Spatial–Temporal Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Marine Fishery Eco-Efficiency in China: Evidence from Coastal Regions
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comments
This paper tries to evaluate the ecological efficiency of marine fishery in 11 coastal provinces of China from 2011 to 2020 using the Super-SBM model, combined with Malmquist index, Moran index and other methods, to also analyse the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics. The paper also explored the influencing factors of marine fishery eco-efficiency using the Tobit panel model.
The objective of the manuscript, in general, is interesting from a fisheries ecological and management point of view. However, the study lacks an essential part of a scientific paper (lack of discussion) to reach the standard of publication. The manuscript should become acceptable for publication pending suitable major revision considering the following comment:
While the authors made a great effort to summarise conclusions and provide suggestions in the last section (5. Conclusions and suggestions), the paper totally lacks a discussion section where the authors should use findings of other similar studies (e.g., with the same objectives and/or using the same or other methodology) for comparison even for other regions or countries (not necessarily only in China) to extract lessons learned (e.g., from successful case studies in other similar countries/regions) to overcome such identified problems. The goal of a scientific discussion is to explain the meaning and value of the research findings to readers, but an excellent discussion is also a demonstration of the investigator’s critical, analytical, and logical acumen that eagerly invites the reader to think in similar ways. What is then missing is a scientific/scholarly 'discussion' which links the proposed ideas in this paper into the other existing similar research.
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Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
The comprehensive study made by the authors is praiseworthy. However, the paper needs clarity in some of the sections.
1. There is a good scope for increasing the methods section, more clarity is required, on how the data were collected and which data was used for which method/ model/indexes.
2. The references for the software used may be mentioned in the MS.
3. More clarity on the discussion part to justify the result/analysis.
Some more suggestions are mentioned in the MS.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Minor editing of English language is required
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This study is an examination of the marine fishery eco-efficiency in 11 coastal provinces fisheries in China between 2011 and 2020. The findings seem to be (1) that overall, marine eco-efficiency improved, but the gap between the most eco-efficient and the least eco-efficient fisheries widened; (2) there was no spatial difference to explain this finding; and (3) the most important factors appear to be the structure of the fishery, the technological support level, and government regulation. You conclude that “optimizing the structure of fishery industry, improving the government 's environmental regulation and increasing investment in science and technology are all effective measures to improve the marine fishery eco-efficiency” (lines 27-29).
The manuscript is well-written in good English, but it raises several questions.
First, it is unclear whether your above finding – that “optimizing the structure of fishery industry, improving the government 's environmental regulation and increasing investment in science and technology are all effective measures to improve the marine fishery eco-efficiency” - refers to the national government or to the provincial governments. This lack of clarity is compounded in a later passage:
“In order to win in the competition and stimulate their own transformation of environmental technology, the government 's investment in marine fishery environmental protection is different, resulting in different provinces. The impact of pollutant emissions from marine fishery related industries on the environment will also be different. Based on this, the amount of investment in marine environmental governance by provincial governments is selected to characterize environmental regulation” (lines 501-506)
Are you saying that the role of government in environmental regulation is played by central government or provincial government?
Second, what do you mean by the phrase “the negative effect of opening up level is obvious” (lines 26-27)
Third, it is sometimes unclear whether you are referring to China’s fishery or the global fishery. For example, the following paragraph starts with China’s fishery but ends with the global fishery:
“In 2020, China's marine product output reached 33.1438 million tons, accounting for 50.6% of the total global output. Of this, marine fishing accounted for 11.7907 million tons, and mariculture accounted for 21.3531 million tons [1]. The total value of marine fishery production reached 87.471 billion dollars, underscoring its increasingly prominent role in bolstering the nation's marine economic strength. However, rapid economic development in coastal regions and the intensification of marine resource exploitation have rendered the traditional extensive development model of the marine economy incompatible with the principles of conservation, resource intensification, and recycling. Issues such as the depletion of fishery resources and the deterioration of the marine ecological environment have emerged [2], significantly impeding the sustainable development of marine fisheries. Addressing these challenges has become an urgent global concern within the realm of fishery economy development” (lines 44-56)
At what point in the paragraph do you switch from China to the world?
Fourth, you appear to assume that Taiwan is part of China:
“the scope of this study is limited to the coastal areas of the mainland, and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are not included in the study” (lines 249-250).
You must delete the word ‘Taiwan’ in this sentence to avoid the charge of engaging in pro-Chinese propaganda.
Fifth, you claim that the provincial governments issue regulations that improve the environmental performance of coastal fisheries:
“Environmental regulation has a positive effect on the ecological efficiency of marine fisheries, with an impact coefficient of 0.0463, and has passed the 10% significance test. Under the background of the current ecological civilization construction and green development, the coastal provincial governments pay more and more attention to the protection of the ecological environment of marine fishery waters, and attach importance to the improvement of environmental quality. Environmental regulation can directly and strongly manage and restrict the unreasonable discharge of marine fishery enterprises, and urge them to consider the cost of environmental pollution and other stakeholders while obtaining the economic benefits of marine fishery. Reasonable environmental regulation can stimulate the new demand of marine fishery related enterprises, R&D bias green technology innovation, improve the level of cleaner production technology, pollution treatment technology upgrading, indirectly improve the marine fishery ecological environment” (lines 562-574).
But this is generalisation and assertion, not empirical evidence. Can you give concrete examples of provincial regulations that have actually improved the eco-efficiency of marine fisheries? In my opinion, you are too focused on statistical methods and ignore the need for empirical evidence.
Sixth, the use of jargon throughout the paper makes reading and understanding difficult. For example, what is meant bv the following passage?
“Overall, the coastal zonal distribution characteristics are not conducive to the development of marine fishery industry agglomeration” (lines 598-600).
Surely you can make your meaning clearer by avoiding the use of jargon? One of the most important characteristics of a good paper is that its statements are immediately intelligible to the reader. In this paper, jargon sometimes gets in the way of such clarity.
Seventh, you refer to ‘polarisation” between the high eco-efficiency of some of the 11 cases and the low eco-efficiency of others, but it is unclear whether you regard polarisation as a bad thing or a good thing. For example, the following sentence suggests polarisation is a bad thing (though we are not told why):
“The results show that: (1) The eco-efficiency of marine fishery in China increased during 2011-2020, but the polarization trend between high-efficiency and low-efficiency regions was obvious (lines 17-19)
But the following passage implies polarisation is a good thing:
“But the polarization trend of high efficiency and low efficiency has not been improved” (lines 594-595)
Eighth, some of the policy recommendations in the Conclusion seem to come out of the blue, with no relation to previous analysis. For example, the following paragraph refers to biomedicine, medicine, entertainment, culture and education:
“In the secondary industry, extend the industrial chain, based on high-tech development of modern materials, biomedicine, health food and other high value-added industries. In the tertiary industry, build a cold chain logistics network, improve transportation and marketing efficiency, and form a whole-process information interaction pattern with traceability at the beginning and traceability at the end. Make full use of modern media and e-commerce technology, continue to cultivate leisure fishery, deeply explore local characteristics, organically combine global tourism resources, develop rich service content such as entertainment, health care, culture and education, weaken the consumption dependence on resources and environment, and enrich the ecological connotation of the industry” (lines 635-644).
How can you justify such policy recommendations without any previous analysis of them?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
First, again I'd like to thank the authors for their great effort made to improve the manuscript considering the suggestions of the 3 reviewers (including me). However, although the authors provided new paragraphs as a discussion (Lines 622 - 664), in my opinion the manuscript still needs a real scientific discussion. This is clear when we observe that almost all references (48 citations out of 50) were used in the introduction and material and methods (2 citations in results section) and nothing in discussion.
The discussion needs to be just that - a discussion. It isn’t enough to simply rehash your results or rewrite a new introduction as a discussion (or a mix of both). Your discussion is, in short, the answer to the question “what do my results mean?” The discussion section of the manuscript should come after the results section and before the conclusion (Be careful, you placed it after conclusion. The section should be discussion and conclusion). It should relate back directly to the questions posed in your introduction and contextualize your results within the literature you have covered in your literature review. So, you need to situate your research in the context of previous studies, draw out the practical implications of your own research, address limitations, and suggest areas for future study. All in the light of previous studies even by comparing your results to similar case studies in other countries.
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Author Response
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