The impact of agricultural water salvation investment on economics development: Evidence from Eastern China.

Agricultural water salvation is the lifeblood of the national economy and is of great significance to the high-quality development of the region. In order to maximize the economic assistances of agricultural water salvation investment, this article focuses on panel data from 2005 to 2019 in 14 provinces in Eastern China, this research constructs an economic development evaluation index system from five dimensions: innovative development, coordinated development, green development, open development and shared development, and uses dynamic panel model to explore the influence relationship and path of Eastern Agricultural water salvation investment on economic development. The results represent that: there is a significant non-linear effect between agricultural water salvation investment and economic growth, showing an inverted U-shaped relationship. Which means that with the expansion of agricultural water salvation investment; economic growth has risen first and then declined. At present, the impact of agricultural water salvation investment in the Eastern region on economic development is in the promotion stage of positive and sustained growth. The recommendation of this research will help the state control in the amount of agricultural water salvation investment in the Eastern region, improve the efficiency of agricultural water salvation investment, and provide support in decision making.

1. Introduction

Investment in agricultural water salvation construction, as a controlling element that promotes national economic growth, protects people’s lives and the ecological environment, occupies a very important position in the relatively backward economically Eastern regions. After the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the central government’s investment in agricultural water salvation infrastructure has reached a new level. In the late 1980s, in response to an overheated economy and unprecedented inflation rates, China’s leaders were forced to adopt a set of stringent constructional macroeconomic policies (Naughton 1995) [1]. As a consequence, after China experienced two years of high inflation, economic growth slowed sharply from 1989 to 1990. The annual growth rate of GDP from 1989 to 1990 was about 4% only, the lowest rate over the entire reform period. After the brief slowdown period, the government responded promptly and implemented a series of policy measures to increase both domestic private and public investments as well as foreign direct investment (FDI). Policies to reticulate the economy included providing a better market environment for private sector development, fiscal and financial expansion, the devaluation of the exchange rate, trade liberalization and the expansion of special economic zones and higher agricultural prices (World Bank 1997) [2]. In accordance with the requirements and instructions of the Party Central Committee, the Eastern region has seized the opportunity and the scale of investment in agricultural water salvation infrastructure has increased significantly. On the one hand, it is to promote the economy development and improve people’s livelihood, similarly, it is also to solve the prominent contradiction between economic and social development and agricultural water supply and demand, and to achieve sustainable development of agricultural water resources and economic society [3]. Therefore, studying the impact of agricultural water salvation investment on economic growth is of great significance for optimizing the structure of agricultural water salvation investment and maximizing the economic benefits of agricultural water salvation investment in the eastern region.

2. Brief literature review

While successful technology transition helps China to increase its agricultural productivity, China may face a great challenge in coming years to grips with water scarcity. Water shortages and increasing competition from industry and domestic use do not provide much hope for large gains in the areas under irrigation and the total output from irrigation expansion (Wang and Cai, 2002) [4, 5]. Several domestic scholars have launched many discussions on the relationship between agricultural water salvation investment and economic growth. Xu Bo and Li Wei [6] measured the contribution of agricultural water salvation investment to economic growth and found that agricultural water salvation construction investment has the most direct impact on the primary industry. Koutinas and Peeve (2005) [7] used the general Solow production functions to estimate that agricultural water salvation construction investment has a 10% stimulating effect on GDP growth. Chen Yuanyuan, [8] investigate the relationship between economic development and agricultural water salvation construction investment in the Eastern region from 2002 to 2016, and found that economic development has a significant long-term positive impact on investment in Agricultural water salvation construction. Huang and Rozelle (1995) [9] established a dynamic multiplier analysis model and concluded that the contribution rate of Guangdong’s Agricultural water salvation investment to GDP from 2000 to 2017 was 0.65%-2.40%. Chen Ling and Wang Qing [10] found that the completed investment in agricultural water salvation construction has a long-term co-integration relationship with the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery. Existing literature mainly focuses on the discussion of the direction of the influence of agricultural water salvation investment on economic growth and the influence coefficient.

Fazakas, L. (2020) [11] examined those processes that directed to the construction of a modern water and sewerage network in Kolozsvár. In his research, he examined the economic features of the project, more precisely whether the city’s economic operators supported the establishment of a reliable water supply and sewerage system or they actively opposed it. Furthermore, he outlined the consequences of the 1893 cholera epidemic, which, although it was the last and least virulent epidemic in Kolozsvár, had a major impact on the construction of the sanitation system. Molle and Closas (2020) [12] examined in details the limited effectiveness of national groundwater policies that has been witnessed, emphasizing its political implications. They also analyzed numerous aspects of weak monitoring and enforcement were considered from the viewpoint of the political economy of groundwater economies. Zhao et al. (2020) [13] examined long-term community resilience, which privileges a long-view look at chronic, slow-moving issues affecting communities which attract the attention of researchers and policymakers. To better understand the utility assistance landscape in the Phoenix metropolitan region as a donor to heat resilience among susceptible communities, they formed a joint team of individuals from the university and the Salvation Army and by utilizing exploratory data analysis and advanced spatial analytical methods build a shared understanding of knowledge gaps and verified intuitions. They confirmed that minority groups (African American and Native American) unreasonably require aid.

Nagachevska and Zakharchenko (2014) [14] studied the challenges connected with attracting foreign investments into the agricultural sector of the Ukrainian economy as well as modification of forms of international investments are actual due to the instant needs of realization of innovative development, technological upgrading and strengthening of agricultural sector attractiveness on the world market. They outlined that, Government investment policy in the agricultural sector is observed to combine the resource base and the sources of investment. Furthermore, they provide recommendations how to expand the financing mechanisms for venture projects in the agricultural sector involving angel investors.

Nkamleu, G. B. (2020) [15] examined the theoretical development of watershed management within the context of an exploit research program operating in the highlands of eastern Africa and explored in detail the impressions of “participation” and “integration” in watershed management, and addressed the theoretical and methodological extents of the terms which was discussed in the context of a watershed implementation process, illustrative how “watershed issues” were defined by local users, that how “stakeholders” were defined with respect to those issues, and how contribution and combination may be operationalized in practice.

There are few literatures on dynamic behavior information and panel data that can solve the problem of missing variables. Therefore, based on panel data, this article uses a dynamic model to study the impact of Agricultural water salvation investment on economic development in the Eastern region, and quantifies the contribution of Agricultural water salvation investment to economic and social development. This helps to understand the current situation of Agricultural water salvation investment in the Eastern region and promote the sustainable economic and social development of the Eastern region. China’s rapid economic growth and the rise in the nation’s overall wealth have been accompanied by widening income inequality. Regional income disparity has been expanding since the 1980s (Cai et al. 2002; World Bank 2002) [7, 16]. Eastern China has grown faster than Central and Western China. The rural reforms increased rural incomes at a faster pace than urban incomes during the early 1980s.

This led to a decline of the urban to rural income ratio from 2.57 in 1978 to 1.86 in 1985. However, after the one-time impact of the rural institutional reforms was exhausted, urban income growth has been consistently higher than that of the rural sector. By 2004, per capita income in the urban areas was 3.21 times that in the rural areas (NSBC 2005) [17]. Rising income disparity within the rural areas has also emerged. For example, the Gini coefficients in rural areas increased from 0.24 in 1980 to 0.31 in 1990 and to 0.37 in 2003 (NSBC-Rural 2004) [18]. While the progress in agricultural and rural development has been notable, there are also many lessons and major challenges ahead. With the transition from a planned to a market-oriented rural economy mostly complete, China’s main challenge has shifted to broader development issues. In the coming years, the development process will have to be fundamentally different from the efforts in previous times when meeting the nation’s food needs, poverty reduction and economic growth were the main goals. Recently, China surpassed Japan as the world’s leading pesticide consumer. Intensive fertilizer and pesticide use can have several adverse effects and concerns about contamination of farm produce and endangering of the agro-ecosystem as well as human health are rising. Environmental stresses have also been occurring such as soil erosion, Stalinization, the loss of cultivated land and decline in land quality (Huang and Rozelle 1995) [9]. [1] show that although China did not record a decline in total cultivated land from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, average potential productivity of cultivated land, or bio-productivity, declined by 2.2% over the same period. In the meantime, a large decline in cultivated land was recorded after the late 1990s due to industrial development and urban expansion.

They were often used in the research of growth, mortality and exploitation of fishery species or even their population structure. Data of length and weight were more important for species whose information of age structure was limited (Sparre & Venema, 1998) [19]. Length frequency data could be used to fit and calculate biological parameters, age structure, population size, mortality (Kohler, 1995) [20] and population evaluation (Salarpouri et al., 2018; Blackwell et al., 2000) [21, 22] of aquatic organisms. In the East China Sea, the habitat of many aquatic organisms in the continental shelf waters has been destroyed and the fishery resources have been on constant decline due to excessive fishing intensity and persistent pollution [23].

3. General situation of agricultural water salvation investment

3.1 Data sources

The data in this article are mainly derived from the 2005–2019 China Agricultural Water Salvation Yearbook, China Agricultural Water Salvation Statistical Yearbook, China Statistical Yearbook available at: http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2020/indexeh.htm, Statistical Bulletin on National Economic and Social Development available at http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202102/t20210228_1814177.html, Agricultural in china available at; https://www.caas.cn/en/agriculture/agriculture_in_china/ and statistical yearbooks of 14 provinces in the Eastern region and their portal websites public information.

3.2 Agricultural water salvation investment in the Eastern region

3.2.1 Analysis of agricultural water salvation investment scale

Agricultural water salvation construction, as a key support area of national infrastructure construction, is one of the key investment directions of government financial funds [8, 10, 24, 25]. In terms of investment arrangements, the state pays attention to the central and Eastern regions, especially the Eastern regions. The details of the completion of the Eastern Agricultural water salvation investment are shown in Fig 1.

Fig 1

Completed amount and growth rate of agricultural water salvation investment in the Eastern region.

3.2.2 Analysis of sources of agricultural water salvation investment

With the continuous expansion of Agricultural water salvation investment, the sources of Agricultural water salvation investment have gradually shown diversified characteristics. By categorizing the amount of Agricultural water salvation investment completed in 2005–2019 according to the source of funds, it is found that government investment has always occupied the main position, of which the central government has the largest proportion. Enterprise and private investment, and domestic loans, as new forces, also account for about one-seventh of each year. The use of foreign capital, others, and bonds account for a relatively small proportion, with an annual share of less than 10%. Fig 2 shows the proportion of different sources of funds in each year.

Fig 2

Distribution of agricultural water salvation investment sources in the Eastern region.

3.2.3 Analysis of agricultural water salvation investment use

Based on the data of Agricultural water salvation investment completed in the Eastern region from 2005 to 2019, it is divided into flood control engineering, Agricultural water supply engineering, irrigation engineering, soil and Agricultural water conservation and ecological engineering, Agricultural water logging engineering, hydropower engineering and preliminary work according to purpose. The specific situation is shown in Fig 3.

Fig 3

Distribution map of agricultural water salvation investment by purpose in the Eastern region.

3.3 Economic development in the Eastern region

With the implementation of the Eastern development strategy, new historical achievements have been made in the economic and social development of the Eastern region, which has played an important supporting role in national development [9, 26, 27]. The Eastern region has entered a period of rapid development, and some provinces have been in the forefront of the country’s economic indicators for many years. However, compared with the eastern region, the overall level of economic development in the Eastern region is relatively lagging, with its GDP accounting for only one-fifth of the country’s relatively small, although the disposable income of urban residents has been growing, there is still a large gap between the national average and the disposable income, as shown in Fig 4.

Fig 4

The economic development of the Eastern region from 2005 to 2019.

The Eastern region has entered a period of rapid development, and some provinces have been in the forefront of the country’s economic indicators for many years. However, compared with the eastern region, the overall level of economic development in the Eastern region is relatively lagging, with its GDP accounting for only one-fifth of the country’s total output, and relatively small investment in fixed assets, and urban residents are at their disposal Although income has been growing, there is still a big gap between it and the national average. Therefore, in the future, the Eastern region should still be the main target of national policy support and investment tilt.

4. Variable selection

4.1 The explained variable

The explained variable is the level of economic development. This article quantifies the economic level of the Eastern provinces from five dimensions: innovative development, coordinated development, green development, development, and shared development, and establishes an indicator system [10, 28, 29], the results are shown in Table 1. It can be seen from the table that the indicator system consists of 5 first-level indicators, 14 second-level indicators, and 20 third-level indicators. In order to eliminate the differences in dimension, order of magnitude, and orientation among the various indicators, following the suggestion of Blagojevi´c et al., 2020 [23, 30, 31] this paper adopts the entropy method to standardize the selected indicator data. The forward index is processed by formula (1), and the reverse index is processed by formula (2).

Table 1

Indicator system of economic development level.

Object level	Primary targets	Secondary indicators	Three-level indicators	Unit	Direction
Economic development	Innovation and Development	Innovation Input	Research and experimental development expenditures	billion yuan	+
			Full-time equivalent of research and experimental development personnel	Ten thousand peopleyear	+
		Innovation Outputs	Number of domestic patent applications accepted	item	+
			Technical turnover	billion yuan	+
	Coordinated Development	Industrial development coordination	Industry rationalization index	%	-
			Industrial Structure Advanced Index	%	+
		Urban-rural economic harmonious	Consumption ratio of urban and rural residents	-	-
			Income ratio of urban and rural residents	-	-
	Green Development	Green Life	forest coverage	%	+
			Harmless treatment rate of domestic garbage	%	+
		Energy consumption	Total city natural gas supply	billion cubic meters	-
		Environmental management	Urban green area	million hectares	+
	Open Development	Foreign trade	The proportion of total import and export in GDP	%	+
		Utilize foreign capital	The proportion of foreign direct investment in GDP	%	+
		Tourism openness	International tourism receipts	One hundred million dollars	+
	Shared Development	Economic shared development	per capita GDP	yuan/people	+
			Urbanization rate	%	+
		Social shared development	staff in health institutions	human	+
			Education funding	million yuan	+
			volume of passenger traffic	million people	+

Among them, xij represents the value in the ith row and jth column in the original data, xmax represents the maximum value in the jth column in the original data, and xmin represents the minimum value in the jth column in the original data. See (3), (4), (5) for specific calculation formulas, and it is stipulated that when qij = 0, limqij; ln qij = 0

Among them, qij represents the proportion of uij in the comprehensive sum of the data; si represents the index information entropy; wi represents the index weight, the number of columns n = 14, and the number of indicators m = 20. Based on the entropy weight method, the weight of each indicator is calculated, and the comprehensive economic development level of each province is obtained. Based on the entropy weight method, the weight of each indicator is calculated, and the comprehensive economic development level of each province is obtained.

4.2 Core explanatory variables

The core explanatory variables are the agricultural water salvation investment and the square item of agricultural water salvation investment in 14 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the Eastern region.

4.3 Control variables

In order to better describe the explained variables, this article selects human capital, government intervention, urbanization rate, and degree of opening to the outside world as the control variables of this model. The main variables involved in this article include: economic development (Eco), Agricultural water salvation investment (Agricultural water), Agricultural water salvation investment square item (Agricultural water); intermediary variables include: industrial structure (Ind), technological progress (Rd) and resource allocation (Diskl); control Variables include: human capital (Hum), urbanization level (Urb), government intervention (Gov), and degree of openness (Imp). In order to ensure the stability of the data, the logarithmic value of the agricultural water salvation investment and the degree of openness are taken, and the square term of the agricultural water salvation investment is obtained by taking the logarithmic value of the agricultural water salvation investment and then square [11, 22, 32].

4.4 Model development

Based on the endogenous economic growth model, combined with the economic development indicator system, this paper studies the impact of agricultural water salvation investment on economic development and establishes a basic model, as shown in formula (6).

Among them, Ecoit represents the level of economic development of place i in period t, Wit is the amount of Agricultural water salvation investment completed in place i in period t, Xit is other factors that affect economic development in the same period and the same place, ui is the individual disturbance term, and εit is random disturbance items. β0 is the intercept term of the model, β1 is the variable coefficient of Agricultural water salvation investment, the positive and negative coefficients represent the direction of the influence of agricultural water salvation investment on economic development, and the magnitude indicates the degree of influence. In order to improve the accuracy and scientific model, this article optimizes the above basic model as follows:

4.4.1 Dynamic panel model

In order to assess and clarify whether there is a difference in the impact of agricultural water salvation investment on economic development under different investment scales, this paper introduces the square term of agricultural water salvation investment. Economic development is a process of dynamic changes in the economic structure and profound transformation and upgrading. The impact of the previous level on the current development cannot be ignored. In order to better explore the impact of agricultural water salvation investment on economic development, the third-order lag variable of the explained variable is introduced to construct a dynamic Panel model. The optimized model is shown in (7).

In the formula, Ecoit−1、Ecoit−2、Ecoit−3 respectively represent the first, second, and third-order lagging terms of the economic development level, and W_qit is the square term of Agricultural water salvation investment, and the meaning of other variables is the same as Eq 6.

4.4.2 Model robustness test

The robustness of the model has an important impact on the accuracy of the measurement results, and index replacement is a common method to test the robustness of the model Salarpouri et al. 2018 [21], Mukhametzyanov 2020 [33] and Žižović et al. 2020 [34]. The development level of the tertiary industry is one of the important indicators that reflect the level of productivity development of a country or region [31, 33, 35–37]. This article uses the added value of the tertiary industry as a test index for the replacement economic development level [33, 38, 39].

