Does Digital Inclusive Finance Effectively Promote Agricultural Green Development?—A Case Study of China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Line 38 Please define „Digital inclusive finance“ when you first mention it, i.e. in the introduction.
Do you apply the Durbin model (line 13) or the Dobbin model (line 67) or both?
Line 147 Please be more specific in the presentation of the indicators. What is behind „intensity of agricultural machinery“ e.g. kW (engine power) per hectare or investments in yuan per hectare?
The authors have to indicate the data sources they used like “China Statistical Yearbook” or “China Rural Statistical Yearbook” in the same way as other references (author, year of publication etc.).
Furthermore, it would be beneficial to indicate mean values und standard deviations of the 14 indicators and the moderating variables.
The estimation of the Durbin model is not explained, the TOPSIS-model not even mentioned in the method section.
Please indicate the direct and indirect effects in the method section.
Line 218 The “moderating effect model“ is hard to follow. An example would be helpful. So far it is not clear why Dm does not lead to a second sigma, summing up for the m dimensions.
The following questions should be answered in the method section:
-Does the estimation address four regions or 30 provinces?
-How are the 14 indicators (Table 1) aggregated towards gad?
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript provides interesting insights into the impact of digital inclusive finance on agricultural green development in China. Through a dynamic spatial Durbin model authors confirmed a positive short-term effect of digital inclusive finance on agricultural green development, also confirming regional heterogeneity.
Given the importance of the Chinese agricultural sector, I find the issue very relevant. The methodology fits the objectives of the manuscript. The results are interesting; however, the discussion needs to be improved again to improve the overall clarity of the manuscript.
Thus, some issues should be carefully addressed to make this manuscript publishable.
1. To improve clarity, I suggest explicitly dividing the Chinese provinces into the three studied categories (East, Middle, West).
2. Tables should be self-explicative. Add the name of the test in the notes and all the acronyms in the notes of the table. Moreover, for example, in table 5, it is important to uniform the name of the variable with the name written in the text.
3. The reported global Moran’s I index is somewhat incomplete. I prefer more complete results, taking into account the provinces you report in the manuscript (see, for instance, the article of Guo et al, 2020).
4. The manuscript should also report the Dobbin model results for the control variables (as listed in equation 4). Indeed, some interesting results could also be linked to the control variables.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
Thank you for the opportunity to review the article. The paper is interesting and deals with an important topic of sustainable agricultural development. A good and interesting literature review is provided, Publications have been selected appropriately. In the methodology, it is worth emphasizing the advantages and limitations of the selected method and indicating other methods that can be used. The results should describe the indicated cause-effect relationships in more detail. Recommendations should be more focused on specific actions to be taken. It is also worth adding directions for future research.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear author,
I have read this paper with interest, and I hope you are open for some comments that may clarify some to even improve this presentation a little bit.
Analysis of agricultural development in accordance with the idea of sustainable development requires a thorough understanding of the factors shaping this process.
Understanding this phenomenon may allow us to reduce negative human impact on the environment.
But in my opinion, several things are missing. The problem with this manuscript is several inaccuracies that are described in the review.
You have studied the literature well. However, I think the term "inclusive digital finance" should be operationalized. In my opinion, not every reader will understand what it means. Maybe the author can offer his own definition?
So, the manuscript can be published after summarizing the comments and suggestions contained in this review and approval by the editor.
Title
The title sounds good and corresponds to the content of the paper, however I would change "Evidence from China" to "A case study of China".
Abstract
The abstract introduces the manuscript well and briefly.
L.13, 20, 67, 207, 210, 271, 363, You need to decide whether the spatial Durbin or Dobbin model was used. It looks like you don't know which method you used.
Keywords
Add: China, TOPSIS and sustainable development
Introduction
Footnote 1 should be converted to a bibliography reference.
L. 34. Can you explain why it requires more government support? What kind of support - legal, financial? Is bottom-up, farmer capital not enough?
L.38. Here, could the author provide a specific definition of "digital inclusive finance"?
L.41. How many farmers in China have access to seamless internet access? This information will help the reader understand if indeed the next sentences could be true.
L.54. Unfortunately, I disagree with the author on this one. Increasing the use of credit in agriculture by securing it with fixed assets increases productivity, but does it increase income? One should refer to the publication of Cochrane, the forerunner of the issue of "market direction" in agriculture in the 1950s. This mechanism consists in the fact that an increase in agricultural productivity does not entail an increase, but, on the contrary, a stagnation of farmers' income, and in some cases even a real decrease in it. So, there's too much optimism.
l.56-58. I understand that this is about international trade. And is food security guaranteed in China? China should focus on domestic food markets while making sure it has the right level of import capacity. So, who should China's farmers be competing with? Additionally, keep in mind that the productivity of organic farming is much lower than conventional farming. This could cause a decrease in the supply of domestic food commodities and increase prices.
Review of the literature
2.1. Agricultural green development - It should be added that most often the "ecologization" of agriculture is forced by state interventionism (payments for organic farming, greening of conventional agriculture in the EU).
Materials and Methods
Change the chapter title according to the guidelines.
Have the financial figures been adjusted for inflation, for example? You cannot compare financial values from different time periods without making them realistic by eliminating the impact of inflation, investment risk, etc.
In Table 1, be sure to add units, abbreviations (e.g. eco, res) and specific sources of information (not just the name of the database, but also website links, for example). You can insert them in the bibliography as sources and in the table only references (e.g. [23]; [34,35] etc.).
In instructions for Authors - "Materials and Methods: They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited".
L.161-162 - Can these two indicators be treated as the same? Unfortunately, the author has not provided any arguments. This should be supplemented. How about removing Tibet from the analysis?
Table 2 - add the coefficient of variation. It will better represent the heterogeneity of regions than the standard deviation (intuitively speaking, the standard deviation tells how widely the values of some quantity (for example, age, inflation, exchange rate) are scattered around its mean. The smaller the value of the deviation, the more the observations are clustered around the mean).
Results
Table 3 and 4 - why the information under the table about the level of significance at different levels if all the results have 3 stars (p<0.01) anyway?
Footnote 2 add to methodology.
I wish the authors had done comparisons and rankings between regions. It would be possible to observe the direction and speed of changes in individual regions.
Hope this helps, keep it up!
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
