Shifting the Balance among the ‘Three Rs of Sustainability:’ What Motivates Reducing and Reusing?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript deals with an interesting topic in a attempt to emphasize the need for reducing and reusing initiatives in the waste management practices scheme.

The topic and method are very interesting, and I really enjoyed reading it. Overall, the article presents an interesting analysis on the topic.

The stated objectives of the study are indeed interesting. The literature review, however, should help identify certain gaps in order to better frame the study within the state of the art. 
In addition, It should become very clear why another approach/method/paper was "needed" and that all recent and leading publications in the field are addressed and compared with. The literature review misses some discussion about the application of mathematical-statistical modeling in similar or other cases, which will eventually support the argument on why is the proposed model essential to use. Additionally, describe briefly in which areas have usually applied this approach and with what purpose.

Although this is a debatable suggestion, a growing body of scholarly literature refers to the waste management, both in terms of classifying produced waste (municipal, hazardous, etc.), as well as waste management monitoring, methods, suggestions, etc. (See for example Professors Antonis A. Zorpas work). In addition, someone could argue that the three R’s of sustainability is currently debated on the global agenda, and notions of circular economy, metabolism of cities, the 7 Rs of sustainability and other indicators, benchmarks, audits, standards, indexes, certification and reporting systems, as well as assessment, in addition to the political pragmatism debate and the sociology theories, are applied over a wide range of scales (see for instance https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings10040073). I would like to see a part of the literature analysis on this matters.

Why is USA chosen for this study? Please insert a section of theoretical reference, in which you will explain the reasons and perhaps representativeness (,or the uniqueness) of the case study, what is reported for other areas/countries. Is this research stamped as of local interest? 

The paper has undertaken both qualitative and quantitative approaches. A theoretical framework was somehow built from the analysis of the literature. However, the connection between qualitative and quantitative tools is not quite clear. The readers would also like to know if any robustness tests were performed for the model(s).

Please use a table to list sample socioeconomic characteristics.

I really enjoyed the experiment idea. However, I believe the statistical analysis is poor. I would see this data being analysed with more advanced methods (catPCA, etc). Perhaps an idea for future research. Still, I do expect to see some references regarding the methods chosen and used.

The sample of respondents was representative of the United States according to what consencus or data. Where there any diases due to using electronic survey (as usually there are)?

Pleas use discussion section to further elaborate on the results in terms of other recent relevant literature findings.

Please add a conclusions section. The conclusions should be a brief summary of the paper and should be able to be read and understood without knowing all the details of the research. Conclusions section is to be directly connected with the presented results. In addition, the authors should discuss and compare their findings with the findings of earlier published research discussed in the wider literature, and generalize the importance of their findings.

How can the research be used in practice and influence society? What is next in this research, will a tool be developed?

Finally, the abstract typically outlines the research focus (statement of the problem/specific gap in existing research/research issue addressed), the research methods used to solve the problem, the major findings of the research; and, the main conclusions and recommendations, and the significance or implications of the findings. I believe the authors should invest to improve their abstract (although is not bad, it somehow does not give justice to the whole effort).

The paper does not need improvement for grammatical and typo errors. 

Author Response

Review 1:

 

This manuscript deals with an interesting topic in an attempt to emphasize the need for reducing and reusing initiatives in the waste management practices scheme.

The topic and method are very interesting, and I really enjoyed reading it. Overall, the article presents an interesting analysis on the topic.

            Thank you.

The stated objectives of the study are indeed interesting. The literature review, however, should help identify certain gaps in order to better frame the study within the state of the art. 
In addition, it should become very clear why another approach/method/paper was "needed" and that all recent and leading publications in the field are addressed and compared with. The literature review misses some discussion about the application of mathematical-statistical modeling in similar or other cases, which will eventually support the argument on why is the proposed model essential to use. Additionally, describe briefly in which areas have usually applied this approach and with what purpose.

Lines 118 - 122 now mention the overall context and how other publications have focused on macro-level sustainability endeavors and recycling of building materials. More explicitly, we added how our work is an expansion of Barr’s work by moving beyond identification of psychological motivators of environmental values and focuses on what external factors or conditions might motivate behavior change towards reducing and reusing. We recognize that stylistically this might not be the type of literature that you are referring to, and we are happy to further expand this if you would like. Due to time constraints and one of our main authors has a Biology background (where literature reviews are very concise), we have expanded this section sufficiently but understand there could be more added and would do so if you would like.

Although this is a debatable suggestion, a growing body of scholarly literature refers to the waste management, both in terms of classifying produced waste (municipal, hazardous, etc.), as well as waste management monitoring, methods, suggestions, etc. (See for example Professors Antonis A. Zorpas work). In addition, someone could argue that the three R’s of sustainability is currently debated on the global agenda, and notions of circular economy, metabolism of cities, the 7 Rs of sustainability and other indicators, benchmarks, audits, standards, indexes, certification and reporting systems, as well as assessment, in addition to the political pragmatism debate and the sociology theories, are applied over a wide range of scales (see for instance https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings10040073). I would like to see a part of the literature analysis on this matters.