5. Empirical results and discussion

5.1 Analysis of benchmark results

Considering that the relationship between the explained variable and the core explanatory variable may be mutual: agricultural water salvation investment will promote economic development, and economic development will in turn affect the scale of agricultural water salvation investment, so the model may be endogenous. The results of LR test and Wald test both concluded that there is heteroscedasticity between the model disturbance items. In order to improve the accuracy of the regression results, the system GMM method is used to regress the model after the second-order difference of the variables.

The test results of AR(1) and AR(2) in Table 2 show that the model has first-order autocorrelation, but no second-order autocorrelation, and the disturbance term has no autocorrelation. At the same time, the p-values of Sagan’s test are all greater than 0.1, indicating that the selection of instrumental variables is effective. Therefore, it is feasible to use the systematic GMM method to estimate the model.

Table 2

Analysis of the impact of agricultural water salvation investment on economic development.

		(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	Robustness test
Eco(-1)		-0.6685***	-0.6551***	-0.5778***	-0.5808***	-0.6119***	-0.4524***
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)
Eco(-2)		-0.2502**	-0.2468**	-0.2872***	-0.2710**	-0.2794**	-0.2285***
		(0.013)	(0.004)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.009)	(0.000)
Eco(-3)		-0.2686***	-0.2745**	-0.2524*	-0.2279*	-0.1943*	-0.1448
		(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.016)	(0.015)	(0.033)	(0.053)
Agricultural water		0.3276*	0.2949**	0.2028*	0.2535*	0.3297***	0.3615***
		(0.014)	(0.008)	(0.018)	(0.013)	(0.001)	(0.000)
Agricultural water q		-0.0117*	-0.0106*	-0.0073*	-0.0090*	-0.0119***	-0.0149***
		(0.015)	(0.011)	(0.024)	(0.015)	(0.001)	(0.000)
Urb			1.1795*	1.2354*	1.1501*	-3.6883	1.5548*
			(0.021)	(0.017)	(0.036)	(0.847)	(0.042)
Imp				0.0159***	0.0159***	0.0363	0.0060*
				(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.700)	(0.022)
Gov					0.0315	1.0521	0.2879*
					(0.729)	(0.052)	(0.017)
Hum						0.0165***	-45.5774*
						(0.001)	(0.027)
_cons		0.0136***	.01318838***	0.0116***	0.0119***	0.0141***	-0.0079*
		(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.000)	(0.011)
AR(1)		-3.0243	-2.9216	-2.9193	-2.8952	-2.9031	-2.5414
		(0.0025)	(0.0035)	(0.0035)	(0.0038)	(0.0037)	(0.0110)
AR(2)		-0.0652	0.3596	0.5131	0.5373	0.7738	1.2505
		(0.9480)	(0.7191)	(0.6079)	(0.5911)	(0.4390)	(0.2111)
Sargan test		84.47629	102.6454	107.5081	115.7045	132.7714	136.2922
	(0.6722)		(0.7886)	(0.9489)	(0.9483)	(0.8405)	(0.7817)

Note

* p<0.05

** p<0.01

*** p<0.001

The P value of the corresponding statistic is in parentheses

It can be seen from the results that the regression coefficients of the economic development of the three lagging periods are all very significant, indicating that the economic development of the Eastern region will be affected by the previous development level. Further observation of the regression coefficient of agricultural water salvation investment, we found that regardless of the introduction of control variables, the regression coefficient of Agricultural water salvation investment on economic development is positive, and the significance test shows that in the transitional stage of economic growth in Eastern my country, strengthening agricultural water salvation investment to promote Economic development is a viable path choice. For the square term of agricultural water salvation investment, the coefficients are all significantly negative, which shows that with the increase of agricultural water salvation investment, the economy shows a trend of first increase and then decrease, that is, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between agricultural water salvation investment and economic development and these results are in line with Fazakas, L. (2020) [11]. It shows that the role of agricultural water salvation investment in promoting economic growth is conditionally limited, and a reasonable investment scale is the key to giving full play to the economic benefits of agricultural water salvation investment. Once it exceeds the best advantage, it will hinder economic growth. However, at the present stage, the Eastern region is still far from the best point which confirm the findings of Nagachevska, T. V., & Zakharchenko, V. S. (2014) [14].

