Fostering Community Values through Meal Sharing with Strangers

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

I really enjoyed reading the article, is well written and interesting. I also liked to learn about a popular, but the emerging topic. I have only three main points: 

The piece of sustainability or the lack thereof needs to be made more prevalent. 

A lit review of key terms is needed such as communication, gift giving, reciprocity, the use of money, exchange, etc. The lit review is the only reason my overall recommendation is to reconsider after major revision. 

There are some quotes from authors without using quotations to avoid plagiarism just use quotations or complete paraphrase.  

I found a few typos or mistakes and I made comments in the actual pdf text. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewers, 

I have responded to all your comments in one document - which thus contains the points from all three reviewers. Please see the attachment. 

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

A very interesting article based on very pertinent research. It is easy to read and comprehend.

I think that perhaps in a future article it would be interesting to show a couple of photographs and perhaps even more importantly a conceptual framework identifying the various dimensions that are discussed in the article.

Just a few very small errors:

Line 12: ... required ... (not  ...require); Line 156: not a chapter, it's either ... an article ... or more probably ... a section. Line 247: is the word affection rather than affect? I'm not sure!

Author Response

Dear reviewers, 

I have responded to all your comments in one document - which thus contains the points from all three reviewers. Please see the attachment. 

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a genuinely interesting paper. I particularly enjoyed the qualitative data that was used, this really did provide a good insight.

However, the paper is lacking quite considerably in terms of theoretical framing. Given the scope of the special issue, the paper starts promisingly with reference to community self-organisation and how TA is an example of this. Yet this argument (which is made on line 6 in the abstract) is not sustained and is not revisited in the latter parts of the paper – which I was expecting. Instead, the narrative veers to discussing social economy, which is OK, but it needs to go further and come back to community self-organisation on a theoretical level. The paper also ends quite abruptly, so ‘closing the conceptual loop’ by revisiting community self-organisation will help elevate the paper. I have specific comments too:

Line 37: the food sector. Can this be more specific please? ‘alternative food sector’?

Line 61: transactions take place between peers, rather than between individual citizens – what is the difference?

Introduction section: Generally sound. However, I was expecting a conceptual framework, or at the very least a little more on a conceptual level about community self-organisation (which remains largely absent in the latter part of the paper). For example, a definition of this term here would help – and you could then revisit in the discussion.

I was also surprised that reference to ‘moral economy’ and/or related concepts such as ‘reconnection’ (Kneafsey et al 2008) was absent given its prominence in some of the earlier sociological work connected to Alternative Food Networks, community food initiatives and relocalisation of food systems. I would also recommend that you include a reference to Bos and Owen’s (2016) work around ‘virtual reconnection’, as the TA platform is arguably helping to facilitate this.

Furthermore, you have not mentioned at any point ‘proximity’, which is an important sociological concept (see Torre 2005) that has been drawn on by scholars such as Renting et al. (2003) and Dubois (2018) to describe the various types of relationships within alternative agri-food systems. This concept may also help you to critically interpret some of the descriptive results and encounters between cooks-consumers, and to tie back to the overarching community self-organisation concept. You may only want to cite proximity but either way it really needs acknowledging.

Section 2.1 is good – if possible include a logo to illustrate what TA ‘looks like’. It would also be desirable to have a map showing the extent of TA’s usage or registered ‘members’ but I appreciate this may not be possible.

Some other running questions that need clarifying either in text or footnotes here”:

What are the legalities of e.g. health and safety if someone is food poisoned?

Do cooks use the TA service (and others) as a business or is it more ‘hobby’ and ‘pocket money’ based (i.e. small scale, irregular, ad-hoc?). As with e.g. Uber, are TA cooks ‘self-employed’ or employed or ‘volunteers’? What is their (legal) status?

Line 118: Change ‘as said,’ to start this section.

Line 147: Did the MSc student also provide reflective input, and if so, did you corroborate your findings and reflections? Be clear either way.

Line 156: This chapter should be ‘this section’

Line 156: You refer to ‘four topics’ but in the previous paragraph you refer to them as ‘four themes. Be consistent (and use themes). You also need to state what the four themes are here so that the reader knows upfront.

Section 3.1 is interesting. However, there is surely some contact between cook and consumer before the face-to-face meeting? You compare to AirBnB and the host and guest are able to communicate quite extensively through online channels before meeting, which ‘breaks the ice’ somewhat and influences the rules of engagement. Does this happen with TA? If so, please include any illuminating data about it. If not, then please state that pre-face to face meeting communication is limited/non-existent.

Section 3.3 Reciprocity. I think this needs a definition of what reciprocity is. I was not convinced that it was the right term for this theme (as you ended up talking about the enjoyment, for example). However, it probably is a term that works it just needs clarifying given that there is a monetary transaction involved in TA and so it is not a ‘free’ service.

Line 369: “Consumers demonstrate that they are genuinely interested in the meal by willingly paying money, and by accepting that money cooks acknowledge that there is also something in it for them - in other words: they enable the consumer to (partly) reciprocate.”

I am not sure I agree with this – can you please elaborate why ‘partly’ and again, what is meant by reciprocation here.

Line 384: TA being ‘non-commercial’ – what is meant by non-commercial? Given this is used in your abstract you really need to be clear here what this means in the context of a service like TA where money is involved. You allude to it on line 436 but again it is brief.

Line 457: “People’s appreciation of the social in the transaction indicates an attempt to hybridize and contaminate the neoliberal capitalist model with a mix of innovation and tradition”. While I would agree with this sentiment it needs substantiating more. What is the innovation and what is the tradition you are referring to here, and how/why is that ‘different’ to the capitalist model?

Future research recommendations around life cycle analysis would be useful (to assess the environmental benefits – or indeed costs in terms of travel – of the TA platform).

You could also add something critical to further the point about the TA platform not being a vehicle for food system transition. For example, if it is not doing this, then how might TA better address notions of food injustice and food insecurity, food poverty? Could it? Should it? Is there scope for this?

Author Response

Dear reviewers, 

I have responded to all your comments in one document - which thus contains the points from all three reviewers. Please see the attachment. 

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round  2

Reviewer 1 Report

My comments have been addressed. In particular, the conclusion is much improved. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks again for your comments, they have been very helpful.

Best regards

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper has been substantially improved and now reads more than ready for publication.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks again for your comments, they have been very helpful.

Best regards

Esther