clear and needs rephrasing.

Response 5: We appreciate this comment. We have rewritten the sentence between Lines 513and 515:

 “The embedding of APS in the agro-industrial chain tends to increase farmers' income through two paths: technological innovation and labor substitution, respectively.”

Point 6: Line 681 Please rephrase "extant" with existent.

Response 6: Done.

Point 7: Lines 776-777 "Third" is duplicated. Please clarify.

Response 7: Done.

 

Special thanks to you for your good comments. We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript. It is hoped that the correction will meet with approval.

Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper investigated the causality test of uncertainty of risks on types of contractual choice behavior for agricultural services by considering the selection bias. It provides some insights to policy makers to enhance stabilization of farmers’ welfare. Overall, I thought the paper is of interest to readers of Agronomy. However, I have a concern about their econometric analysis. Because the difficulty of measuring the level of trust, authors should provide more robustness checks. For example, instead of five-dimensional Likert scale, authors can use a simple dummy variable (1=trust is confirmed, others are 0) to provide re-estimate their test models. If authors obtain relatively same results, the results are more reliable.

Author Response

Thank you for giving us a chance to improve the manuscript, entitled “The Effect of Uncertainty of Risks on Farmers' Contractual Choice Behavior for Agricultural Productive Services: An Empirical Analysis from the Black Soil in Northeast China” (ID: agronomy-1989208). We appreciate the constructive comments from anonymous reviewers, which are very helpful for us revising and improving our paper. We have studied the comments carefully and have made necessary corrections accordingly. We believe the manuscript has significantly improved.

 

To better show what has been changed, we enclose the manuscript in "Track Changes" mode. In addition, we summarize the point-by-point response as below. Note that the Lines numbers mentioned in the following responses are according to the revised manuscript. And our responses are marked in Blue.

 

Detailed responses to the reviewer’s comments:

 

 

Point: Because the difficulty of measuring the level of trust, authors should provide more robustness checks. For example, instead of five-dimensional Likert scale, authors can use a simple dummy variable (1 = trust is confirmed, others are 0) to provide re-estimate their test models. If authors obtain relatively same results, the results are more reliable.

Response: We sincerely thank you for this suggestion. It's an excellent point! To further test the robustness of the moderating effect of trust levels, we used a 0-1 dummy variable measure as a proxy for the five-dimensional scale. After rerunning the regression analysis, the results obtained were extremely similar and the robustness of the findings was verified. We have added to Table 6 in the manuscript by adding the results of the robustness regression analysis for Model 3 and Model 4 to the original table. Also, the sentence "Table 6 shows the estimation results of the Heckman second-stage regression model within the CCB stage for the grouping case." in lines 657-658 of the manuscript has been modified accordingly, and the replaced sentence is as follows (line639-641).

“Table 6 shows the estimation results and robustness tests of the Heckman second-stage regression model in the grouping case within the contract selection phase.”

Meanwhile, we have amended the elaboration of the analysis section accordingly based on the newly added robustness results, we have inserted the following sentence (line667-672).

“To further test the robustness of the measurement results, this study replaced the measure of trust level with a dummy variable to replace the five-dimensional scale to develop the analysis (0 = no trust; 1 = trust). Model 3 and Model 4 in Table 6 represent the results of the analysis for the no-trust group and the trust level group, respectively, and are similar to the analysis of Model 1 and Model 2, with robust regression results.”

 

Thanks for your constructive comments—which helps us a lot to improve the manuscript. We tried our best to address your concerns.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author has clearly explained the differences between the two articles.