PONE-D-22-16858A study of the impact of land transfer decisions on household income in rural ChinaPLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: The paper focuses on a contemporary and timely topic, namely the land transfer issues in rural China. This research area is particularly interesting in a society where the communism and capitalism exist parallel, and the question of land ownership is essential in societal terms. So, the originality of the paper is not questionable.

The abstract is well written and the title reflects the content. The introduction is appropriate, setting the topic into the context and highlights the research problem. Also, some (very few) literature review can be found here. However, no separate literature review (in fact, no literature review at all) was written in the manuscript. I recommend to establish a sound literature review where also the experiences of transition countries could be highlighted (besides the processing of the basic contemporary literature). For this purposes I recommend to include:

https://jcea.agr.hr/en/issues/article/92

https://doi.org/10.1080/08974438.2013.833567

http://agro.icm.edu.pl/agro/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-d39237c0-404d-4c36-a585-cf76c45b74a8/c/Magda_Vasa.pdf

http://ea21journal.world/index.php/ea-v168-09/

http://ea21journal.world/index.php/ea-v170-03/

The methodology is well selected and applied, I find the toolset and datasets excellent.

The results are supported by the methodology and provides us a very good understanding of the investigated problem. The conclusions are clear and acceptable.

The limitations of the research are not highlighted.

Reviewer #2: The topic of the paper is relevant and very interesting. Authors used a wide range of international literature sources and cited them correctly. Most part of them are from the last few years. The authors highlighted the importance of measures to improve the distribution of land resources and achieve moderation in China. With their research, they proved that land transfer plays an irreplaceable role in fully validating the social and economic value of land. They used official data from China Family Panel Studies, to which matching methodology was applied.

They illustrated results by using clear tables, but in some cases probably figures would have been more illustrative. I appreciate their findings and results.

Suggestions:

1. Please clarify the following sentence, because I could not understand numbers:

“. According to FAO's World Agricultural Census in 81 countries (representing 2/3 of the world's population and 38% of the world's land available for cultivation), about 73%, 85% and 95% of farmland is under 1, 2 and 5 hectares respectively.”

2. I think you will have to use capita instead of capital:

“…land per capital in the world…”

3. Please clarify the following sentence, because I could not understand numbers:

4. “…finally obtained the tracking data for a sample of 7,913 rural households in 2018, including 6475 households are in the land flow-out group, 7420 households are in the land flow-in group and 5982 land non-flow households.”

5. I suggest to write few sentences bellow the following subchapter:

“2.3. Variable selection”

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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A study of the impact of land transfer decisions on household income in rural China

PONE-D-22-16858R1

Dear Dr. Wang,

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.

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Kind regards,

László Vasa, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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