Assessment of Aesthetic Preferences in Relation to Vegetation-Created Enclosure in Chinese Urban Parks: A Case Study of Shenzhen Litchi Park

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for the authors.

The comments I raised for the first manuscript have been properly replied. All my suggestions for your revision have been considered in your revised manuscript.  

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I checked your re-submitted paper “Assessment of aesthetic preferences in relation to vegetation-created enclosure in Chinese urban parks: A case study of Shenzhen Litchi Park”. You made a very good revision work in improving it and its current form it follows all comments arose from the first review process.
Definitely, I consider it publishable in its current form.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper “Assessment of aesthetic preferences in relation to vegetation-created enclosure in Chinese urban parks: A case study of Shenzhen Litchi Park” deals with the analysis of people’s aesthetic preferences for scenes with varying levels of enclosure created by vegetation. A case study in the Shenzhen Litchi Park (China) was provided.

The paper is very interesting and well written. In addition, its structure is very good.

Concerning its content, I think that some methodological details must be added to improve the readability and the completeness of the present manuscript. For example, how the Authors disseminate the questionnaire among the respondents? Moreover, I suggest to add a table containing details about the respondents’ profile.

Technical comments

Line 136 – I suggest to get right to the point explaining that the research was based on an online questionnaire.

Line 154 – In Fig. 1, scale bars must be added to improve its readability.

Line 209 – Scientific name (i.e, Latin names) of species must be written in Italian, also adding the "authority" (i.e., the scientist(s) who first published the name), as follows: Wedelia chinensis (Osbeck.) Merr.

Line 219: I appreciate that the Authors provided the link to the designed questionnaire form. By the way, the link does not works. I rather suggest to provide it as additional material (i.e., as pdf or other file formats), also because links to online surveys need a valid subscription.

Line 220 and follows: I suggest to add some other and more recent scientific reference that analysing how respondents’ profile play a role in shaping a landscape preference (i.e, 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2007.02.006, 10.1007/978-3-642-39646-5_40, 10.1007/s00267-010-9513-3).    

Lines 432-434: I think this sentence is just a typo, thus it must be deleted.     

Paragraphs dealing with acknowledgments and authors’ contribution should be added.

Reviewer 2 Report

As an increasing number of quantitative measurements have been developed to assess people’s landscape preferences. This paper focused on the interesting concept of enclosure and applied it as a predictor variable for landscape preference. This paper can be interesting to readers and may have some practical significance for urban landscape research and design.

The quality of writing of this manuscript is good. However, there are still some defects to be improved before it can be accepted and published in the journal of “Sustainability”:

1. International readers will not only interested in Chinese urban parks but also other types of park in the world. The authors should provide a more comprehensive literature review on the concept of enclosure in the context of different types of urban park.

2. The review of visualization techniques is too simplified. The defects of current studies and the strength (advantage) of these techniques need to be reviewed and compared. The novel idea of your techniques of your study should be emphasized and the differences between yours and other studies should be declared.

3. Did you modify the classification and description of permeability of enclosure which composed of four combinations of visual and physical enclosure proposed by Robinson (2004)? Are there several case studies based on Robinson (2004) already exist can be found in your literature review process?

4. Please carefully explain the research design of your study in Litchi Park, Shenzhen, China meets the context and condition of the typology of four combinations of visual and physical enclosure proposed by Robinson (2004).

5. A 52-page, 60-question questionnaire of this research should be a very heavy load for your participant. Please explain your method of implementation. How long their needed to finished the questionnaire? How can you make sure the reliability and validity of their responses?

6. The manuscript is too wordy, you'd better condense it. Especially, there are too many tables to explain clearly in the space a paper of paper published in a journal. Table 3 to Table 9 need to be reconsidered and simplified (or combined).