The mentioned citation has been added on line 119, and Zorpas work has been included in line 122. While there is a larger conversation about sustainability, we focus on what is most identifiable to the broader public outside of waste management (the 3 vs. 7 R’s) and focus on motivating individual behavior rather than more macro-level systemic changes. We can further extend this if you would like.

Why is USA chosen for this study? Please insert a section of theoretical reference, in which you will explain the reasons and perhaps representativeness (,or the uniqueness) of the case study, what is reported for other areas/countries. Is this research stamped as of local interest? 

This is addressed in lines 335-336. This was a sample of convenience derived mostly from our use of the Amazon Mechanical Turk Platform for survey data collection.

The paper has undertaken both qualitative and quantitative approaches. A theoretical framework was somehow built from the analysis of the literature. However, the connection between qualitative and quantitative tools is not quite clear. The readers would also like to know if any robustness tests were performed for the model(s).

While survey data collection and research can be used for both qualitative and quantitative analysis, we used quantitative methods common within social science research to analyze our collected data. All of our analysis uses relevant significance testing and measure reliability where appropriate. All of our data and coding are available on Open Science Framework also. 

Please use a table to list sample socioeconomic characteristics.

We chose to include them within the text with relevance to overall findings to identify if particular social groups had higher correlations with the key outcome variables. Given that our sample is similar to US demographics and was not necessarily a main driving factor of this research, we presented the sample’s socioeconomic characteristics in this way.

I really enjoyed the experiment idea. However, I believe the statistical analysis is poor. I would see this data being analysed with more advanced methods (catPCA, etc). Perhaps an idea for future research. Still, I do expect to see some references regarding the methods chosen and used.

The methods and packages used are all cited as well as access to the data and its analysis through open access databases on Open Science Framework. Further our understanding of a PCA is to reduce the number of items into components, or as is more common in the social sciences to employ an EFA because of the included error in measurement terms. Our goal is not to reduce items for further analysis but rather to use existing composite measures as identifiers that motivate behavior change. 

The sample of respondents was representative of the United States according to what consencus or data. Where there any diases due to using electronic survey (as usually there are)?

We have added a citation to the U.S. Census report from 2020 which shows similarities to our own data while recognizing, as we had previously stated the common exceptions for online data collection.

Please add a conclusions section. The conclusions should be a brief summary of the paper and should be able to be read and understood without knowing all the details of the research. Conclusions section is to be directly connected with the presented results. In addition, the authors should discuss and compare their findings with the findings of earlier published research discussed in the wider literature, and generalize the importance of their findings.

            A header has been added to more clearly delineate our conclusion section of the paper. If needed, we could more specifically address connections to wider literature here.

How can the research be used in practice and influence society? What is next in this research, will a tool be developed?

            This is specifically addressed in the last paragraph of the paper starting on line 578.

Finally, the abstract typically outlines the research focus (statement of the problem/specific gap in existing research/research issue addressed), the research methods used to solve the problem, the major findings of the research; and, the main conclusions and recommendations, and the significance or implications of the findings. I believe the authors should invest to improve their abstract (although is not bad, it somehow does not give justice to the whole effort).

Yes, our original abstract was a bit more descriptive, but in the interest of the requested abstract word count, it was edited significantly. Thank you for the feedback; revisions have been added, and we feel it has been improved immensely.

The paper does not need improvement for grammatical and typo errors.

            Thank you.

 

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

1. Formulation of the title

The title of the article is concise, informative and consistent with the content of the article.

2. The importance and usefulness of the research

The topicality of the issues presented is of great importance in the context of the need to implement any activities that can contribute to reduce the global environmental crises (eg. RRR).

3. Originality and novelty

The novelty of the paper is reflected of the shared environmental values among reducers and reusers and what might induce recyclers or even non-recyclers to practice more sustainable behaviors. This information is essential for informing the public and waste managing institutions about realigning waste management practices to adjust to the current constraints on recycling programs.

4. Scientific quality

Theoretical substantiation of the study, adequate formulation of hypotheses, as a result of theoretical analysis well used to justify the research objectives. The work has a logical structure and the study is sufficiently detailed so as to understand the importance of the topic addressed.

The results of the paper were approached both in terms of theoretical and practical contributions.

5. The style of expression

Clarity, accessibility and understanding of assertions, concise nature of presentation, observance of spelling and punctuation.

6. Use of References

Good reflecting of the idea pursued in the text by the references used; there are quotes from internationally recognized journals. Use of a relevant, recent references.

 

Additional comments:

The paper is well organized and very clear. Starting from my experience on the topic, the paper works and it can be published.

1) Regarding the graphic presentation of the paper the recommendation is to make better use of the visuals (pie-charts, graphics and so on).

2) To better justify the value of the scientific results obtained in relation to the international level, I recommend to the authors to compare their results with similar studies, in this case the article will be more interesting.

