The Influence of Rural Land Transfer on Rural Households’ Income: A Case Study in Anhui Province, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

There are some problems which must be solved before it is considered for publication.

(1)Please simplify the Introduction. The contents of Table 1 can be put into the appendix.

(2)The figures in this paper should be embellished, such as Figure 2.

(3)The generalizability of the research conclusions needs further discussion.  The conclusions of this paper are mainly based on the situation in China, and although it has certain reference significance for other developing countries, the author does not discuss the generalizability of these conclusions in other countries. It is suggested that the author add discussion and comparison of the situation in other countries to the Conclusion.

(4)The contribution margin of the paper needs to be more clearly expressed in the introduction and conclusion. Previous studies have paid more attention to the positive income effects of land transfer policies, but this paper provides new and different evidence.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions and careful review.All our replies and modifications are explained in detail in the Respond letter.Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The repetition rate of this paper reaches 40%, it is recommended to reduce it.

2. The Land Right Reform includes many contents, such as the reform of the homestead property rights, the separation of the three rights of agricultural land. The content of this paper only focuses on the impact of farmland transfer on rural households' income, and does not study the impact of land ownership and contract right reform, so it is suggested that "Land Right Reform" in the title should be changed to "farmland transfer" or “rural land transfer”.

3. In the Abstract part, the abbreviation TRSP needs to explain the meaning of these four letters when it appears for the first time.

4. There is a problem with the format of references 1-9 in the text, which needs to be modified.

5. In section 2.2, “transfer-out” should be “transfer-in” in the title of (2) and (3).

6. In the study area selection section, it is suggested to add the expression of why Anhui Province can represent China.

7. There is a big difference between the number of land transfer-in households (60) and transfer-out households (300) in the survey sample, will this difference in sample size affect the model estimation results? How big is the impact?

8. Formula annotations need to be aligned.

9. It is recommended that the estimated results of all robustness test methods described in the paper be presented in Table 5.

10. The innovativeness of the paper can be expressed more clearly.

Author Response

Thank you for your careful review and constructive feedback.We have revised the manuscript in detail according to your suggestions, and have responded to your suggestions point-by-point and explained the changes we have made in the Respond letter. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is interesting. It is about poverty eradication in developing countries. The authors analyze the impact of land rights reform on rural household income in China. The Three Rights Separation Policy (TRSP) reform separates land ownership, land contracts, and land management rights. Land transfer plays a key role in agricultural modernization and poverty reduction in rural China. TRSP was proposed in 2014 to address problems such as land fragmentation and lack of investment. With TRSP, the area of ​​land transferred has increased from about 30 million hectares in 2015 to over 37 million hectares in 2023. Land transfer encourages the formation of family farms, large-scale farmers, and agricultural cooperatives. TRSP increases income opportunities through agricultural development and poverty reduction. Land reform promotes better allocation of land resources in line with market mechanisms. The authors argue that land reform affects household income both positively and negatively. The negative impact of TRSP is the deepening of income inequality among households. Land reform reduces the number of small farmers through land transfer, and land transfer promotes the emergence of new forms of agricultural organizations.

The article is quite well written, but it can be improved. The summary provides concise information about the study. The data sources and method used in this study are correctly presented. The summary also correctly includes the main results of the study. The introduction correctly describes TRSP and its impact on land transfer and household income. The direct and indirect impacts are analyzed. The research was conducted in Anhui Province, China in 2021. Other studies related to the topic of the article are correctly written. The structure of the article is also written. The article is very extensive, in the opinion of the reviewer, it should be described in more detail so that the reader can follow the authors' considerations in this article. The authors should also clearly write in this section what the theoretical contribution of this article is and what its significance is. What is the innovativeness of this study? I recommend supplementing it. The research hypotheses are correctly formulated in Section 2. The effects of TRSP on transferring households are presented. In point 3, the research object and research methods are correctly presented. The SEM structural equation model and descriptions of variables are presented. Table 2 correctly presents descriptive statistics of these variables. Point 4 presents the research results. The approach presented in this point seems scientifically justified, and the literature review is sufficient. The results are clearly presented in a descriptive form and using figures and tables. The limitations of the study and directions for future research in the context of this article are given. Possible errors in conducting this study could be mentioned in this part. Some conclusions were also presented correctly.

Author Response

We are very grateful to your critical comments and thoughtful suggestions. Based on these comments and suggestions, we have made careful modification on the original manuscript. All changes made to the text are in red in the revised manuscript so that they may be easily identified. All our replies and modification are explained in detail in the attached Respond letter.Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents a study on the impact of land right reform on the incomes of rural households. The authors placed the land right reform in the context of poverty reduction. The authors started their study with an extensive literature review showing the diversity of the results of similar studies.

The study approach is clearly presented in fig. 2.  There are 7 hypotheses posed. Fig. 3 shows direct link between the study approach and the hypotheses.

The authors did not explain how the study participants were chosen and how representative is the study sample to the region in question.

I greatly appreciate the fact that the authors kept the negatively verified hypothesis 1.

The results are presented in detail and compelling and the conclusions are based on findings. The study limitations are also presented adding to the value of the study findings.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments and professional advice. These opinions help to improve academic rigor of our article. Based on your suggestion and request, we have made corrected modifications on the revised manuscript. All our replies and amendments are explained in detail in the attached Respond letter. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx