Conditions and Constrains for Reflexive Governance of Industrial Risks: The Case of the South Durban Industrial Basin, South Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thanks for clarifying the data analysis -now it becomes clearer to me.
Greetings to Durban

Author Response

Thank you for the report: Our responses to the report are below:

Reviewer 1:

Thank you for the feedback and for clarifying that the data analysis is now clearer and your concerns addressed.

It is noted in the reviewer report form submitted that the following can be improved (i.e. research design/questions and hypothesis + Discussion of findings + empirical results presented). Unfortunately no specific comments are made on which areas need to be improved. Improvements were made in the first round based on reviewer comments. It was also noted that since this study was of a qualitative nature and not a quantitative methodology, no hypotheses are presented. Rather the paper highlights important research questions which the paper goes about to answer. No questionnaires were employed, but semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants. The empirical results were also summarised at the beginning of the conclusion and before the discussion of the findings.

Reviewer 2 Report

1. I understand that some keywords do not reflect the content of the paper. I suggest removing: participation, risk, and transparency
2. Mention who the "Other authors" are in line 45.
3. Correct the reference line 46 "see 6 and 7).
4. Suggest referencing the statement contained in line 235.
5. Correct the text on line 258; it was confusing how one of the authors? Do the texts in red represent a need for correction?
6. In the interviews, how did the authors avoid or eliminate coercion of employers or social actors on the interviewees?
7. What was the population interviewed?
8. How was the interviewed population separated? Gender? Level of education? Position? Technical background?
9. The direct interview was the primary source, and documents collected between 2007 and 2019 the secondary source of data; how was this data separated? How was it chosen? How was the correlation between the primary and secondary data made?
10. What is the reason there was no statistical treatment of the data? What was the quantity of the population analyzed? When were the interviews done? In what form? 
11. What are the author's conclusions?

Author Response

Thank you for the report: Our responses to the report are below:

Reviewer 2:

Thank you for the comments. Below is a response to each of the comments raised in the second round of the review:

1. I understand that some keywords do not reflect the content of the paper. I suggest removing: participation, risk, and transparency

The keywords (participation, risk and transparency) are reflected in the content of the paper. These keywords deal directly with the content of the paper on reflexive governance having showing implications for participation, risk and transparency discussed in detail in the paper. A point worth noting is that the keyword ‘participation’ occurs 35 time in the paper (excluding the reference list). The key word ‘risk’ occurs 39 times in the paper. The keyword ‘transparency’ occurs 19 times in the paper. These terms are discussed in relation to the topic at hand.   

2. Mention who the "Other authors" are in line 45.

These have been added as suggested

3. Correct the reference line 46 "see 6 and 7).

Corrected

4. Suggest referencing the statement contained in line 235.

Done – a reference to Meisch et al. (2012) added

5. Correct the text on line 258; it was confusing how one of the authors? Do the texts in red represent a need for correction?

Corrected – the text in red denotes the track changes conducted by the authors due to the first round of reviewer comments

6. In the interviews, how did the authors avoid or eliminate coercion of employers or social actors on the interviewees?

The methods section notes that the interviewers were one-on-one interviews. We have added the word ‘anonymous’ next to the word interviews on page 272 to emphasis the point.

7. What was the population interviewed?

The paper has this information under section – data collection (i.e. A total of seven anonymous interviews were conducted of which five interviews are reported in this study. One interview was secured with an anonymous local government official. Two interviews were secured with academics from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and dealing with health studies and industrial expansion in South Durban respectively. One interview was secured with an ex-local government employee (now working in the water industry in the same area), who was previously responsible for air pollution in South Durban, and another interview was conducted with the SDCEA leadership)

8. How was the interviewed population separated? Gender? Level of education? Position? Technical background?

The interviews were based on semi-structured interview questions and so characteristics of gender, education, position, and technical background were not needed for separation analysis. The data analysis as highlighted was based on a grounded theory approach.

9. The direct interview was the primary source, and documents collected between 2007 and 2019 the secondary source of data; how was this data separated? How was it chosen? How was the correlation between the primary and secondary data made?

With qualitative interviews, secondary documents were drawn upon to verify what informants have stated as a way to interrogate what has been said. It is a very common approach in qualitative methodology to use secondary sources when necessary to identify relationships or patterns regarding the interview content to interrogate and verify interview responses. This is therefore how the secondary data was selected.

10. What is the reason there was no statistical treatment of the data? What was the quantity of the population analyzed? When were the interviews done? In what form? 

The methodology employed was a qualitative research methodology and not a quantitative approach. Therefore, no statistical analysis is required.

As highlighted above and under the methodology section - A total of seven anonymous semi-structured interviews were conducted from June to July 2019.

11. What are the author's conclusions?

Please refer to section 6 in the paper which deals with the discussion and conclusions

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have made some suggested corrections, others not.
However, I believe that there are severe methodological errors in the conduct of the research, absence of free research, a mixture of primary and secondary data to obtain the data through questionnaires and data from the database itself and, above all, lack of specificity of the cultural factor to get the information.
Furthermore, I questioned the conclusions, considering that they were not following the work, but the authors limited themselves to positioning their location.
I suggest the rejection of the article for containing severe methodological errors in the conduction of data collection.

Author Response

Please refer to attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf