Students’ Willingness to Plant Trees and Pay for Their Maintenance on Campuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

We analyze students' attitudes toward green campus (tree) and their willingness to pay. It is necessary to consider the following points:

1. The analysis is very simple and technical. A more sophisticated analysis is required.

It is necessary to conduct a causal analysis. In paticular, it is necessary to perform a regression analysis. In setting independent variables in determining payment intention, variables that are theoretically meaningful as well as university and major should be added and analyzed.

2. A theoretical review of the variables affecting the willingness to pay is necessary. The decision to pay depends on the economic resources of individuals. Variables such as income and knowledge are very important. It is necessary to add if possible in this analysis.

3. Additional review and analysis such as confirmation of sample representativeness, calculation of sampling error, same method bias, and ANOVA analysis are necessary.

Author Response

We would like to thank you for your comments which have greatly improved our work.

As you suggested, in-depth analyzes were carried out to understand the determinants of the willingness to participate in tree planting and maintenance.

A binary logistic regression was performed to determine the source of information among the five sources examined, those that would influence students' decision to participate in tree planting. The same binary logistic regression was applied to assess student willingness to pay for tree maintenance on campuses. The results of this analysis indicated that the level of the amount to be paid was the only significant determinant factor among the variables examined. This led us to perform a multinomial regression to determine the factors that influence students to pay a set amount. A study by Qiao and Randrup (2022) on Willingness to Pay for the Maintenance of Green Infrastructure published in water provided us with a lot of information to conduct this analysis.

2. In our discussion, we have focused only on the determinants of amount levels. Factors identified were gender, the university, and the faculties attended by the students.

However, income was not included in the model because this information, although very important, was not collected during our survey. This was due to the fact that in DR Congo, the majority of students did not work to earn money, but were financially dependent on their parents. We think that such dependence is uncertain and less reassuring for our analysis. We specified this limitation in our methodological critique in the Discussion Section (see 4.1. Methodological approach: strengths and limitations)

3. Regarding the sampling calculation, we would like to tell you honestly that we did not perform any calculation to determine the number of students interviewed but our ambition was to interview as many students as possible. The criteria for selecting students were based on their registration at the University and their attendance at one of the faculties surveyed. We only interviewed students enrolled in undergraduate and license levels.

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is presenting an interesting study on assessing students’ willingness to participate in tree planting and their maintenance to promote green and clean campuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is a complete work and timely research with extensive literature review and comprehensive analyses providing new contributions to the body of knowledge in the associated field.

Author Response

The reviewer acknowledged the work was complete work.

Thank you

Reviewer 3 Report

This article used a questionnaire survey based on 29 contingent valuation method (CVM) and Likert scale to interview 1278 randomly selected students from 13 universities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) about their willingness to participate in tree planting and pay for their 31 maintenance to promote green and clean campuses. Findings suggest that students’ expressed willingness to support tree planting is a key factor to consider by academic authorities and planers to successfully implement green infrastructures to improve the campus environment and make these educational and workspaces sustainably attractive.

My comments are as follows:

1.      The title of the article is too plain, it would be better to add what methods were used and what was studied.

2.      The research method used in the article is mainly the questionnaire method, which is somewhat old-fashioned and obsolete, and it would be better to use some novel research methods.

3.      In line 123, an extra space is typed in the D and R of the abbreviation DRC, please note the rigor of the article.

4.      Section 2.4 Methodology, one paragraph structure looks a bit bloated, can it be split into two or more paragraphs?

5.      In Section 2.5 Data analysis, this section, like Methodology, should need to be highlighted. However, the content presented so far is a bit small, and we are considering whether we need to expand the content of this section.

6.      What is the principle of student sample sampling? Is it randomly selected without rules? Or do different characteristics have a random sampling according to a certain proportion?

7.      Consider whether the format of Figure 6 needs to be reformatted, it doesn't look very pretty at the moment.

8.      Line 396, header 4.3 seems to be formatted with some extra indentation, please note the consistency between header formats.

Author Response

Many thanks for your comments which have greatly improved our work.

1. If you will not find the title too long, the article can go by

Contingent valuation method and logistic regression to elucidate students ‘willingness to plant trees and pay for their maintenance on campuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo

2. Your feedback on the outdated technique used to collect the data inspires us to consider exploring new research methods in our future surveys. At this point, we couldn't do anything because the investigation is already over. However, a binary logistic regression was performed to identify the source of information among the five sources examined, those that would influence students' decision to participate in tree planting. The same binary logistic regression was applied to assess students’ willingness to pay for tree maintenance on campuses. The results of this analysis indicated that the level of the amount to be paid was the only significant determinant factor among the variables examined. This led us to perform a multinomial regression to determine the factors that influence students to pay a set amount. A study by Qiao and Randrup (2022) on Willingness to Pay for the Maintenance of Green Infrastructure published in Water provided us with a lot of information to conduct this analysis
3. In line 123, the abbreviation DRC was fixed.
4. In Section 2.4. Methodology, the long paragraph was split into 3 paragraphs.
5. Regarding the sampling calculation, we would like to be honest that we did not perform any calculation to determine the number of students interviewed but our ambition was to interview as many students as possible. The criteria for selecting students were based on their registration at the University and their attendance at one of the faculties surveyed. We only interviewed students enrolled at graduate and undergraduate levels.
6. Figure 6 was removed from this article, as it did not look very pretty.
7. Line 396, header 4.3 was fixed

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper is well structured and clear in the dissertation and results.

Results, discussion and conclusion in an attempt to emphasize the results are very repetitive.

A suggestion that I could dare is to explain in the methodology, also using an appendix section, the questions and the questionnaire that have been submitted to the students of the various universities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The clarification of the questions could further clarify the attitude chosen by the research team. In this way, the need may emerge to explain other results, perhaps omitted in the discussion.

More attention should also be given to editing the references, which in cases, such as the reference [60], are not well edited, for example, the indication of the author (the Word Bank), or the link to the document ( https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/377381588248725756/pdf/Gender-and-Forest-Landscapes-Enhancing-Development-Impacts-of-Projects-and-Programs.pdf)

Author Response

Many thanks for your comments which have resulted in great improvement of our article.

As you suggested detailing the methodology, this feedback allowed us to specify other useful statistical tools used to elucidate the participation of students in tree planting and paying for their preservation.

A binary logistic regression was performed to determine the sources of information among the five sources examined, those that would influence students' decision to participate in tree planting. The same binary logistic regression was applied to assess students' willingness to pay for tree maintenance on campuses. The results of this analysis indicated that the level of the amount to be paid was the only significant determinant factor among the variables examined. This led us to perform a multinomial regression to determine the factors that influence students to pay a set amount. A study by Qiao and Randrup (2022) on Willingness to Pay for the Maintenance of Green Infrastructure published in water provided us with a lot of information to conduct this analysis.

The references editing was double-checked.

The questionnaire used to collect data can be found in the appendix section of this article.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

There are still critical problems of missing the important variables and errors in sampling.

Author Response

We truly appreciate your comments. Thank you again.

The updated title of the paper should be:

Students’ willingness to plant trees and pay for their maintenance on campuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo

We have revised our conclusion and highlighted our crucial message. We also suggest ways to get students more involved in tree planting and promoting the implementation of green infrastructure on campuses.

Reviewer 3 Report

Most of my comments have been addressed. However, I suggest the authors revising the title to make it more readable. In addition, I strongly advise the authors to carefully check the texts and format of their paper. So far, there are still some typos or errors. For example, in the title, the quotation mark was used wrongly.

Author Response

Thank you for your insightful comments on our manuscript.

Feedback to comments

The quotation mark wrongly used was removed from the text.

We reviewed the title of the article to make it readable. One of the reviewers suggested to add the methods used in the title. Therefore, we found the following interesting.

Using the Likert Scale and the contingent valuation to assess students ‘willingness to plant trees and pay for their maintenance on campuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo

We propose the following titles so that you can guide us in choosing the best one.

1. Using the Likert Scale and the contingent valuation to assess students ‘willingness to plant trees and pay for their maintenance on campuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo
2. Students ‘willingness to participate in tree planting and pay for their maintenance to promote green campuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo
3. Students’ participation in tree planting and maintenance to promote green campuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo
4. Students’ perception on climate change, tree planting and maintenance to promote green campuses in DR Congo: a questionnaire survey based on contingent valuation