Model of Demand of Human Settlement Environment for Rural Houses in North China: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Line 54 - I recommend writing prices in Euros or dollars

Line 64 - PM.2.5. explain what the mark means as it appears first in the text. It is mainly a quick understanding of the reader about what it is all about.

Lines 134 - 140 - the use of devices would be better displayed in the table. It would definitely be clearer. I would also add deviations of measuring devices.

Table 5 - Column marked T - not mentioned in the text what it expresses. Briefly, an explanation is needed in the text before the table.

Figure 4 - I recommend using a gap between the images

It would be appropriate to write prices in euros or dollars

Line 316 - it's really 6 ° C. This is a very low temperature. Such an environment will certainly affect the psyche of users.

 

Line and other lines where there is talk of a temperature difference, it is necessary to use units in Kelvin! K,

It would be appropriate to describe the constructions in one chapter,. Which form the cover of the heating space. Walls, roofs, windows, glazing, floors.

 

Line 531 - Chapter is called Discussion. This is also what Chapter 4 is called correct at the end.

Author Response

Reviewer #1

1. Line 54 - I recommend writing prices in Euros or dollars

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. All prices have been described in US dollars.

 

2. Line 64 - PM.2.5. explain what the mark means as it appears first in the text. It is mainly a quick understanding of the reader about what it is all about.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. The position of PM2.5 and PM10 appearing for the first time in this paper has been explained in the form of suffix brackets.

 

3. Lines 134 - 140 - the use of devices would be better displayed in the table. It would definitely be clearer. I would also add deviations of measuring devices.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. The paragraph description of the measured equipment has been deleted in the paper, changed to the expression in the form of charts, and the test accuracy description of the equipment has been added.

 

4. Table 5 - Column marked T - not mentioned in the text what it expresses. Briefly, an explanation is needed in the text before the table.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. Since a new table is added before table 5, table 5 becomes table 6. According to the comment, add the relevant statement of t-test in the text paragraph in front of table 6.

 

5. Figure 4 - I recommend using a gap between the images

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. The image has been modified according to the recommendations.

 

6. It would be appropriate to write prices in euros or dollars

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. All prices have been described in US dollars.

 

7. Line 316 - it's really 6°C. This is a very low temperature. Such an environment will certainly affect the psyche of users. Line and other lines where there is talk of a temperature difference, it is necessary to use units in Kelvin! K, It would be appropriate to describe the constructions in one chapter,. Which form the cover of the heating space. Walls, roofs, windows, glazing, floors.

Response: Accepted.

• I understand your concern. In fact, because the fuel and other substances of farmers are usually placed outdoors, they need to come in and out frequently for cooking and other activities. However, when the outdoor temperature is very low, the average indoor temperature is also relatively low due to the influence of cold air infiltration. However, most farmers are used to it and will not have psychological problems.
• The unit of temperature difference has been changed to Kelvin K.

③ A paragraph is added in section 2.1 of this paper for a brief introduction of the enclosure structure and materials of rural houses in northeast and North China, such as walls, roofs, windows, glass and floors.

 

8. Line 531 - Chapter is called Discussion. This is also what Chapter 4 is called correct at the end.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for the reviewer's mention, which has been modified into "conclusions".

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1) Is this model applicable to all areas and countries, if not add that particular localisation component in the title please

2) How the weightage for the components are decided, is it internationalised or localised? Please add this component also.

3) in table 8 Demand index why bathroom is given more weightage is not clear to me, are people living in living room or bathroom maximum? That too farmhouses mostly are activity oriented and people venture out and stay home in little time

4) Had authors added the amount of time people live inside the home as a component or thought of it atleast?

5) What is the use of fig 7 and in particular one surface temperature image is given which is tough to interpret, please elaborate.

6) Line 469: House A is warmer than B what is the use of it, it varies because of many parameters.

7) Line 475 if the window is sealed with plastic film will it act as a reducing agent of environment? New to me, please explain.

8) Fig 9 explanation needed.

9) Section 4 seems to be more explanatory than interpretable, kindly add few more lines to explain what a new reader should understand from this.

