The Impact of Self-Quantification on Consumers’ Participation in Green Consumption Activities and Behavioral Decision-Making
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper deals with a very interesting and current topic.
I thank the authors for their contribution to the literature. However, I have some concerns about the paper in its current form.
First, despite the authors' effort in explaining the studies, the paper is very long and, moreover, there are many experimental conditions. This makes it difficult for the reader to follow the argument.
When you read the hypotheses, you have to have in mind:
- participation performance
- selection of environmental protection & ecology categories/ energy using & pollution categories
- Self/non self-quantification
- goal/no goal-requirement in the promotional green consumption activities
- goal/no goal-limitation in the defensive green consumption activities
This requires a great cognitive effort in reading and understanding the hypotheses and experimental method.
Similarly, first there are paragraphs named "Experimental Results of ...". Then, there is a new Results paragraph (n. 5), for a total of 8 pages devoted to the results of the study.
I suggest that the authors make an effort to better schematize the contents, in the text and also with graphic support, and facilitate the reading of method and results.
Second, it is not clear if you have used a scale to measure the “activity participation experience”. You provide some Cronbach’s α values, which is a measure of scale reliability. If you have used a scale, you should state it in the paper and provide the source and the items.
Minor suggestion:
On page 4 line 145, wrap the text. You are talking about positive and negative weighting and, then, you shift to green consumption.
Author Response
Thank you for your highly affirmation and appreciation of this article, and thank you for your valuable comments and suggestions for this article. After careful consideration and overtime modification, all authors have revised and improved the proposed shortcomings of the paper.
In view of the questions you raised about the length of the experimental part and the difficulty of reading and understanding, we have made the necessary deletions of the experimental part and reorganized the writing logic of this part to make the content more concise and easy to read.
In view of the problem you proposed that the expressions of many professional terms in the text are too long, which makes it difficult to read and understand, we have refined the expressions of related concepts under the premise of ensuring the accuracy of the concept expressions, making the research hypotheses and experimental methods more easy to understand and reduce the cognitive effort of reading.
In view of the repeatability problem you put forward about the explanation of the experimental results, we draw on the suggestions and use the graphs to present the experimental results. The repeated textual description of the experimental results is deleted to make the expression of the article more intuitive.
In response to the doubts you raised about the measurement scale of participation experience, we supplemented the source and specific measurement items of the measurement scale in the revised version.
In response to the problem of sentence cohesion in line 145 on page 4 , we have revised and adjusted this part of the content.
Please refer to the cover letter for specific modifications.
We are deeply grateful to you for your valuable comments, and believe that the article has been greatly improved after revision.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The problem highlighted in the research is very interesting and vital, also consistent with the journal profile. But the text must be improved in several aspects.
Abstract should be strutured better: the objective of the study should be presented, main theoretical background, method of gathering and processing data and main conclusions. Some of these elements were somehow presented in the abstract but due to the poor style it is very hard to get to the essence of the text. I would recommed to divide two extremaly long and complex sentences into pieces.
From my point of view poor style is the problem of the whole text, some expresions used are very unclear and not explained (41-42, 51, 74-75, 94-96, 194 - who have no goals, be more specific and explain what goals you mean). It would be good to give examples of promotional activities without specific goals to make that concept more clear.
It is unacceptable to present the opinion like this: "Most scholars believe that self-quantification will enhance the performance of consumers’ energy-saving activities and the choice of high-intensity energy-saving products, but some scholars question that self-quantification will negatively affect consumers’ participation in energy-saving activities under some situations" without references. 164-165 - similar situation. Generally the list of references is relatively poor.
Hypothesis - singular, hypotheses - plural
What theory is the background for developing hypotheses? Right now there is none.
Th whole text would be more clear if the research model was presented on the graph (there are 12 hypotheses and one may get lost without a graphic presentation).
Regarding the design of the experiment - the general comment is that it is very complex and perhaps overcomplicated. It is a hard task to present properly so complicated experiment and I think authors failed to do it so there are numerous questions without the answers. How many projects were participants expected to choose? What did the list (328) contain: seven groups or seven pair of emission reduction projects? What does it mean to use less? It is not clear how high-intensity and low-intensity emission reduction activities were distinguished. What is the source of that data? Some of the projects are quite similar and the difference in CO2 emission is high (like use table lamp less for 5 hours and use ceiling lamp less for 5 hours - what if in both cases there is only one bulb of the same power? How the CO2 emission was calculated in the case of riding a bike and travelling by bus as in the second case the level of emission per capita depends strongly on the number of people travelling by bus?). As the authors wrote: it was found that all the subjects were wrong in estimation, and all the subjects were uncertain about the estimated total emission reduction value of their selected projects. How that fact can be interpreted? How it could bias the results of the experiment? And it is even worse with food. I can't agree with recognizing beef as low-intensity food (table 2) however in this case I agree with the emission data.
How the process of verification (336) was organized?
The explanation on data analysis method applied in the research is necessary.