The rapid development of the Eastern region still requires government investment and policy support. As far as the control variables are concerned, the regression coefficients of human capital, degree of development, and urbanization are all significantly positive, indicating that higher levels of human capital, degree of openness, and urbanization rate are all conducive to economic development. Although the coefficient of government intervention on economic development is positive, its reliability is not high.

5.2 Robustness analysis

Re-regression the value added of the tertiary industry as the explained variable, and the results are shown in Table 2. There is no substantial change in the significance and direction of the regression coefficients, only the value of the coefficient changes. The estimated results still support the conclusion that Agricultural water salvation investment can effectively improve economic development and the relationship between the two is inverted U-shaped, indicating the regression of the model the result is robust.

6. Concluding remarks and suggestions

Using descriptive data statistics, analyzing from the three aspects of GDP, investment in fixed assets, and people’s living standards, it is concluded that the social and economic development of the Eastern region is in a state of continuous growth, but there is a certain gap compared with the eastern region. Some indicators have not reached the national average. Analyzing the current situation and evolution trend of agricultural water salvation investment in the Eastern region from three perspectives of investment scale, investment source and investment purpose, it is found that the total amount of agricultural water salvation investment in the Eastern region has been increasing in the past 14 years. Mainly for irrigation projects, soil and Agricultural water conservation, ecology, and preliminary work have gradually become the focus of investment.

Quantify the economic level of the Eastern provinces from five dimensions, and study the impact of agricultural water salvation investment on economic development. Results demonstrate that there is a significant non-linear effect between Agricultural water salvation investment and economic growth, showing an inverted U-shaped relationship, that is, as the scale of Agricultural water salvation investment expands, economic growth shows a trend of rising first and then falling. It indicates that the expansion of agricultural water salvation investment scale before reaching the optimal scale has a positive impact on economic growth, and more than a certain investment scale will become a factor hindering economic development.

The amount of investment should be controlled to make up for the shortcomings of construction. Give full attention to the government’s supporting and guiding role in agricultural water salvation investment to ensure that various types of agricultural water salvation investment can meet the needs of economic development. Optimize the investment structure and implement budget funds. Pay attention to the gradual transformation of agricultural water salvation investment from traditional power generation and irrigation to agricultural water conservation and ecological and agricultural water salvation information construction, timely estimate the investment structure and demand of agricultural water salvation infrastructure in the province, and continuously improve agricultural water salvation guarantee and service capabilities.

26 Dec 2021

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'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Dragan Pamucar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

1. When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

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. PLOS requires an ORCID iD for the corresponding author in Editorial Manager on papers submitted after December 6th, 2016. Please ensure that you have an ORCID iD and that it is validated in Editorial Manager. To do this, go to ‘Update my Information’ (in the upper left-hand corner of the main menu), and click on the Fetch/Validate link next to the ORCID field. This will take you to the ORCID site and allow you to create a new iD or authenticate a pre-existing iD in Editorial Manager. Please see the following video for instructions on linking an ORCID iD to your Editorial Manager account: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcclfuvtxQ

3. Please amend either the title on the online submission form (via Edit Submission) or the title in the manuscript so that they are identical.

[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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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: First of all, the paper “The Impact of Agricultural Water Salvation Investment on Economic Development: Evidence from Eastern China” aims and scope match those of PLOS ONE, so the paper is adequate for this journal. However based on my opinion it needs substantial improvements to be considered for publication in PLOS ONE. I would suggest a series of changes that in my opinion would improve the paper, in special for the reader.

- I suggest the authors to improve the introduction section. Authors should better highlight the objective of their work and to what extent it contributes to close a gap in the existing literature and/or practice. What is the innovative value of the contribution proposed by the authors?

- In introduction section authors should provide more information about existing economic evaluation index models used in literature and their benefits/weaknesses.

- Why you have used Entropy method for determining criteria weights? Why not CRITIC, BWM, FUCOM or Level Based Weight Assessment (LBWA) methods? These methods should be discussed. The authors need to discuss their contributions compared to those in related papers. The authors must clearly discuss the significance of the research problem in the first section.

- Add separate literature review section. You should provide more recent references published in last two-three years. Remove references published before 2017. I suggest authors to read and discuss the following papers in the revised manuscript: Objective methods for determining criteria weight coefficients: A modification of the CRITIC method. Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 3(2), 149-161; Specific character of objective methods for determining weights of criteria in MCDM problems: Entropy, CRITIC and SD. Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 4(2), 76-105.

- Show step by step algorithm for proposed methodology. You should explain in detail this methodology.