10) Line 515-6 how authors arrive to this conclusion and also why this is needed for this work, this is a model development paper.

11) I am not seeing any final model or framework, please be specific, title says " model", is fig 6 that model?

 

Author Response

Reviewer #2

1. Is this model applicable to all areas and countries, if not add that particular localisation component in the title please.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. This model is currently only applicable to rural areas in northern China, which has been described in the title.

 

2. How the weightage for the components are decided, is it internationalised or localised? Please add this component also.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. In this paper, the process of determining factor weight coefficient is briefly introduced. This paper uses smartPLS 3.0 software to estimate the parameters of the demand description model to get the weight values of each parameter. In addition, the demand description model proposed in this paper is based on the survey data of rural areas in northern China, so it has typical local characteristics.

 

3. in table 8 Demand index why bathroom is given more weightage is not clear to me, are people living in living room or bathroom maximum? That too farmhouses mostly are activity oriented and people venture out and stay home in little time.Had authors added the amount of time people live inside the home as a component or thought of it atleast?

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. In some rural areas in northern China, due to the cold weather and inconvenient water use, there are often no convenient bathing facilities. Therefore, the demand weight of the bathroom is large, which also reflects the strong desire of farmers to improve the bathing conditions, which is not directly related to the length of stay..

 

4. What is the use of fig 7 and in particular one surface temperature image is given which is tough to interpret, please elaborate.

Response: Accepted.

Thank you for your question. Kang is a traditional heating method in rural areas of northern China. Flue gas from biomass fuel (such as straw and branches) is burned into the kang main body, and the surface temperature of the kang is heated. The body of kang is usually built of brick and clay, and its working principle heating is shown in the figure below. Figure 7 is used to tell readers that even if the same way of heating is used, a lot of folk wisdom may make the indoor environment is very different. The special mention of the temperature difference on the surface of kang is intended to explain that too large a temperature difference will bring thermal discomfort and safety risks.

In addition, the infrared photos of the surface temperature distribution of the two kangs in Fig.7 were modified to unify the scale range of the temperature scale，and more detailed description are given at the bottom of each picture for readers to understand.

 

5. Line 469: House A is warmer than B what is the use of it, it varies because of many parameters.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. The purpose of this passage is to tell the reader that for low-income families, there are many easy and low-cost ways to improve their living environment in real life.

 

6. Line 475 if the window is sealed with plastic film will it act as a reducing agent of environment? New to me, please explain.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. Adding plastic sheeting to seal windows is intended to increase the air tightness of the house and reduce heat loss from cold air infiltration.

 

7. Fig 9 explanation needed.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. The text description before Figure 9 has been rewritten to make it easier to understand, The details are as follows:

Figure 9 (a) shows the most common form of rural courtyard in North China. There are generally no Windows on the wall facing the street or smaller Windows on the high ground, which is said to be for safety and local customs. Figure 9 (b) is developed from Figure 9 (a). A roof with open windows is added above the courtyard to prevent sand and keep warm in winter, and the upper windows are opened in summer to realize natural ventilation. However, the problem of overheating in summer and poor indoor air quality in winter due to poor ventilation is still very serious. The measured survey results show that, even in summer, the average indoor CO₂ concentration of the two forms in Figure 9 (a) and Figure 9 (b) is still as high as about 1800ppm. As shown in Figure 9 (c), the farm house is set in the south between the courtyard and the sun, so the warmth effect is better in winter, but the problem of lack of ventilation path still exists.

8. Section 4 seems to be more explanatory than interpretable, kindly add few more lines to explain what a new reader should understand from this.

Response: Accepted.

Thank you for your comment. Add a few lines of explanation to section 4, as follows:

As mentioned in the above section, the demand description model of farmers is developed according to the survey results. However, some influencing factors are not well integrated into the relational framework of the demand description model, which will be further discussed in this section.

 

9. Line 515-6 how authors arrive to this conclusion and also why this is needed for this work, this is a model development paper.

Response: Accepted.

Thank you for your comment. This paragraph has been modified as follows:

According to the survey, although the large-scale urbanization construction in recent years has caused some farmers to give up land farming and reduce farmland work, farmers have homestead and some land to engage in planting, breeding and processing of supplied materials to improve their lives and increase their income.

 

10. I am not seeing any final model or framework, please be specific, title says " model", is fig 6 that model?

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. In order to more clearly point out that fig. 6 is the final requirement description model, the description of fig. 6 is modified, more detailed description is given in Section 3.2..

Reviewer 3 Report

Main remarks

Chinese currency should be converted, if only in a footnote, to dollars or euros for more understanding for the reader (p.2; 53 and p.10; 315)

The structural analysis part seems generally good; we are still wondering about the choice of items in the questionnaire. The authors cite some previous studies, but the deconstruction of key research concepts is unclear. A pilot study, with the review of the literature, would have been judicious and would have shed light on the most relevant variables.

The authors state (p. 4; 161-165) “To conduct the questionnaire survey smoothly, some measures 161 were enforced, such as contacting the local village committee for support, provision of 162 appropriate rewards to motivate villagers, and execution of the survey under the leader-163 ship of local people familiar with the situation. The survey was conducted from December 164 29, 2021 to January 2, 2022. A total of 167 valid questionnaires were collected.” How can we guarantee the farmers’ independence or freedom in answering questions? Why not just conduct a pilot study to identify problems before conducting the questionnaire?

The “results” part ‘p.10; 301) which tries to make the connection with measurements is more uncertain, because reasoning on the basis of average temperatures is more than questionable, knowing that the characterization of thermal comfort can be indicated by an index defined by a combination of parameters, in addition to ambient temperature, including:

1.      Wind speed and/or infiltration which the authors do not mention;

2.      The average radiant temperature. Apparently, the latter was calculated with regard to the apparatus described on page 4, but the authors do not tell us whether this parameter was integrated. The latter is important and depends on the surfaces, materials, and their thermophysical properties which have been completely ignored in this study.

The "outputs" of the thermal camera could have been used to characterize the thermal losses on the facades, and to identify the thermal bridges. Instead, only the “kang” benefited from this technology, leaving assessments to visual judgment alone, as the authors attest on page 16; 469-470: “House A is warmer than House B. A closer look at the thermal protection measures 469 of farm house A are shown in Figure 8 (in conjunction with the house layout)…..”

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer #3

1. Chinese currency should be converted, if only in a footnote, to dollars or euros for more understanding for the reader (p.2; 53 and p.10; 315)

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. All prices have been described in US dollars.

 

2. The structural analysis part seems generally good; we are still wondering about the choice of items in the questionnaire. The authors cite some previous studies, but the deconstruction of key research concepts is unclear. A pilot study, with the review of the literature, would have been judicious and would have shed light on the most relevant variables.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. As the reviewer said, how to define the survey items of the questionnaire is indeed a very important issue for forming more reasonable demand characterization parameters. The research team has studied the living environment and energy use in rural areas in northern China for more than ten years, but still feels that with the promotion of urbanization, the lifestyle in rural areas is also undergoing great changes. Traditional and modern coexist, and further research is needed around the demand characterization parameters in the future.

 

3. The authors state (p. 4; 161-165) “To conduct the questionnaire survey smoothly, some measures 161 were enforced, such as contacting the local village committee for support, provision of 162 appropriate rewards to motivate villagers, and execution of the survey under the leader-163 ship of local people familiar with the situation. The survey was conducted from December 164 29, 2021 to January 2, 2022. A total of 167 valid questionnaires were collected.” How can we guarantee the farmers’ independence or freedom in answering questions? Why not just conduct a pilot study to identify problems before conducting the questionnaire?

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. This study conducted a number of pre surveys before the formal issuance of the questionnaire, and constantly revised and improved according to the exposed problems to better reflect the most important needs of farmers. These measures are described in this paper. As for the independence and freedom of farmers to answer questions, first of all, we took full account of the degree of cooperation of farmers when selecting the surveyed villages, and selected the villages we are familiar with and suitable for questionnaire survey to ensure the full cooperation of farmers. On this basis, the questionnaire is filled out offline one-to-one to ensure that farmers fully understand the questionnaire questions and give the most authentic answers.

 

4. The “results” part ‘p.10; 301) which tries to make the connection with measurements is more uncertain, because reasoning on the basis of average temperatures is more than questionable, knowing that the characterization of thermal comfort can be indicated by an index defined by a combination of parameters, in addition to ambient temperature, including:

4.1 Wind speed and/or infiltration which the authors do not mention;

4.2 The average radiant temperature. Apparently, the latter was calculated with regard to the apparatus described on page 4, but the authors do not tell us whether this parameter was integrated. The latter is important and depends on the surfaces, materials, and their thermophysical properties which have been completely ignored in this study.

Response：Accepted.

Thank you for your query. Reviewers have questioned the adoption of average indoor temperature for thermal environment evaluation instead of some more comprehensive comfort indexes for analysis. The author thinks that more explanations should be given in this paper. Therefore, section 3.1 has been modified as follows:

At present, natural gas has been widely used for cooking and heating in rural areas of Hebei province, while most families in rural areas of northeast China still use the traditional stove and kang heating system and household hot water heating system. The main fuels used are crop waste (straw, corn cob, wood, etc.) and coal. The survey results show that the annual heating cost of rural houses in Zhengding, Hebei province is about $360, the average indoor temperature in winter is only about 14℃, but the farmers generally feel very comfortable. However, in fuxin rural house in Liaoning Province, the heating cost is almost zero, the average indoor temperature is about 6℃, the average temperature difference between indoor and outdoor is about 13℃, the temperature difference between rooms is large, and the uneven radiation is serious.

 

In addition, since this is a model development paper, a more detailed analysis and discussion of the field survey results will be described in another paper by the authors.

 

5. The "outputs" of the thermal camera could have been used to characterize the thermal losses on the facades, and to identify the thermal bridges. Instead, only the “kang” benefited from this technology, leaving assessments to visual judgment alone, as the authors attest on page 16; 469-470: “House A is warmer than House B. A closer look at the thermal protection measures 469 of farm house A are shown in Figure 8 (in conjunction with the house layout)…..”

Response：Accepted.

Kang is a traditional heating method in rural areas of northern China. the infrared photos of the surface temperature distribution of the two kangs in Fig.7 were modified to unify the scale range of the temperature scale, and more detailed description are given at the bottom of each picture for readers. Two infrared photos are used here, mainly to compare the difference of temperature distribution on the surface of Kang in two rural houses, and further tell the readers that for low-income families, there are many easy and low-cost ways to improve their living environment in real life.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Add discriminant validity table,

figure 2a one factor loading is 0.4 less than 0.5 improve it.

Table 6 R ² values 0.996 very high check comon method bias. 

Add few more references

Better to use 7 point likert scale for SEM for better variance

 

Author Response

Reviewer #4

1. Add discriminant validity table,

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. Please see table 2 and table 3 for the reliability and validity of the questionnaire

 

2. figure 2a one factor loading is 0.4 less than 0.5 improve it.

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. A reasonable method has been tried to correct it. This indicator is a modern living equipment indicator. This indicator is selected to reflect the modern living cost of farmers. Although the factor load is 0.46 less than 0.5, the economic cost problem cannot be ignored for farmers, and other indicators in the model meet the requirements. Therefore, this indicator is selected to be retained

 

3. Table 6 R ² values 0.996 very high check common method bias. 

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. It has been checked without error. The larger the value of the determination coefficient R², the closer it is to 1, indicating that the better the fitting degree of the model is. The value of the determination coefficient R² calculated in this paper is 0.996, which is considered acceptable.

 

4. Add few more references

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. Some literature has been added as appropriate.

 

5. Better to use 7 point likert scale for SEM for better variance

Response: Accepted.

Thanks for this comment. In the previous investigation of this study, it was found that it was difficult for farmers to distinguish too fine scales, so the Likert 5 subscale was used. Valuable suggestions will be drawn from the follow-up related research, and Likert 7 subscale will be used as much as possible to make SEM have better variance.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Accepted in present form.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.