PONE-D-24-41259Paving the Way for Rural Revitalization: Empirical Analysis of the ‘Sihao Rural Road Policy’ and Transport Mode Choice in Inner Mongolia, ChinaPLOS ONE

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Hironori Kato, Dr. Eng.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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This work was supported by the Inner Mongolia Open University Special Project, "Research on the Impact of 'Sihao Rural Roads' Construction on Rural Economy in Inner Mongolia" [grant number IMOU-SSR2302].

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: Yes

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: - Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to review this interesting paper. The paper’s value is to assess the effects of a rural road program on people’s travel behaviors after rural road improvement. The following could be addressed to strengthen the discussions in the paper and help readers’ understanding.

- Please ensure that the paper should be proofread carefully during revision for second review.

- 2.1. Please clarify why this paper needs to focus on travel behaviors when you measure the impact of “Sihao Rural Road.” This explanation is needed to justify your 3 key questions in Section 4.1.

- Please include the potential effects of the relatively small sample size (127 households) on the overall modeling results, probably in Section 5. Furthermore, please provide challenges you faced during the data collection, which resulted in the removal of 73 sample households.

- 3.3. Please describe briefly each village's socio-economic characteristics and road density. In the modeling exercise, village-level variables were not included. Villages might be influential factors to people's livelihoods and travel behavioral patterns, however, the study villages' differences are not detailed other than whether the Sihao Rural Road program has been applied or not.

- 4.1.

a. Please add the discussion on whether any other government programs or policies or any infrastructure development projects were implemented in parallel with the Sihao Rural Road program. If any of the programs/policies/projects existed, please explain how you eliminated those programs/policies’ effects on the variables for this paper, particularly income level, agricultural sectors, health conditions, education, and travel modal ownership.

b. The information in Table 2 does not support the descriptive explanation of the sample in Section 4.1. Please check the internal linkages. Major items are pointed out below for your consideration.

c. Please add the discussion on the average and mean income and the economic dependency on the agriculture sector of the study country and each study village, as these factors are influential to people’s decision to obtain transport means, particularly motorized ones. Also, the discussion will substantiate “the sample is primarily composed of low- to middle-income households” after Table 2.

d. Please provide statical information in the table to support “Education data reveal that 37.01% of respondents….primary school education.”

e. “Average” and “mean” are mixed among the table and main texts. Please ensure consistency.

f. Please describe the average market prices of major transport means in the country and, if data is available, each village.

g. How did you consider villages' influences? You may include a dummy variable representing each village at modelling exercises. Furthermore, the descriptive statistics in Table 2 can be divided for each village, which should be possible as the total sample number is 127.

- 4.2. It is interesting that the rural road policy would negatively impact people’s car ownership. However, the interpretation of modeling results should be carefully made. Please include the discussion of potential external factors, such as prices or market conditions of cars, development of public transportation or shared transportation services, and so on. The discussion is needed to support your finding (within the studied rural context, higher-income households might have better access to alternative modes of transportation, or they might reside in areas where car ownership is less necessary due to better connectivity or availability of services) and need for complementary strategies as described in the last paragraph in this section. Also, I observe a potential contradiction with the implication in Section 4.3 (Car ownership further amplifies this effect by providing the means to travel further). Please check internal consistency.

- 4.4. Will you add the roles of electric bicycles in people’s lives in the country and people’s motivations to buy them? Electric bicycles are focused too much in this section, but you may have some ideas to justify this. One reason for the potential unclarity of this section is the absence of each travel mode’s role in people’s lives in the country, and another reason is that “motorized mode” is not clearly defined in the paper’s contexts (sometimes. I read that “motorized mode” means only car, but not always). Please give an in-depth analysis of each travel mode. This ambiguity makes the last paragraph difficult to read and the conclusion statement in Section 5.

Reviewer #2: In comparing the studies in the four villages, it is undeniable that the differences in the transportation behavior of the people in these villages are due to conditions other than the presence or absence of the SHRR Policy.The SEM and the Descrete choice model framework and its thin description of the results do not allow us to judge the validity of this model and results. Overall, the simplicity of the survey makes it difficult to conclude the impact of the SHRR Policy from this alone.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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<p>Paving the Way for Rural Revitalization: Empirical Analysis of the ‘Sihao Rural Road Policy’ and Transport Mode Choice in Inner Mongolia, China

PONE-D-24-41259R1

Dear Dr. Bao,

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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Kind regards,

Hironori Kato, Dr. Eng.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

Both reviewers recommended accept. Congratulations for acceptance.

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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: No

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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: Principally, the revised manuscript is well-written technically.

However, proofreading throughout the publication is still considered necessary prior to publication.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: No

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