3) Authors should develop the conclusions of the work and refer in more detail to the next steps of the work. It would be interesting to compare the results of the paper with a survey in which individuals answered questions about their current behavior regarding RRR after COVID 19, so that it can be seen whether people's behavior has changed following the pandemic.

Author Response

Review 2:

General comments:

1. Formulation of the title

The title of the article is concise, informative and consistent with the content of the article.

            Thank you.

1. The importance and usefulness of the research

The topicality of the issues presented is of great importance in the context of the need to implement any activities that can contribute to reduce the global environmental crises (eg. RRR).

            Thank you.

1. Originality and novelty

The novelty of the paper is reflected of the shared environmental values among reducers and reusers and what might induce recyclers or even non-recyclers to practice more sustainable behaviors. This information is essential for informing the public and waste managing institutions about realigning waste management practices to adjust to the current constraints on recycling programs.

            Thank you.

1. Scientific quality

Theoretical substantiation of the study, adequate formulation of hypotheses, as a result of theoretical analysis well used to justify the research objectives. The work has a logical structure and the study is sufficiently detailed so as to understand the importance of the topic addressed.

The results of the paper were approached both in terms of theoretical and practical contributions.

            Thank you.

1. The style of expression

Clarity, accessibility and understanding of assertions, concise nature of presentation, observance of spelling and punctuation.

            Thank you.

1. Use of References

Good reflecting of the idea pursued in the text by the references used; there are quotes from internationally recognized journals. Use of a relevant, recent references.

            Thank you.

Additional comments:

The paper is well organized and very clear. Starting from my experience on the topic, the paper works and it can be published.

            Thank you.

1) Regarding the graphic presentation of the paper the recommendation is to make better use of the visuals (pie-charts, graphics and so on).

Given the short turnaround of these revisions and a lack of specificity we are unable to provide different visualizations of our data. We feel that the current presentation is adequate at this time. We would be happy to make further revisions with more specificity.

2) To better justify the value of the scientific results obtained in relation to the international level, I recommend to the authors to compare their results with similar studies, in this case the article will be more interesting.

We appreciate this feedback and have tried to include how global politics impact local recycling programs. We also build off of work from Barr who conducted his work in Great Britain. We also recognize in the limitations that our work is limited because of a focus on English- speaking countries and a sample of convenience.

3) Authors should develop the conclusions of the work and refer in more detail to the next steps of the work. It would be interesting to compare the results of the paper with a survey in which individuals answered questions about their current behavior regarding RRR after COVID 19, so that it can be seen whether people's behavior has changed following the pandemic.

            This sounds very interesting and we would be happy to do this work in a future study.

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Generally, an easy to follow paper. It is well written in general..

 

Adequate set of survey data.

 

The authors should give more substantiation about the novelty of the work since there has been extensive research on reduce, reuse recycle (RRR)

 

 

 

What’s the evidence that they are skeptics… [[[[ Participants with relatively low scores (mean 129 less than 4) on all RRR questions were categorized as skeptics  ]].. Question 1 of the survey state whether the respondent is a skeptic

 

For linear mixed models we 203 used the [[ lme()  ??/check]] function in the nlme package

 

Perhaps using some sketches in the results in addition to the description would be useful

 

A conclusion section would be very useful about the main finding. Also recommendation for the future.

Author Response

Review 3:

Generally, an easy to follow paper. It is well written in general.

Thank you.

Adequate set of survey data.

            Thank you.

The authors should give more substantiation about the novelty of the work since there has been extensive research on reduce, reuse recycle (RRR)

In several places, throughout the paper we have clarified our unique contribution of focusing on external motivators for waste management behaviors for individuals. While previous work has attempted to identify these motivators, we created and implemented a survey targeting those motivations to better understand behavior change.

What’s the evidence that they are skeptics… [[[[ Participants with relatively low scores (mean 129 less than 4) on all RRR questions were categorized as skeptics  ]].. Question 1 of the survey state whether the respondent is a skeptic

We measured skeptics in several ways but found that self-report measures suffered from social desirability bias. Almost no one identified themselves as a skeptic so we relied on an artificial cutoff point for those individuals least likely to recycle to have adequate data for analysis.

For linear mixed models we 203 used the [[ lme()  ??/check]] function in the nlme package

We specifically describe our methods in the manuscript. This can also be found in the Open Science Framework repository for this study which is linked in the manuscript. This language is common in describing functions and packages in the statistical analysis program and coding language of ‘R’. 

Perhaps using some sketches in the results in addition to the description would be useful

Given the short turnaround of these revisions and a lack of specificity we are unable to provide different visualizations of our data. We feel that the current presentation is adequate at this time. We would be happy to make further revisions with more specificity.

A conclusion section would be very useful about the main finding. Also recommendation for the future.

            A header has been added to more clearly delineate our conclusion section of the paper.

Thank you very sincerely for your comments and suggestions.

 

 

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I greatly endorse the work done and effort put on to reshape the manuscript based on the reviewers' and editors' comments. The revised manuscript has improved in an attempt to addresses my initial comments, which were provided for exactly this reason, althought there's still room for improvement.