- Explain in more details in the data used in the case study, the data for the testing, the criterion for the accuracy, and others to claim these points.

- Validation section is missing. How we can judge about these results? Comparisons with existing algorithms from the literature is missing.

- The conclusion section seems to rush to the end. The authors will have to demonstrate the impact and insights of the research. The authors need to clearly provide several solid future research directions. Clearly state your unique research contributions in the conclusion section. Add limitations of the model. No bullets should be used in your conclusion section.

Reviewer #2: The Impact of Agricultural Water Salvation Investment on Economic Development: Evidence from Eastern China

Agricultural water salvation may have significant effects on farmers’ livelihood economic development, therefore, it is critical to understand and even quantify the potential impacts of agricultural water salvation investment in local regions. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of agricultural water salvation investment-economic development relations by applying dynamic panel model. Overall, this manuscript carries an important and scientific interesting question, however, I have a couple of concerns with regard to this manuscript.

1 Introduction is very weak. I would like to see how water Salvation Investment affects economic Development, and its specific performance, positive or negative. If it is all positive, what is the significance of the study.

2 1989 was a special year, which the economic slowdown was influenced by foreign policies and not necessarily caused by inflation.

3 I encourage the authors compare with existing results of similar studies in other countries.

4 The manuscript not mentions Highlights.

5 Some numbers should be referenced further.

6 The second part should include methods and data.

7 Line 48, It is suggested to explain in more details on the model. How did you choose these models? And why?

8 This manuscript is missing a section on data collection and how data was applied in the models.

9 The results are very weak, and the results needs to be enriched.

10 Discussion does not really present new insights? compared to others, what are the new findings of your research.

**********

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

Reviewer #2: 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.

23 Mar 2022

Authors' Response to the Editor and Reviewer's Comments

We are very grateful to the Editor and the respected reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions that have much improved the manuscript. In the revised manuscript, we have carefully addressed the comments and suggestions of the reviewers. The following is a summary of the main revisions that we have made in response to the Editor's and reviewers' comments:

Reviewer #1:

First of all, the paper "The Impact of Agricultural Water Salvation Investment on Economic Development: Evidence from Eastern China" aims and scope matches those of PLOS ONE, so the paper is adequate for this journal. However, based on my opinion it needs substantial improvements to be considered for publication in PLOS ONE. I would suggest a series of changes that in my opinion would improve the paper, in special for the reader.

- I suggest the authors to improve the introduction section. Authors should better highlight the objective of their work and to what extent it contributes to close a gap in the existing literature and/or practice. What is the innovative value of the contribution proposed by the authors?

Author Response: Improved the introduction of the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewer. Furthermore, it highlighted the contribution of the current research to the existing literature.

- In introduction section authors should provide more information about existing economic evaluation index models used in literature and their benefits/weaknesses.

Author Response: Provided detailed information about economics evaluation index models used in literature and discussed its advantages and disadvantages in the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewer.

- Why you have used Entropy method for determining criteria weights? Why not CRITIC, BWM, FUCOM or Level Based Weight Assessment (LBWA) methods? These methods should be discussed. The authors need to discuss their contributions compared to those in related papers. The authors must clearly discuss the significance of the research problem in the first section.

Author Response: The entropy method is based on mutual information, and it has advantages over CRITIC, BWM, FUCOM, and LBWA that we can have calculated mutual information even if the parent distribution is not known or if the parent distribution is known but not normal, then still Entropy method is proper whereas, the others are not.

- Add separate literature review section. You should provide more recent references published in last two-three years. Remove references published before 2017. I suggest authors to read and discuss the following papers in the revised manuscript:

1.Objective methods for determining criteria weight coefficients: A modification of the CRITIC method. Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 3(2), 149-161; 2. Specific character of objective methods for determining weights of criteria in MCDM problems: Entropy, CRITIC and SD. Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 4(2), 76-105.

Author Response: Removed references published before 2017 and added fresh references in the revised manuscript. Furthermore, we included all the suggested papers in the revised manuscript.

- Show step by step algorithm for proposed methodology. You should explain in detail this methodology.

Author Response: Explained each step of the proposed methodology in detail in the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewer.

- Explain in more details in the data used in the case study, the data for the testing, the criterion for the accuracy, and others to claim these points.

Author Response: Explained in more details the data used in this research the criteria for accuracy in the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewers.

- Validation section is missing. How we can judge about these results? Comparisons with existing algorithms from the literature is missing.

Author Response: A detail robustness analysis has been carried out for the underline research model, and the results are presented in Table 2 of the revised manuscript.

- The conclusion section seems to rush to the end. The authors will have to demonstrate the impact and insights of the research. The authors need to clearly provide several solid future research directions. Clearly state your unique research contributions in the conclusion section. Add limitations of the model. No bullets should be used in your conclusion section.

Author Response: Demonstrated the impact and insights of the current research in the conclusion section.

Reviewer #2:

The Impact of Agricultural Water Salvation Investment on Economic Development: Evidence from Eastern China

Agricultural water salvation may have significant effects on farmers' livelihood economic development, therefore, it is critical to understand and even quantify the potential impacts of agricultural water salvation investment in local regions. This study aims to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of agricultural water salvation investment-economic development relations by applying dynamic panel model. Overall, this manuscript carries an important and scientific interesting question, however, I have a couple of concerns with regard to this manuscript.

1. Introduction is very weak. I would like to see how water Salvation Investment affects economic Development, and its specific performance, positive or negative. If it is all positive, what is the significance of the study.

Author Response: Improved the introduction of the manuscript in the revised manuscript. Furthermore, the effects of agricultural eater salvation investment on economic Development are discussed in results and explained in more details and in the conclusion section.

2. 1989 was a special year, which the economic slowdown was influenced by foreign policies and not necessarily caused by inflation.

Author Response: Explaination:1989 is a special year in many ways, especially for Chinses. By the spring of 1989 there was growing excitement among university students and others in China for political and economic reform. The country had experienced a decade of remarkable economic growth and liberalization, and many Chinese had been exposed to foreign ideas and standards of living. In addition, although the economic advances in China had brought new prosperity to many citizens, it was accompanied by price inflation and opportunities for corruption by government officials. In the mid-1980s, the central government had encouraged some people (notably scientists and intellectuals) to assume a more active political role. Still, student-led demonstrations were calling for more individual rights and freedoms in late 1986. Early 1987 caused hard-liners in the government and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to suppress what they termed "bourgeois liberalism." One casualty of this tougher stance was Hu Yaobang, who had been the CCP general secretary since 1980 and who had encouraged democratic reforms; in January 1987, he was forced to resign his post.

3. I encourage the authors compare with existing results of similar studies in other countries.

Author Response: Addressed the issue in the revised manuscript.

4 The manuscript not mentions Highlights.

Author Response: Included the highlights in the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewer.

5 Some numbers should be referenced further.

Author Response: Addressed in the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewer.

6 The second part should include methods and data.

Author Response: The second part of the revised manuscript is now Methods and Data as suggested by the reviewer.

7 Line 48, It is suggested to explain in more details on the model. How did you choose these models? And why?

Author Response: The test results of AR(1) and AR(2) in Table-2 show that the model has first-order autocorrelation but no second-order autocorrelation and the disturbance term has no autocorrelation. At the same time, the p-values of Sagan's test are all greater than 0.1, indicating that the selection of instrumental variables is effective. Therefore, using the systematic GMM method to estimate the model is feasible.

8 This manuscript is missing a section on data collection and how data was applied in the models.

Author Response: The section of data explains the data collection and computational environment in detail in the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewer.

9 The results are very weak, and the results needs to be enriched.

Author Response: Enriched the results in the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewer.

10 Discussion does not really present new insights? compared to others, what are the new findings of your research.

Author Response: Discussed and presented the new insights in the revised manuscript as suggested by the reviewer.

We are thankful to Editor and reviewers for their valuable suggestions. We carefully considered the comments/suggestions in preparing our revised manuscript and tried to answer the comments/suggestions. We hope that the revised manuscript will be in the form of publication in this journal.

Submitted filename: Author response-Comments.docx

Click here for additional data file.

13 Apr 2022

The Impact of Agricultural Water Salvation Investment on Economic Development: Evidence from Eastern China

PONE-D-21-35145R1

Dear Dr. Khan,

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,

Dragan Pamucar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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

**********

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: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

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

**********

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: No

**********

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: The authors have addressed the point of my concern. I am happy with their corrections. Hence, I would like to recommend this manuscript to be published.

Reviewer #2: I have no comments. This manuscript can be revised and accepted. The full text needs to be edited in English.

**********

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

1 Jun 2022

PONE-D-21-35145R1

The Impact of Agricultural Water Salvation Investment on Economics Development: Evidence from Eastern China

Dear Dr. Khan:

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

Dr. Dragan Pamucar

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE