Time as a Subject in Sustainable Consumption

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article is very interesting, it is a pleasure to read it. It stimulates thinking about time from different perspectives. Before publication, there are a few things to consider

 

Firstly, it would be worth emphasizing clearly in the abstract what is the aim of the article and the research conducted. The authors explain this in the introduction, but it could still be given more meaning. The very classification of time concept and assessing the consistency and use is an important goal of literary reviews or bibliometric analysis. The authors show that different understanding of time may affect developing sustainable consumption strategies and policies - it would be worth to clarify it - how conclusions of the analysis may contribute to these issues.

The research question (s) seems also not clearly indicated - how it / they correspond (s) with the theoretical model / the theoretical framework? Are there four research questions as the number of arrows in the model is 4? How to interpret the arrows?

 

Some doubts regarding conclusion - what are the questions in the lines 441-451 for? If they pose some suggestions regarding future research, it should be also clearly indicated.

The paperis interesting but it seems in some parts of it that bibliometric analysisinstead of literature review should be more appropriate - anyway this is only asuggestions for Authors to be considered for their future research, not forthis article

Author Response

Reviewer 1 Comments

 

Point 1:   it would be worth emphasizing clearly in the abstract what is the aim of the article and the research conducted. The authors explain this in the introduction, but it could still be given more meaning. The very classification of time concept and assessing the consistency and use is an important goal of literary reviews or bibliometric analysis.

Response 1:

First, we would like to thank the reviewer for the valuable comments. Please see all the corrections made using “track changes” in the manuscript. In the revised version, a sentence is added to the abstract (line 8,9) and aim of the study is clearly emphasized.

Point 2:   The authors show that different understanding of time may affect developing sustainable consumption strategies and policies - it would be worth to clarify it - how conclusions of the analysis may contribute to these issues.

Response 2:

Thank you for the comment. We have made the following changes to the paper:

• After revision, sustainable value creation and sufficiency-oriented policies are added as topics for research based on intrinsic difference between time and commodities.
• In the discussion section after showing the inconsistency in understanding of time (line 408-428), the intrinsic differences of time and resources such as money and energy is discussed and the effect of this understanding on working hour reduction polices, developing sustainable business models and sufficiency-oriented policies is mentioned (line 429-462).

Point 3:   The research question (s) seems also not clearly indicated - how it / they correspond (s) with the theoretical model / the theoretical framework? Are there four research questions as the number of arrows in the model is 4? How to interpret the arrows?

Response 3:

Thank you for noting this. The research question is mentioned in abstract as how time is conceptualized and used in sustainable consumption (line 12). In the revised version the research question and its connection to essential concepts of framework is mentioned in material and methods section (line 175-182). The three basic concepts for the analysis are introduced in the introduction section (line 55-130) as:

• ‘Sustainable consumption’ represented by sustainable consumption box in the diagram.
• ‘Time and consumption’ represented by consumption box in the diagram.
• ‘Time and wealth’ represented by Time box in the diagram.

As the arrows in the diagram were misleading, in the revised version they are replaced by lines to simply show connection of the proposed concepts.

• Consumption is noticed by its understanding in sustainable consumption.
• As it is mentioned in lines 99-117, consumption is understood as a time-consuming activity.
• Time has various use and definitions, but we focused on the notion of time in sustainable consumption.

Point 4:   Some doubts regarding conclusion - what are the questions in the lines 441-451 for? If they pose some suggestions regarding future research, it should be also clearly indicated.

Response 4:

Thank you for the comment. In the revised version, format of the text in the mentioned lines is changed. Some of the questions clarified as some concluded facts and some are clearly left as a suggestion for future studies. Lines (449- 456)

Point 5:   It seems in some parts of it that bibliometric analysis instead of literature review should be more appropriate - anyway this is only a suggestions for Authors to be considered for their future research, not for this article.

Response 5:

To the best of our knowledge, this topic is not discussed properly by scholars yet and this study was a start for distinguishing the topic. Literature review was selected as it plays a critical role in identifying theoretical gaps in the knowledge for future research to address. For a bibliometric analysis, the aim and criteria for selections would be different. As you noticed bibliometric analysis will increase our understanding of the issue.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting subject and the authors have identified a topic with real potential for in depth analysis. However, their sample size and methodology is lacking, so their insights could be incomplete. I recommend them to go more in depth with the analysis, add to their sample size (should be well over 100 articles included in their analysis) in order to determine if their categories are consistent in larger sets. Good luck!

Author Response

Reviewer 2 Comments

 

Point 1:   their sample size and methodology is lacking, so their insights could be incomplete. I recommend them to go more in depth with the analysis, add to their sample size (should be well over 100 articles included in their analysis) in order to determine if their categories are consistent in larger sets.

Response 1:

First, we would like to thank the reviewer for the extensive comments. For another, please see all the corrections made using “track changes” in the manuscript. As a response to your comments:

• Proposed criteria for material selection for qualitative content analysis (131-163) is suggested for accomplishing the goal of the study. This criterion has resulted to the reviewed articles in this paper. In this paper authors were concerned about the articles in sustainable consumption in which time was a subject matter.
• There are many articles in sustainable consumption that time is a parameter in the discussions but not a subject matter (e.g., Druckman et.al. 2012 https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2012.09.008). Authors were not interested in those articles. If bibliometric analyze was the method of the paper, those articles would be included in statistics. As qualitative content analysis is the selected method for this study, the reviewed articles are limited to consciously concerned ones about time. There were also many articles about the time concept (e.g., Ashby & Rakow 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2017.1281334) that were left out of the selection because they were not in the sustainable consumption domain. Only a few articles (e.g., Jalas 2012 https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2012.671570) could be added to this selection which were out of the authors academic access and behind the paywall.
• The reviewed articles in this paper have revealed the gap in the existing the findings imply that the current realization of time in sustainable consumption is not comprehensive enough.

To the best of our knowledge, this topic is not discussed properly by scholars yet and this study was a start for distinguishing the topic. Utilizing other methods such as bibliometric analysis in future in larger sets of articles, as you noticed, will improve the topic and results

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic of the article is very interesting but not mature enough to be published.There are terms that show the lack of maturity of the content (they should, one can perceive, probably). The paper, in a redundant way, is constructed as a very long introduction and survey of the literature, but it does not investigate the issues and does not lead to any demonstrations. There are more questions than answers, and some of them should have a clear address in order to consider the paper publishable.

Author Response

Reviewer 3 Comments

 

Point 1:   The topic of the article is very interesting but not mature enough to be published.

Response 1:

First, we would like to thank the reviewer for the input. We would like to argue that our manuscript provides insights for the academia as this topic is not discussed properly by scholars yet and this study was a start for distinguishing the topic. We wish to note that the comment about immaturity of the topic is vague and cannot be addressed properly.

Point 2:   There are terms that show the lack of maturity of the content (they should, one can perceive, probably).

Response 2:

Thank you for the comment. In the revised version, the mentioned terms are replaced by other phrases to generally improve the language of the article. Please see all the corrections made using “track changes” in the manuscript.

Point 3:   The paper, in a redundant way, is constructed as a very long introduction and survey of the literature, but it does not investigate the issues and does not lead to any demonstrations. 

Response 3:

As it is mentioned in the introduction (line 40-46) aim of the study is classification of time concept and assessing its use and consistency. Achieving this goal and answering the research question (how time is conceptualized and used) needed analytic review of the selected literature. Based on the analysis, time concept is categorized (line 198-254), the use of time concept is assessed (line 255-406) and inconsistency in understanding of the time concept in this context is observed (line 408-428). It is also suggested (line 429-456) how intrinsic differences between time and commodities (as a result of the analysis) contribute to future research in working hour reduction, sufficiency policies and sustainable value creation.

Point 4:   There are more questions than answers, and some of them should have a clear address in order to consider the paper publishable.

Response 4:

Thank you for the comment. As a response to your concern:

• In the revised version, format of the text in the discussion section is changed. Some of the questions clarified as some concluded facts and some clearly are left as suggestions for future studies. Line (449- 456).
• Regarding the proposed aim (line 40-46) and the research question (how time is conceptualized and used in sustainable consumption), the main research question of the paper is answered, and the aim is accomplished.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I have no comments to add