Non-Farm Employment Experience, Risk Preferences, and Low-Carbon Agricultural Technology Adoption: Evidence from 1843 Grain Farmers in 14 Provinces in Chinaâ€
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors:
I am pleased to have the opportunity to comment on your manuscript. This article focuses on promoting carbon-reducing farming in Chinese agriculture. This manuscript focuses on how to promote carbon reduction agricultural technology in China, which I think very interesting. My specific suggestions are as follows.
1. Why do you need to make a hypothesis when you've been so emphatic in your manuscript? I suggest modifying these statements to make them seem more speculative. By the way, you need to provide evidence for the sentences. The sentences I suggest to revision are as follows:
** Furthermore, non-farm employment is rare experience for farmers, which can improve their courage, reaction, information acquisition capability, expand their social network, enhance their technology acceptance ability and agricultural sustainable development awareness, and enable them to adopt LCAT.
** Therefore, farmers with different types of risk preferences have different LCAT adoption methods, and risk-averse farmers reduce the possibility of adopting LCAT. High-risk farmers are more likely to adopt LCAT, and low-risk farmers show inhibition in its adoption.
** First, Non-farm employment experience improves farmers' awareness of LCAT and reduces the risk of technology adoption.
** Second, Non-farm employment experience strengthens farmers' ability to obtain market information, deal with circumstances and reduce the risk of net income uncertainty. Compared with local farmers, rural migrant laborers have stronger market-oriented attributes, and they may moderately perform commercial agriculture production following specific market needs to rectify the information asymmetry of the market price for agricultural products and achieve a "high-quality price" for their products. They also make necessary adjustments to their production and management mode following the changes in market demand to reduce uncertainty risk. Third, non-farm employment experience accumulates human capital and reduces the risk of improper use of technology.
2. As you mentioned that "Among them, six LCAT are selected: straw returning, deep plowing subsoiling, soil testing fertilization, no-tillage direct sowing, green field crops, and soil conditioner. "
Please define LCAT in the literature review section and explain why these six ways can be collectively referred to as LCAT. In addition to these six ways, are there any other ways that are missing?
3. As you mentioned that "Risk preferences refers to the respondents’ attitude toward risk, classified into low-risk preferences, medium-risk preferences, and high-risk preferences. Farmers’ expected income is used to determine their risk preferences and their degrees [51], and their risk preferences are classified into three types: low (low-risk preferences, the value is 1), medium (medium-risk preferences, the value is 2), and high (high-risk preferences, the value is 3)."
I've checked the article you're referencing here, and I find that it's not a peer-reviewed article. At the same time, the article did not refer to farmers in China, so I question the classification method and the 10,000 RMB inquiry here.
4. I note that the authors claim to have used secondary data. Please provide the questionnaire scale and contents in the appendix.
5. The discussion section of this study is very weak. I suggest that the author elaborate further on the contribution of this manuscript. Please divide the discussion into theoretical contribution and practical contribution. Please note that this section should not just repeat the research results or make a superficial discussion. Please discuss in a critical way.
I hope these suggestions are helpful to you.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for these insightful and useful suggestions. Point-to-point responses to these comments are provided below. Corresponding changes have been made in the paper.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
A sample of 1843 surveyed grain farmers in China in 2019 is used to estimate the contribution of of-farm work experience on farm adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies. A positive effect is found, and in part via an intermediate effect of off-farm employment increasing risk preference and adoption of new technology with uncertain outcomes.
On page 8, line 286. Spell-out the measure of IRR, and include it in the Table 2 list of variables. Or, and what I recommend is delete this measure, or better pass it into the robust test section? What are the pros and cons of the two dependent variable measures?
In Sections 4,2 and 4.3 and associated tables, logic requires that all of the control variables used in the basic model be included in the estimated functions.
It would assist the reader if equations (2), (3) and (4) of page 10 were moved to pages 4 and 5 as formal expressions of the three hypotheses.
Use a sequence of numbers for equations throughout the paper, so that those on page 10 become (5), (6), ....
Typos and presentation issues:
page 2, line 55. Change "greater" to "great"
page 2, line 85. Delete "more"
page 5, line 213. B is a parameter vector, not a parameter, and e should be deleted.
page 6, lines241 and242. There is no logic to "Farmers' expected income is used to determine their risk preferences and their degrees". My understanding of the estimated model is that "agricultural income" and "education level" are included in the list of x variables along with "non-farm employment".
page 11, line 373. "receiving" to replace "receiveing"
page 13, line 428. Change "they" to "them"
page 13, line 431. Add "to" before "their home"
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for these insightful and useful suggestions. Point-to-point responses to these comments are provided below. Corresponding changes have been made in the paper.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author:
Thank you very much for your response to my comments. I think the current version of the manuscript has improved a lot. There is only one place in this manuscript that has not been made clear.
I noticed that you changed the reference in the question of perceived risk, and this is a Chinese article that says the following:
" In the face of uncertain production risks, will you actively adopt water-saving irrigation technology, 1= risk-averse, 2= average, 3= risk-friendly"
So this still doesn't explain very well why the question is to divide farmers' preferences for low risk, medium risk, and high risk by a few key points such as RMB 400, 1700, and 9600. I would suggest that the author use the current year's per capita income for each village and town and the questionnaire used by some banks to assess users' perceived risk as the basis for this item, rather than using the current reference, which is not the same as your survey. In addition, I suggest that the authors include references to each item in Table 2, of which I provide an example here: https://doi.org/10.3390/foods11081167.
Congratulations on your work!
Author Response
We thank for your encouragement and useful suggestions. Point-to-point responses to these comments are provided below. Corresponding changes have been made in the paper.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
