Understanding the Rural Livelihood Stability System: The Eco-Migration in Huanjiang County, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper focuses on a topic of great interest and on which it is particularly important to focus attention as scholars by encouraging theoretical debate and application studies. This is a solid paper devoted to the pertinent issue of the role of eco-migrations for the rural development. The authors focus on Huanjiang County - a karst territory - and use the Participatory Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) to explore livelihood stability of immigrants.
I have particularly appreciate the issue and the authors approach, however, I suggest some changes that could significantly improve the readability of the paper for international scholars:
- The title in my opinion could better describe the theme, i.e. “Understanding the rural livelihood stability system: the ecomigration in Huanjiang Count in China”.
- I suggest to clarifying the goals of the paper better in the introduction.
- I would avoid the sub-paragraphs which greatly fragment the article and complicate its reading.
- I also suggest setting up the paper’s structure following the guidelines of Sustainability, and also to correct the editing according the review’s template. Besides, the paper has many typos.
- 1 and 2 are really interesting but can be better explained in the text (e.g. the difference between yellow and red nodes).
- In the conclusions I would highlight the value of the proposed approach and its transferability also to other areas of the planet, specifically underlining the relevance of the issue in a Pandemic era.
- The policy implications evidenced by the authors as well as the role of the decision making process (rural development programs, and agricultural policies) are also very interesting – non only in China - and can be better highlighted both in the first part of the paper and in the conclusions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This article is dealing with a very relevant issue: the livelihood strategies of immigrants and their differences with natives' strategies in an area of China.
The introduction is presented in a somewhat confused way, and it is not clear which are the main objectives of the study. Goals are mixed with the analysis of the relevant literature and are distributed here and there without no logic. One reader should catch the main objectives after the reading of the introduction. Authors should resume the main goals of the study in a proper way.
The methodology includes a methodological framework and some indicators that are not scientifically sound.
The sample used is not adequately described.
This statement should explain the methodological frame, but it is unclear: "Combined with this paper, the fragile ecological environment stimulates immigration policy occurred, and in turn the latter has an impact on the former both in the immigration and emigration areas, forming a causal cumulative cycle (Figure 1). " Rows 115-116
The indicators rely on a definition of activity that is misleading and unclear. The livelihood activity diversity index relies on the pure number of activities, whatever be their financial share or economic size. The land-use efficiency index is unclear and unexplained. The reader does not understand what index is being used.
The differences between immigrants and natives in terms of livelihood capital are negligible, but the authors emphasise these differences.
Statistical significance indexes never support the differences between natives and immigrants, so it is quite hard to understand what is the significance level of these differences among means.
Environmental sustainability is mentioned in the methodological framework, but in reality, it is absent in the study. The land use efficiency unadequately identifies environmental interventions, that has nothing to do with environmental issues.
Policies designed to alleviate poverty are mentioned but not properly described.
In some part there are some confused concepts:
- "Fewer fertiliser and pesticide inputs by natives also enable them to increase land-use efficiency and economic level" (row 280) (how is possible that fewer inputs contribute to increase efficiency and economic outputs?);
- "Land use efficiency was used to evaluate the effectiveness of economic activity" (row 270) (are we talking about efficiency or effectiveness?).
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The term "unreasonable income structure" is not used in English. One capital that seems important that is missing is "cultural capital", which includes ways of seeing and doing. This article might be useful.
Flora, J. L., M. Emery, D. Thompson, C. M. Prado-Meza, and C. B. Flora, 2012. “New Immigrants in Local Food Systems: Two Iowa Cases,” International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. 19: 119-134.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have significantly improved the paper, I sincerely hope that their first experience of publishing a scientific paper has been fruitful for them.
Author Response
We have further improved the description of the results and conclusions of the article. Thank you very much for your help to make the text more valuable.
Reviewer 2 Report
Authors tried to improve the text, but they did not answered fully to the methodological problems of their work.
The activity diversity index, which is used to show the number of agriculture or non-agriculture activities, is not clear. If this index relies on the number of different members of the family having various activities, it could be used. But if this index is merely the number of different activities, it does not give any additional information because each activity is not weighted. It is sufficient to use the income index to express the economic share diversity of livelihood activities in the study area. I suggest to drop the activity diversity index because it is too naive.
In my previous review, I said that the differences between immigrants and natives in terms of livelihood capital are negligible, but the authors emphasise these differences. Authors answer that there are significant differences in some components of the livelihood capital. But honestly I can see only relevant differences in the physical capital, maybe because natives have more land and more substantial pieces of land.
I also said that it should be correct to illustrate the statistical significance of these differences for each specific indicator, possibly in the same table.
Authors emphasise differences between natives and immigrants that, in reality, are not confirmed by data. They state that immigrants had higher (0.3393) non-farming strategy diversity, while natives have an index of 0.3333), that is almost the same.
Furthermore, is quite clear that natives depend much more than immigrants from agricultural activities, while immigrants from non-agricultural activities (at least the reader can understand this). But what is the different level of incomes between natives and immigrants? Authors should include some table representing the total household income levels and the two components (agricultural and non-agricultural). This information is crucial to understand the livelihood capacity of the two groups.
Agricultural productivity (that authors confuse with efficiency) is used to discuss the environmental effects of the two groups. I stated that the land-use efficiency index is unclear and unexplained. The reader does not understand what index is being used: is the output/fertilisers index or is the output/total inputs index? In any case this index cannot be defined as an indicator of enviromental intervention, but simply of intensification processes.
But there is another problem: the same authors say that output/input ratio is influenced by many factors (they mention rightly local land fragmentation, low productivity, outmoded technology, and incomplete agricultural infrastructure). How can you demonstrate that the different values of the land use efficiency is only related to the use of fertilisers and pesticides? No model is confirming this statement in your study. This is another reason to not identify this index as a proxy of environmental practices.
Author Response
Thank you for your suggestions. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
There are still some minor issues to be revised:
1) Table A1. The indicators of livelihood capitals. If authors have calculated means and standard deviations, and also the significance test of the mean difference for each variable, please include it in the table;
2) Authors state that line 285): "The calculation results showed that the
average value of DEA efficiency for immigrants and natives was 0.5881 and 0.3922 respectively", but in the figure 6 natives tourn out to be more efficient than migrants in terms of land use.
3) This sentence seems to be incomplete (lines 290-292): However, the value for natives was slightly higher than that for immigrants, indicating that natives reasonably allocate land resources (e.g. the abundant crop varieties, the utilisation of marginal land, improved planting technologies)......Allocate how?
Author Response
Thank you very much. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
