PONE-D-23-36493Research on the Economic Effects of Housing Support Expenditures under the Perspective of Consumption Heterogeneity: Evidence from ChinaPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Tang,

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PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Since both the reviewers have serious concerns about the presentation of the paper, authors are suggested to go over the suggestions very carefully. 

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Abstract

1.The research contributions of the paper should be articulated more clearly. The abstract is not representative of the content and contributions of the paper. The abstract does not seem to properly convey the rigor of research.

2. Aside from the aim stated in the title, the research gap and the goals of the research are not specified which leads to the reader missing the significance of the research.

3. Some conjunctions have incorrect usage.

4. The abstract is too long and needs to be streamlined.

Introduction

5. The introduction section is detailed, but needs a significant amount of reorganization. It could be strengthened by adding more recent references.

6. Please add as sentence or two to clearly recap how your study differs from what has already been done in literature to ascertain the contributions more strongly

7. More explanation is needed for where there is a research gap and what the goals of the research are. The research gap and the goals of the research are not explained in detail which leads to the reader missing the significance of the research.

8. The research idea should be linked to multiple problems the research is trying to address so that the findings have relevance.

9. The introduction is too long, and it mainly introduces the history of China's housing market rather than the significance of research. It needs to be rewritten.

10. The introduction needs to provide more background information

11. The author needs to clearly point out existing knowledge gaps or conflicting research results in the literature

12. At the end of the introduction, it is best for the author to clearly state the research objectives and the questions that the research aims to answer.

Literature review

13. Section 2.1.1 is not related to the research of the manuscript. I suggest linking this section to the housing market or housing consumption.

14. A research paper is not a graduation thesis, and the author needs to describe the research content of the manuscript clearly, rather than writing all the content. Sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 have no connection to the research topic of the manuscript.

15. Sources are out of date. More recent studies (2020-2023) should be included. Also, it should lead up to the research questions in a logical manner.

16. Please discuss learning theories and tie them to both, the research gap addressed by the paper as well as to the factors in the research model.

17.The literature review is insufficient in its addressal of the research gap and research model. It not only needs to be expanded in length, but also in terms of the quality of the content.

18. I don't understand the meaning of section 2.2, is it related to the research content of the manuscript?

19. The content of section 2.3 needs to be reorganized, and the description of the content is very unclear.

20. A suggested approach is to present very specific research questions and then tie the literature review to these questions.

Variable setting

21. Some sentences are too long and very unclear. I suggest the author reorganize the language and change the long sentences to short ones.

22. I suggest changing the descriptive statistics. Mean and standard deviation may not be reliable indicators for some of the non-continuous outcome variables measured. It would be better to add inter-quartile range.

23. The methodology section needs more details and a drastic revision.

24. The reason for using specific analysis is not clearly mentioned. Justification for using a specific methodology or instrument will make it more understandable. Adding more details in this section can give more clarity to the readers.

25. The methodology used should be justified in the article in the light of the research questions (i.e. why is the chosen methodology the best approach to answer the research questions).

Discussion

26. Improve the discussion section to better ascertain what is unique / novel about your findings

27. Explain in detail how the article contributes to new knowledge in the domain.

28. This section needs to be re-written keeping in mind the research questions.

29. The value of the research to the academician and the practitioner should be expressed in an unambiguous manner.

30. The generalizability of the findings must be discussed.

Conclusion

31. Update the conclusion to include the newly formulated theoretical contributions.

32. Summarize the key results in a compact form and re-emphasize their significance.

33. Summarize how the article contributes to new knowledge in the domain.

Reviewer #2: This study empirically investigates how government housing support spending affects urban families' overall and consumption-structured consumption using panel data at the province level.

The salient features of the current study are:

• The significance of the study is intelligibly highlighted

• The research problem is genuine and has regional and local appeal for welfare outcomes

• The research gap is well-identified and bridged

• The theoretical framework is constructed on simple but sound and pertinent theories of economics

• Operational definitions of the variables used in the model are very clear and their measurements (and units of measurement) are appropriate

• The results are logically interpreted and discussed in comparison with the previously conducted relevant studies

To further improve the quality of the manuscript, the following suggestions are proposed:

1. The abstract is too long, especially, the part of the abstract presenting the study's findings. So, it must be shortened. The last two sentences concluding the abstract are confusing and, hence, need to be clarified.

2. On page 4 (lines 161-162) clarify the sentence: “Beneficial increase in local residents' economic activity [26]”.

3. On page 6 (lines 242-253): use the punctuation and that of the sentence case appropriately.

4. On page 10 (lines 383-384): clarify the sentence: “This paper will be removed from the sample of the Shanghai Municipality, Tibet Autonomous 384 Region, as more data is missing.”

5. Justify, in tables 7, 8, and 9, for GMM estimation, why and how each explained variable is split into two.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Research on the Economic Effects of Housing Support Expenditures under the Perspective of Consumption Heterogeneity: Evidence from China

PONE-D-23-36493R1

Dear Dr. Tang,

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.

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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,

Muhammad Khalid Bashir, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors need to address the minor comments / suggestions of reviewer 1

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. 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: * Is the data on the construction of guaranteed housing construction in China so outdated? Don't you have the latest data?

* Line 24-28, what do these sentences mean?

* Why use logarithmic data? Tables 2 and 3 require raw data.

Reviewer #2: The authors have revised the manuscript according to the concerns raised.

Details of the revisions can be found in Lines 9-21, 75-135, 137-171, 180-186, and Tables 7-9, where they have reorganized, re-written, and clarified.

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7. 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

Reviewer #2: Yes: Tusawar Iftikhar Ahmad

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