Multidimensional Valuation and Spatial Differentiation of Cultivated Land Resources at the County Scale: A Case Study of Guangxi, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper developed a methodology for assessing agricultural land value and quantified in a region in China. The three pillars of valuation are economic, social and ecological.   The topic is original and adds to the growing literature on valuing of agricultural land for the society at local and global level. The main value addition of the paper is segregating the land value in to economic, social and ecological indicators by developing appropriate indices.  The results seem to be inline with what we are experiencing and close to reality.

 

The following are my specific comments

I.                A “theory of change” may be introduced by the authors in the methodology section in a flow chart form to explain how the selected variables are contributing to different economic, social and ecological indicators, how they are interlinked to create interest and better understanding by the readers.  See for the theory of change in similar settings: Reddy, A. A., Bhattacharya, A., Reddy, S. V., & Ricart, S. (2021). Farmers’ distress index: An approach for an action plan to reduce vulnerability in the drylands of India. Land, 10(11), 1236.

II.               For land value assessment, there some Demetriou, D. (2016). The assessment of land valuation in land consolidation schemes: The need for a new land valuation framework. Land use policy, 54, 487-498. Deininger, K., Selod, H., & Burns, A. (2012). The Land Governance Assessment Framework: Identifying and monitoring good practice in the land sector. World Bank Publications. Ma, S., & Swinton, S. M. (2011). Valuation of ecosystem services from rural landscapes using agricultural land prices. Ecological Economics, 70(9), 1649-1659.

III.             How rural transformation effects land value over the years, Authors should have some passing remarks on impact of rural roads etc. see and cite Reddy, A. A., Rani, C. R., Cadman, T., Reddy, T. P., Battarai, M., & Reddy, A. N. (2016). Rural Transformation of a Village in Telangana, a Study of Dokur since 1970s. International Journal of Rural Management, 12(2), 143-178.

IV.             Authors should have conducted some robustness checks about the results.

 

Some other comments

Units needs to be in US$ and hectares for increasing readership.  Some times authors used yuan and in other cases, US$, it should be uniformly US$. Similarly for all the units.

There is some ambiguity in land restoration interest rate, maybe it is internal rate of return? Please clarify.

For all formulas, authors have to mention subscript (B_i representing value of the variable for the ith county, otherwise there is a confusion, at what level the data is whether at farmer level, county or city  or country level).

Needs improvement 

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate your comments and proposals on our article. According to the suggestions, we revised the relevant contents of the paper one by one. For more details, please download the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

the manuscript investigates multidimensional valuation and autocorrelation Cultivated Land Resources in a county of China. there are some drawbacks as follows:

1. the abstract should define some quantitative results

2. the first paragraph of introduction needs more references

3. the second paragraph is too long and should be decomposed to some cohesion paragraphs

4. the novelty and contributions of the research should be declared explicitly\

5. why did authors utilize autocorrelation index? and why the use Moran's I index among different indices? 

6. a flowchart should be added for the research methodology and each section should be justified

7. it is better to present Morans' I with p-values 

8. Is there any research that investigate the autocorrelation in valuation of cultivated land resources? what is the difference of the research with those studies?

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate your comments and proposals on our article. According to the suggestions, we revised the relevant contents of the paper one by one. For more details, please download the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper explored the multidimensional valuation and spatial differentiation of cultivated land resources in Guangxi Province from the perspective of counties, realized the scale innovation of the research, and enriched the cognition of the value of cultivated land resources in Guangxi Province, but there are more problems, and the specific advice is as follows:

1. The year of research is not clearly stated in the paper.

2. The lack of scientific basis for researching the practical significance of "multidimensional value of cultivated land resources". For example, Line36-38, Line94-96, and Line100-101 only emphasize the importance of "ecological product value", so what is the significance of studying "the social value "and "the economic value" of cultivated land?

3. Confusion of basic concepts. The "ecological product value" of cultivated land in the introduction is different from the "ecological value" of cultivated land in the research content, so please clarify the specific research object.

4. Lack of judgment on the highlights and shortcomings of existing studies. The article only lists the methods of accounting for the value of arable land in the existing studies, but does not elaborate on the latest progress of the studies, and lacks a summary of the existing studies.

5. The lack of clarity of the significance of the research and the progress of the research leads to the lack of clarity of the scientific problem to be solved in the paper, and the lack of innovation.

6. Since the paper emphasizes the innovation on the scale, the significance and value of choosing Guangxi Province as the study area from the perspective of cultivated land value evaluation should be clearly elaborated.

7. The paper does not give a schematic diagram of the study area or the location of the study area.

8. Most of the results are still analyzed from the perspective of municipalities, which is inconsistent with the county-scale innovation mentioned in the previous article.

9. The results of the article is difficult to support the conclusion of Line29-31.

10. The recommendation section of the paper does not provide targeted measures to the conclusions of the paper, which is rather vague.

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate your comments and proposals on our article. According to the suggestions, we revised the relevant contents of the paper one by one. For more details, please download the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All comments are considered appropriately