The results are very rich but poorly discussed. The theoretical contribution may be discussed only when it is clear from the very begining what theory will be applied as the main theoretical framework what doesn't work in this paper.
Author Response
Thank you for your highly appreciation of the topic selected in this article and affirmation of our efforts. After careful consideration and overtime modification, all authors have revised and improved the proposed shortcomings of the paper.
According to your suggestion, we have revised and written the abstract in accordance with the writing logic of "the objective of the study, main theoretical background, method of gathering and processing data, main conclusions", closely following the research theme and content of this article, so as to make the abstract more clear and logical.
In view of the problem you put forward that some of the sentences in this paper are ambiguous in meaning and improper in grammar, we have made corresponding modifications. For the sentences with unclear meaning, we have deleted or revised them after careful consideration, and attached necessary examples to explain. For sentences with improper grammar, we have also revised the expression of these sentences. We also improve the long and complex expression of the full text, making the article easier to read and understand.
In view of the problem that some points of view in this paper have no references, we have supplemented and annotated the necessary references by consulting the literature and combing the content of this article, so as to make the points put forward in this paper reasonable and reliable.
In the research hypotheses part, we supplement the theoretical basis of the research hypotheses and refine the research hypotheses to make the research hypotheses more understandable. In addition, we also add a research framework, so that the ideas and logic of this study can be more clearly understood by the readers.
According to your suggestion, we have made necessary explanations for the design process and data collection process of the stimulus in the experiment. We have also corrected the grammatical errors in the experiment and even in the full text.
On the premise of supplementing the theoretical basis of the research hypotheses, we have combed and stated the theoretical contribution of this study again.
Please refer to the cover letter for specific modifications.
We are deeply grateful to you for your valuable comments, and believe that the article has been greatly improved after revision.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The introduction is not very clear, with many pieces of information often redundant. Also, most of the reviewed literature has not been comprehensively analysed and reported. Argumentations do not move in straight lines and the reader get confused and lost. To make more clear the argumentation a synthetic approach with parallel more unified discussion of green-consumption and self-quantification is advisable.
Hypothesis, sample definition and sample composition are not clear. The fact that the sample average age was 19 highlight the fact that it is not possible to draw conclusions regarding general consumer behaviours in light of the fact that young people have showed different green behaviour with respect to elder people, as mentioned literature has remarked.
Self-quantification on consumers’ participation in green consumption activities and behavioural decision-making may vary across countries, sections of the population, production sector, type of product. This study raises single-case assumptions from existing literature to general purpose premises, without clarifying the precise range investigated. Present conclusions are not acceptable.
Authors are asked to in deep verify the study context, assumptions made and research questions and then check the appropriateness of the adopted methodology.
In this context, results are likely to be re-interpreted.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you for highly affirming the topic, and thank you for your meticulous and appropriate comments and suggestions for this article. After careful consideration and overtime modification, all authors have revised and improved the proposed shortcomings of the paper.
According to your suggestion, closely following the research theme and research questions of this article, we have revised and adjusted the introduction. By deleting repetitive, meaningless sentences, amending unclear sentences, adding necessary literature and opinion interpretation, we have comprehensively discussed the self-quantification phenomenon and theories in green consumption activities, and have clearly defined the research goals.
In view of the unclear explanation of the research hypotheses, we refine the relevant research hypotheses, delete the repeated and lengthy words and sentences, so as to make the research hypotheses more readable and understandable.
In view of the sample limitations in this study that you put forward, we have tried our best to supplement the necessary experiments, select consumers of different ages, and design different experimental scenarios to further test the research hypotheses, so as to improve the universality of the conclusions to a greater extent.
On the basis of determining the research background, theoretical basis and the appropriateness of research methods, we have revised and improved the full text carefully. For the problems that can not be solved in this paper, we also make necessary supplementary explanation. We have also revised and replied to the questions mentioned in your specific review comments, such as unclear expression, lack of literature citations or inaccurate citations, inaccurate wording, lack of interpretation of concepts, and the process of experimental data collection.
Please refer to the cover letter for specific modifications.
We are deeply grateful to you for your valuable comments, and believe that the article has been greatly improved after revision.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I appreciate the answers to my questions and the revisions made due to my comments. I still think that it would be better to make the goal of the research more clear, so instead of phrase in the abstract"...we analyze the internal mechanism..." I would recommend: "the objective of the study is to examine the internal mechanism...." Analysis can not be an objective of a research.
Author Response
According to your recommendation, The sentence “we analyze the internal mechanism how self-quantification influences consumers’ participation and behavioral decision-making in green consumption activities” in the Abstract is rephrased as “the objective of the study is to examine the internal mechanism of how self-quantification influences consumers’ participation and behavioral decision-making in green consumption activities”.
Thank you again for your valuable comments and suggestions during the review. These comments and suggestions have helped us greatly improve the quality of this article.
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript has been improved. Two final amendments are suggested.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you again for your valuable comments and suggestions during the review. These comments and suggestions have helped us greatly improve the quality of this article.
Please refer to the cover letter for specific modifications.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
