Empirical evidence on factors influencing farmers’ administrative burden: A structural equation modeling approach

Christian Ritzel; Gabriele Mack; Marco Portmann; Katja Heitkämper; Nadja El Benni

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0241075

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJune 12, 2020
19 Aug 2020 Decision Letter - Asim Zia, Editor PONE-D-20-17818 Empirical evidence on factors influencing farmers’ administrative burden: A structural equation modeling approach PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Ritzel, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Methodological issues raised by Reviewer 1 need to be addressed. In addition, the discussion section needs to explain the limitations of the measurement and structural components of the structural equation models and discuss possible ways to improve model fit in future studies. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 03 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. 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In addition, the discussion section needs to explain the limitations of the measurement and structural components of the structural equation models and discuss possible ways to improve model fit in future studies. Journal requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. For this observational, survey-based study, please avoid causal-sounding language (such as 'impact', 'effect', or 'influence') when reporting associations. 3. In your Data Availability statement, you have not specified where the minimal data set underlying the results described in your manuscript can be found. 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Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Partly ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: This study sought to examine the relationship between psychological and compliance costs and perceived administrative burden related to direct payments for Swiss farmers. This is a well written paper in need of just minor revisions/clarifications. These suggested changes are provided below. One minor issue is that direct payments is not exactly defined. While it may be painfully obvious to the authors what this means, it would be helpful to outside readers less familiar with Swiss farming to clarify what is meant by direct payments. The authors state that one of the added benefits of their study is that they are able to refine the framework of administrative burden on Swiss farmers by testing three theoretical models. However, it is not made clear which model the authors determine to be the most appropriate for explaining these interrelationships. The authors also state on page 13 that their specific hypotheses are tested separately (via models 1-3). However, the model fit criteria in Table 1 is exactly the same across all 3 models. Additionally, in the S1 Figure, the title is “Path diagram of the applied structural equation model”, these two things lead me to believe that a single model (displayed in the S1 Figure) was fit, rather than three separate models. If three separate models were in fact examined, while it is important to interpret the results from these various models, it would be helpful if the researchers clarified their conclusion about which model fit best and was the driving force behind their recommendations to policy makers regarding the need to decrease psychological costs and thus the perceived administrative burdens of direct payment for Swiss farmers. Perhaps it would be most appropriate to include the full path diagram for this final model (including path coefficients, factor loadings, correlations, etc.) rather than the current path diagram included in the S1 Figure. X4 is missing from the path diagram in the S1 Figure. One final concern I have is with the specification of the measurement model. I am interested to further understand the authors’ decision to constrain one of the loading for each factor to 1 for model identification rather than estimating each of these factor loadings and imposing other constraints. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241075.r001
Revision 1
14 Sep 2020 Author Response Response to Reviewer Reviewer #1: This study sought to examine the relationship between psychological and compliance costs and perceived administrative burden related to direct payments for Swiss farmers. This is a well written paper in need of just minor revisions/clarifications. These suggested changes are provided below. • One minor issue is that direct payments is not exactly defined. While it may be painfully obvious to the authors what this means, it would be helpful to outside readers less familiar with Swiss farming to clarify what is meant by direct payments. Response: Many thanks for this comment! Right at the beginning of the introduction, we now provide a short definition on direct payments. • The authors state that one of the added benefits of their study is that they are able to refine the framework of administrative burden on Swiss farmers by testing three theoretical models. However, it is not made clear which model the authors determine to be the most appropriate for explaining these interrelationships. Response: The AIC, BIC and likelihood-ratio test values do not differ across model variants. Therefore, (unfortunately) comparative fit measures do not allow determining the most appropriate model (all models “work” equally well). • The authors also state on page 13 that their specific hypotheses are tested separately (via models 1-3). However, the model fit criteria in Table 1 is exactly the same across all 3 models. Additionally, in the S1 Figure, the title is “Path diagram of the applied structural equation model”, these two things lead me to believe that a single model (displayed in the S1 Figure) was fit, rather than three separate models. Response: We re-estimated the three different models to get sure that we provide the correct AIC, BIC and likelihood-ratio test values. However, the AIC, BIC and likelihood-ratio test values still do not differ across model variants. To avoid confusion, we now present the three different applied models separately in S1 Figure. • If three separate models were in fact examined, while it is important to interpret the results from these various models, it would be helpful if the researchers clarified their conclusion about which model fit best and was the driving force behind their recommendations to policy makers regarding the need to decrease psychological costs and thus the perceived administrative burdens of direct payment for Swiss farmers. Perhaps it would be most appropriate to include the full path diagram for this final model (including path coefficients, factor loadings, correlations, etc.) rather than the current path diagram included in the S1 Figure. Response: As already mentioned above, unfortunately, comparative fit measures do not differ across model variants. Therefore, we are not able to conclude which model is the most appropriate one & we do not have a “final” model. • X4 is missing from the path diagram in the S1 Figure. Response: Thanks for this hint! We have added x4 to the figure. • One final concern I have is with the specification of the measurement model. I am interested to further understand the authors’ decision to constrain one of the loading for each factor to 1 for model identification rather than estimating each of these factor loadings and imposing other constraints. Response: Stata automatically constraints one estimator (factor loading) of the measurement model to the value of 1 (unstandardized coefficients). Unfortunately, by using gsem, it is not possible to report standardized coefficients as it is possible by using sem. By choosing standardized coefficients in sem, no estimator of the measurement model is constraint to 1. In our opinion, the impossibility of reporting standardized coefficients is one «disadvantage» of the gsem command. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: ResponsetoReviewer.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241075.r002
8 Oct 2020 Decision Letter - Asim Zia, Editor Empirical evidence on factors influencing farmers’ administrative burden: A structural equation modeling approach PONE-D-20-17818R1 Dear Dr. Ritzel, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Asim Zia, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241075.r003
Formally Accepted
13 Oct 2020 Acceptance Letter - Asim Zia, Editor PONE-D-20-17818R1 Empirical evidence on factors influencing farmers’ administrative burden: A structural equation modeling approach Dear Dr. Ritzel: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Professor Asim Zia Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241075.r004

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