An Environmental Justice Assessment of the Waste Treatment Facilities in Shanghai: Incorporating Counterfactual Decomposition into the Hedonic Price Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article "The Impact of Waste Treatment Facilities from the Perspective of Environmental Justice Incorporating Counterfactual Decomposition into the Hedonic Price Model" analyzes waste treatment facilities en Shanghai from the EJ prespective.

Several comments to improve it:

• Use current template. The one you used is from 2017
• Title could be changed to ""The Impact of Waste Treatment Facilities in Shanghai from the Perspective of Environmental Justice Incorporating Counterfactual Decomposition into the Hedonic Price Model""
• Correct affiliations. Avoid the dot in ".School"
• Authors affiliations a,b,c,d are not correlated with affiliations 1,2,3 and 4
• Email of third author is not the most appropiate for a scientific paper
• MSWTF is more approiate than WTF. This should be included in the paper
• Please, follow author instructions, as it makes the review process easier: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions
• Keywords should include MSWTF
• Please, use the proper format for all the references cited in the text
• Please, use the proper format for all the references in the references section
• References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text
• Give a proper definition of Environmental Justice
• Table 1 should use proper format
• Follow journal format for equations, and cite them in the text
• Add a reference for IBM SPSS software
• Figure 2 quality could be improved. Maybe it is caused by pdf compression
• Line 209-220: Explain table with examples for group A and B
• Use a proper format for table, specially table 4 (stu-dy)
• Table 4 is difficult to read in its current format
• It is not clear the relationship between EJ and the counterfactual decomposition of HPM. This could be explained in a more detailed way.
• Please, clearly state the limitations of the study
• Use proper format for acknowledgemetns and references

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors are presenting an interest approach in the topic. Even though they are focusing on the effects of the proximity of WTF in people's choices in a different way, they must improve their work and address the weaknesses of the manuscript. In particular :

1. The language needs improvement. Many small linguistic mistakes exist.
2. The authors should improve their reference list with publications relating the people's perspective in the WTF as this part is not adequately covered even though there are many publication recently for Chinese areas n many journals including MDPI journals.
3. The authors seems to ignore issues related to the fact that near WTF the residence receive special advantages that improve life quality and reduce costs for homes, e.g. district heating with lower prices, green areas, parks etc.
4. The authors must clearly define and present the two different cases they study in their manuscript. Furthermore they must define why they have made such selections.
5. Their manuscript is focusing mainly on the environmental justice. How the environmental justice approach is justified as an applicable method to evaluate their work and calculations? As the manuscript is written this part is not justified.
6. What is the novelty of the proposed work that should justify publication in a journal with the status of sustainability? And what this work is offering to the scientific and engineering community to justify the publication? These parts should be clearly described and justified in the manuscript.
7. The authors should clearly explain all implications and considerations they analyze in their work in order to justify their work.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is interesting but I think it must be improved as follows:

Page 2: Line 75: How many inhabitants are there in the 1700 apartments?

Figure 1: Please include the location of the apartments to show the distances to the plants.

Page 5: Line 155. You say D and N represent the characteristics variables od dwelling and neighbourhood, but what do they exactly represent? It’s no clear.

Figure 2: Why the “zero value” does not match at the same point in both axis?

Page 7: Line 217: Which is the criteria to classify “decoration” into the 4 classes?

Finally, table 4 should be included as text in the introduction of the paper.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

1. I suggest changing the Keyword "counterfactual decomposition". I believe it will provide difficulty in searching via metadata.

2. I still join the traditional school that specifies that the scientific article must be written in an impersonal way, that is, in the weaver person. Please review and adapt the entire text.

3. I suggest explaining the reason for the choice of the 10Km radius in Shanghai and the selected apartments (I understood the reason for the city and the residences (apartments). However, the explanation could be more detailed, regarding the socio-territorial cutout).

4. Improve the quality of Figs. 1 (Map) and 2

5. I believe that the socio-educational level should be included in the model. These aspects also influence the choice of the residence's place, as well as the scale and rental's value practised.

6. I did not find the dividing line between wealth and poverty well defined, capable of being replicated for other countries or ethnic-social situations.

7. I suggest revising the conclusions after the model is adequate.

8. I suggest changing the title of the article, because as written, it gives the impression of being procedural justice, strict sense, instead of social justice

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have partially replied to my comments. The following comments would improve it:

• Use current template. The one you used is from 2017. https://www.mdpi.com/files/word-templates/sustainability-template.dot
• Check variable WTF. It has only been partially replaced to MSWTF. Use MSWTF for all the tables and equations. Table 2, equations 2-1 and 2-2,...
• Please, cite all the equations in the text
• Add a reference for IBM SPSS software. To the software itself
• Contributions are now missing

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have improve their manuscript but still it requires improvements. In particular :

1. The authors should improve their reference list with publications relating the people's perspective in the WTF as this part is not adequately covered even though there are many publications recently for Chinese areas in many journals including MDPI journals. The list is not improved as it should be. At least 3 papers published in MDPI journals are not included and are focusing in China. In addition the successful implementation of WTE in EU where some of the greener cities of the world are included. So I also propose in addition to these 3 manuscripts, the work of Chaliki et al in Management of Environmental Quality Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 606-620, https://doi.org/10.1108/MEQ-01-2015-0018

The last paper will support the authors to improved their work in issues related to the fact that near WTF the residence receive special advantages that improve life quality and reduce costs for homes, e.g. district heating with lower prices, green areas, parks etc.

The authors must clearly define and present the two different cases they study in their manuscript. Furthermore, they must define why they have made such selections. This point of the manuscript needs further development.

The authors should include their explanations inside the manuscript and not only in the response to the reviewers.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors kindly accepted all the suggestions made by the reviewers, making the article suitable for publication.

Author Response

We are grateful for the reviewer’s insightful suggestion and selfless help again.