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Peer-Review Record

Household Preferences for Improved Solid Waste Management (SWM) Services: A Randomized Conjoint Analysis in Kathmandu Metropolitan Ward No. 10

Sustainability 2022, 14(4), 2251; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14042251
by Bohara Bikash 1,2 and Masaru Ichihashi 3,4,5,*
Reviewer 1: Anonymous
Reviewer 2: Anonymous
Reviewer 3: Anonymous
Reviewer 4: Anonymous
Sustainability 2022, 14(4), 2251; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14042251
Submission received: 20 December 2021 / Revised: 8 February 2022 / Accepted: 10 February 2022 / Published: 16 February 2022
(This article belongs to the Section Waste and Recycling)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, following are a few minor comments I have for your manuscript, following the correction I believe the manuscript can be accepted:

 

Line 53: I suggest not commenting on governmental policies because it's more of an opinion rather than a scientific expression. This can be removed or modified

Line 72: I suggest modifying this sentence to something more scientific, for example: "It's difficult to execute such plans in practice". 

Line 255: The source links us to a Facebook page of KMC office. The citation can be revised and/shortened and the link should be provided in references (preferably an official website rather than a Facebook page). 

Line 281: Table 2 quality is low

Author Response

Thank you for your useful comments.

I have revised our draft according to your comments.

Reply

Thank you for kindly pointing out some problems left. We revised and deleted some points as follows:

  • The sentence commenting on the governmental policies in line 53 has been removed.
  • We added the expression, “it's difficult to execute such plans in practice” in line 73.
  • We changed the information about the source of the map to the Kathmandu official site.
  • We replaced Table 2 with a clearer version.

Thank you for your useful suggestion.

Sincerely,

Masaru Ichihashi

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has been much improved after revision but still requires corrections in the following points
The Figure 1 is followed after the Table 1 without any text in between them. There should be text between them.

The Figure 1 should be mentioned in the text and them the Figure should be put.

The table 2 looks like it is an image. The table should be not an image

The Figure 3 is in not bold but rest of the figure titles are in bold.

Line 334 is not clear

Sub sections for the results section required. The information is clubbed together that it will be difficult for the reader to understand the results.

Author Response

Dear Anonymous referees,

Thank you for your useful comments.

I have revised our draft according to your comments.

Reply

Thank you for your kind comments on the figures and the tables. We revised our draft as follows:

  • We have put Table 1 and Figure 1 in a more appropriate place where we mentioned about in the draft according to your comment.
  • We replaced Table 2 with a clearer version.
  • We have made the figure title clear with the same font style and put Figure 4 in the appropriate place.
  • We have added subsections in the result part to make the explanation clearer.

Thank you very much for all your comments, which were constructive to make a better draft.

 

Sincerely,

Masaru Ichihashi

Reviewer 3 Report

Congratulation on completing the manuscript. Some improvements need to consider by the authors as below:

Abstract: the abstract is understood and has explained the main point of the study. However, the sampling method and the number of participants are missing in the abstract, which I think is crucial for the reader.

Introduction: It's ok. But I am not sure about the last paragraph. Is it necessary to summarise the manuscript structure?

Literature review: the literature review is not exhaustive. The authors need more effort to discuss the attributes used in the study in this section.

Methodology: I think the study area discussion is crucial in this section which includes the justification of study area selection. Besides that, it is not convincing in determining the sample size (how did the authors calculate the sample size?).

Results and Discussion: it is difficult to follow the results because the presented data is confusing. The results are not critically discussed. How significant are your findings to the study of randomized conjoint analysis in Improving Solid Waste Management (SWM)? The authors have identified the attributes that influence household preference and why these attributes are significant in this study?.

Conclusion: Add some direction to this study and possible further study.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Anonymous referee,

Thank you for your constructive comments.

I have revised our draft according to your comments, and the main revised points are displayed in red letters.

Reply

According to your comments, we revised our draft and added some explanations as follows:

  • Abstract

We added an explanation about the sampling method and the sample size in the abstract.

“Data were collected from randomly selected 400 households using paper questionnaires and taking face-to-face interviews. Since those households answered choice-card selection 5 times for 2 kinds of type, the observation number totaled 4,000.” (line 23-27)

  • Introduction

As you mentioned, summarizing the manuscript structure is not necessarily a must so we deleted the last paragraph in the Introduction.

  • Literature Review

We added a brief explanation of the attribute that we used in this study in the last paragraph.

   “To compare with relevant studies such as Setiawan et al. (2019) and Fukuda et al. (2018), we set similar five attributes with two to four levels, which will be mentioned in the next section.” (line 159-161)

  • Method

Thank you for your comment. We selected the study area Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Ward no. 10 as one of the densest areas of residents, and we decided to set the sample size as around 1 % of the population. According to our random selection process with a lottery, the sample basically represents the characteristics of the population.

Also, we added an explanation of the sample in the last part of this section.

“Since those households answered choice-card selection 5 times for 2 kinds of type, the observation number for the study totaled 4,000 as a result.” (line 312-314)

  • Results and Discussion

We revised some parts to clarify the significance of the results.

“This shows that these intermediate facilities can increase the probability to choose a new SWM service rather than no facility, meaning that respondents currently have dissatisfaction with the situation of SWM in Kathmandu and want to introduce some intermediate facilities more although they don’t care about the type of facility. Here, we can say the difference in their preference among facilities isn’t huge.”  (line 327-331)

“It shows many households feel insufficiency for current undesignated garbage collection spots and would like to set some designated spots like common spot and personal spot.” (line 336-338)

 Also, we added a paragraph to explain why our attributes are significant in the study in the Discussion part.

“Attributes that we accepted in this study were reasonable and useful to compare to previous relevant studies because they used similar ones as well. As the first trial, attributes such as service charge, intermediate facilities, and garbage collection spots should be appropriate for the study to consider factors that attract households to improve the current situation of SMW. In terms of the heterogeneous groups, our results show some different characteristics by education, income level, and the length of their living although the tendency as a whole remains the same. Those say educated people seem to have relatively high consciousness about the environment, higher-income households tend to choose personal measures like personal collection spots and home compost bins, and people who stay longer in Kathmandu are likely to prefer designated collection spots. To clarify these differences among groups attributes that this study accepted seem to be suitable.”(line 528-539)

  • Conclusion

We added a paragraph to show the next step of this study.

“This study shows only an example study about the improvement of SWM focusing on Kathmandu as a typical dense urban area to measure how much stakeholders such as households wish to change the current SWM. Our method based on randomized conjoint experiments can be applied to other areas. Further studies should accumulate many experiences in various areas to consider more appropriate ways to efficiently improve the SWM, based on residents’ wishes. In that case, attributes and levels in the experiments can be changed flexibly for each study, which is one advantage of this method.” (line 570-576)

 

Thank you very much for all your comments, which were constructive to make a better draft.

 

Sincerely,

Masaru Ichihashi

 

Reviewer 4 Report

“Household Preferences for Improved Solid Waste Management (SWM) Services: A Randomized Conjoint Analysis in Kath-mandu Metropolitan Ward no. 10.” The manuscript is written as an industrial report and focus only on industrial problem.

The Authors should strongly clarify three fundamental issues and resubmit it for consideration:

Major problems

  • How this paper is framed into the existing literature;
  • What do the prior studies missing to investigate about Household Preferences for Improved Solid Waste Management (SWM) Services should be clarified;
  • What is the gap in the literature filled by this paper? Why this paper is required and important is not clear. In fact, there is no research question or clearly stated research objectives to address the previous studies' gap. The novelty of the present study was not clearly illustrated. The authors just explain the problem in Kathmandu Metropolitan City. It needs to provide a concise context regarding the relevant studies in the literature.

For further information to the authors:

“Thus, there is a great need for an improved solid waste management policy to ensure proper solid waste management in KMC Ward 10.” This is an industry problem

“While several researchers have researched SWM services in Kathmandu using different methods (Dangi et al.(2011), Alam et al.(2008), Pokhrel(2005)), to the best of our 115 knowledge, a study of SWM services based on a choice conjoint experiment in KMC is not 116 popular yet.” Applying a new method can’t be enough to justify preparing a new manuscript.

The manuscript needs to be revised radically in terms of structuring, the proper problematization of the existing literature, and logical narration and presentation. In its current form, it misses the literature gap and theoretical contribution. Further, the discussion section is very weak.

 

Additional comments

 Please ensure that the abstract has the following elements: 1-2 sentences on the context and the need for the study (not only the industrial problem but also the theory gap); 1-2 sentences on the methodology; the majority of the abstract on the actual results of the study; 1-2 sentences on key conclusions and recommendations.

Do not use acronyms in your abstract, keywords, and title, include a sentence about your findings, discussions and conclusions in your abstract and underscore the scientific value-added of your paper in your abstract. (This study contributes ……….due to lack on ………Prior studies are neglecting …….This study proposed this method….. The results are ………).

 Manuscript structure:

Please structure the manuscript and title the sections as follows: 1. Introduction; 2. Literature Review; 3. Methods; 4. Results; 5. Discussion; 6. Conclusions. All other sections must be integrated within one of these sections. If you prefer, you can merge the results and discussion sections into one.

 Referencing: Please do not quote more than three references in any one sentence. Each reference mentioned should be discussed; otherwise, it is not helpful just to list them. Please update your references to recent ones and more journal articles not too many industry reports.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your useful comments.

I have revised our draft according to your comments, and the main revised points are displayed in red letters.

Reply

According to your constructive comments, we drastically revised our draft, especially the abstract and literature review. Before resubmitting the draft, the previous referee asked us to list up at least seven previous papers if we use “many studies” in the draft, but we eliminated the sentence this time and discussed some key papers.

  • We revised the abstract to clarify our contribution, research gap, our main results, and policy implication, and also followed your suggestion for expressions:

“This study contributes to research based on quantitative evidence from households’ preference to think about the priority to make an effective waste management policy due to the lack of such relevant studies. Prior studies are less considering actual households’ preference or tendency to improve the current SWM although most of them pointed out existing waste problems such as the increasing situation of garbage and its composition.

This study examines which factors have a causal effect on household decisions to choose im-proved SWM facilities in Kathmandu, Nepal by using a randomized conjoint experiment useful to effectively identify respondents’ preference for the SWM.” (the abstract)

 

  • We more clarified the research objective and research questions in the Introduction according to your comment.

 

“The objective of this study is to examine the attributes influencing household choice behavior for improved solid waste management services by developing a hypothetical policy study of nonoperational SWM services. Especially, to improve SWM facilities in Kathmandu, we set research questions as follows: which attributes have a causal effect on a household's decision to choose improved SWM Facilities in Kathmandu, and how each SWM attribute affects the probability of preferences. This study identifies specific attributes that affect household decisions to choose by accepting the choice-based conjoint experiment. This could be a case study offering a unique research opportunity to investigate household perceptions of the new SWM service and the feasibility of implementation.” (line 87 – 102)

 

  • We followed your request about the contents of the section and added the Literature Review independently. Also, we discussed the research gap, and the novelty compared with previous relevant studies.

e.g.

“KMC has adopted private sector participation (PSP) as a key strategy for SWM and resource mobilization, but Alam et al. (2008) mentioned investment to improve it is not enough due to insufficient funding.” (line 106 -108)

 

“Additionally, Dangi et al.(2011) mentioned a situation generating waste from households in Kathmandu with a three-stage stratified cluster analysis, which pointed out most wastes were accounted for organic wastes and also it’s important to recycle them. Pokhrel (2005) evaluated the way of SWM in Kathmandu and said solid wastes which mostly come from organic origin should be composted on the land.

As mentioned above, several problems and points of SWM in Kathmandu have been pointed out in prior studies. Those are mainly reporting the current situation of SWM and the major composition of wastes in Kathmandu. However, it’s not necessarily clear how we could improve the current situation and what priority we should take to improve. Costs? Frequency of the collection? Facility for garbage? Service provider quality? There has been not much research to prioritize which factor to improve the current system. To fill out this kind of research gap, this paper tries to show results from another point of view with a randomized sample-based trial called a choice conjoint experiment.” (line 130 – 142)

 

Thank you very much for all your comments, which were constructive to make a better draft.

 

Sincerely,

Masaru Ichihashi

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is now in a better format and can be published in the journal

Author Response

Jan. 17, 2021

Dear Anonymous referee,

Thank you very much for your useful comments.

I believe our draft has been improved by your suggestion.

 

Sincerely,

Masaru Ichihashi

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Congratulation on the manuscript improvement. It is much better as compared to the previous version. However, there is minor improvement required before I can recommend it for publication.

Introduction: Overall is ok. But, the short discussion on the significance of household preference study on SWM services based on the previous study is missing. I think this discussion in this section is crucial to understand why this study is important and significant to be conducted.

Literature review: The authors need to discuss the five attributes (garbage pickup provider, collection, pickup frequency, garbage facility. service charge) comprehensively. My suggestion is to discuss each attribute in one paragraph. Discussing these attributes is crucial to justify why this study focuses on these attributes.

Methods: it is Ok.

Results and discussion: Results is Ok. The discussion needs improvement. Please refer to this paper to write a good discussion https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2020.104899

Conclusion: it's OK.

Author Response

Dear Anonymous referee,

Thank you for your constructive comments and for giving a useful reference.

I have revised our draft according to your comments again, and the main revised points are displayed in red letters.

Reply

  • Introduction

We added one more paragraph to explain the significance of this study by comparing a contrast study from Brussel’s case:

“Mansuy et al(2020) also conducted a choice-based conjoint analysis for Brussels’ consumers in Netherland about their preference to do collection service for electrical and electronic equipment including mobile phones and washing machines. They found that consumers in Brussel interestingly had a strong reluctance for incineration and did not have a significant preference for resuing over recycling. This result is different from the previous similar studies for the waste management field, but it might come from characteristics of target goods like electrical and electric equipment or environmental factors in Brussel. Either way, their findings will give another information so that deepening household preference study on SWM to compare similar points and different points are significant.” (line 131-139)

  • Method

We have already mentioned the contents of five attributes used in this paper in the method section, but according to your comments we added explanations to elaborate them:

“Monthly service charge" is about choice for cost of the waste management service. A negative attitude to the cost is usually expected, but by using this attribute, we can see how sensitive respondents’ reaction to the cost is. "Intermediate garbage processing facility" is items for facility type to dispose of garbage, but in Nepal, it is not obvious which type of facility is demanded at all because such facilities are absolutely insufficient. "Garbage pickup frequency" is about choice for frequency of the waste management service. In general, frequent service should be desirable but the frequency would proportionately increase the cost for service so it’s not so trivial that many services are always acceptable.” (line 202-209)

“Temporary garbage collection spot" is about choice for collection spot. Due to that absolute lack of collection spots, whether the personal type of spot or community type of spot is de-manded by residents is not so obvious. "Garbage pickup service provider" is about the type of service provider. Whether public service is really trusted by residents is also an interesting problem to improve waste management.”(line 214 – 218)

  • Discussion

Thank you for giving an information about an interesting paper. We added a paragraph to mention this paper and to consider the difference from our results briefly as well as mentioned in the Literature Review. Also, we added this paper to the reference:

“On the other hand, as Mansuy et al(2020) mentioned, Brussels’ consumers showed different preferences for incineration and resuing electrical and electric equipment. This difference might come from an environmental background and economic development stage between Europe and Asia as well as characteristics of electrical and electric equipment. This point should be deeply considered further in the future.”  (line 563-567)

 

Thank you very much for all your comments, which were constructive to make a better draft.

 

Sincerely,

Masaru Ichihashi

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors have improved the paper. However, two of my major concerns from the previous round are not addressed. 

  1. The theory gap this manuscript addressed is not clearly stated. The authors stated, "we set research questions as follows: which attributes have a causal effect on a household's decision to choose improved SWM Facilities in Kathmandu, and how each SWM attribute affects the probability of preferences." Yet, the literature discussed is mainly about Kathmandu, and prior studies dealing with factors influencing household choice behavior for improved solid waste management services are not discussed. What is missing from prior studies, if there is no theory gap, why don't we adopt one of the studies from other developing nations? 
  2. The discussion section is very weak, the authors need to compare and contrast it with similar studies and highlight which arguments from the literature are confirmed and which ones are not. Hence this paper is a simple case study dealing only with Kathmandu city and in its current form does not merit publication. 

Author Response

Jan. 17, 2021

Dear Anonymous referee,

Thank you for your useful comments, again.

I have revised our draft according to your comments, and the main revised points are displayed in red letters.

Reply

According to your comments, we revised our draft and added some explanations as follows.

  • We revised the draft adding explanations for the methodological theory gap (line 135 – 164):

“As mentioned above, several problems and points of SWM in Kathmandu have been pointed out in prior studies. Those are mainly reporting the current situation of SWM and the major composition of wastes in Kathmandu. However, it’s not necessarily clear how we could improve the current situation and what priority we should take to improve. Costs? Frequency of the collection? Facility for garbage? Service provider quality? There has been not much research to prioritize which factor to improve the current system. To fill out this kind of research gap, this paper tries to show results from another point of view with a randomized sample-based trial called a choice conjoint experiment. A study of SWM services based on a choice conjoint experiment in KMC is not popular yet. Maybe, Fukuda et al. (2018) is so far the first work to adapt the conjoint analysis on SWM management, which analyzed an Indonesian SWM case in Jakarta. Their method followed Hainmueller, Hopkins, Yamamoto (2013), which has been known as a new type of con-joint analysis becoming popular in social sciences and behavioral sciences recently to find causality in a certain policy. In addition, Setiawan et al. (2019) also analyzed the effect of giving pecuniary and non-pecuniary information to improve a waste collection and disposal program in Surabaya, Indonesia with a randomized conjoint field experiment.

The conjoint analysis itself has been conventionally known as a widely used method to identify characteristics of target goods or services in a marketing field since the 1970s. However, this method had had limitations in that it’s based on a more theoretical model-dependent procedure. Hainmueller, et. al (2013)’s approach has enabled “researchers to nonparametrically identify and estimate the causal effects of many treatment components simultaneously” to fill up with the prior methodological theory gap. This method has strengthened the advantage by not only randomly selecting respondents but also randomly showing the contents of choice card in the questionnaire when conducting the survey to estimate the causal effects of components given to respondents. So, the choice conjoint experiment has been a very powerful tool to identify rationally how strongly a certain attribute affects respondents’ preferences when they decide.

This study is also following the same method to analyze SWM management in Kathmandu by identifying households’ preferences as an example. We believe that our approach can be applied to other areas' SWM policymaking.”

  • We revised the discussion section as well adding a comparison with similar studies and a limitation of this study (line 512 – 531):

 “Compared to the prior similar study like Fukuda, et. al(2018) and Setiawan et al. (2019), households in Kathmandu prefer setting collection spots more than the frequency of collection, which is different from the reaction of households in Jakarta and Surabaya, Indonesia. This result would mean the number of collection spots for garbage in Kathmandu is entirely more insufficient than in Jakarta. On the other hand, establishing garbage facilities like incineration, composting and recycling has similar significance among cities. The negative response to the service charge is basically common in each city (maybe in other cities). The sensitive response to pecuniary information is similarly shown in Se-tiawan et al. (2019). This would indicate that some kinds of financial support should be necessary to improve SWM anywhere.

 As we mentioned in the Introduction, although the improvement for SWM has been recognized to be needed in general, the prioritization of components for the improvement is not necessarily clear. According to our result and prior study, support for the garbage service charge, equipping any type of intermediate facilities like composting and incineration, and setting collection spots might be more important than frequency of collection and the type of business agents.

 These results come from only a few pieces of research including Kathmandu city with the randomized conjoint experiments so the further accumulation of similar research based on households' choice should be necessary to find more universal results for the improvement of SWM.”

 

Thank you very much for all your comments, which were constructive to make a better draft.

 

Sincerely,

Masaru Ichihashi

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.


Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is not written well and there is no proper format followed by the authors. In the current form the manuscript is not recommended for publication.

Corrections are needed  for the following

  1. Figure 1 : Ward profile is not clear. It would be good to remove it or make it large compared to other images.
  2. The format of the tables : The table format of Table 2 and Table 3 are different. Even the word sizes are different
  3. The format of the references are different. For example Ref 1
  4. The titles of the figure should come below the figures.
  • More details on the Conjoint analysis is required especially citing papers on Solid Waste Management done in other places.
  •  
  • There is no mention about the Figures or Table in the main content, hence it is very difficult to understand the results and discussion.

Author Response

I’d like to thank anonymous referees for giving us important and constructive comments.

I have revised our draft according to your comments as follows:

Referee1:

1)      Figure 1 : Ward profile is not clear. It would be good to remove it or make it large compared to other images.

Reply

 Thank you for your suggestion. We removed one of contents of the Figure 1 to improve and clarify it and make it large.

2)      The format of the tables: The table format of Table 2 and Table 3 are different. Even the word sizes are different

Reply

 Thank you for pointing it out. We changed these tables’ word size and format which fit the body style.

3)      The format of the references are different. For example Ref 1

Reply

Thank you for pointing it out. Since this first reference was a simple mistake, we deleted it. Also, we changed the format of reference to be suited to the Journal’s format.

4)      The titles of the figure should come below the figures.

 Reply

Changed the place of the figure’s title.

5)      More details on the Conjoint analysis is required especially citing papers on Solid Waste Management done in other places.

 Reply

Added explanation about the conjoint analysis and mentioned a paper which applied the method on Solid Waste Management in a developing country (in the second last paragraph in the Introduction part, line 124 – 132).

6)      There is no mention about the Figures or Table in the main content, hence it is very difficult to understand the results and discussion.

Reply

Improved points that we’re explaining Figures and Tables in the body (mainly Results)

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Line 40: The sentence needs further clarification. Why is the term “even” used?

Line 47: issue

Line 47: Check “Cities”

Line 49: Please mention the ADB abbreviation is and the year for citation

Line 63: Check grammar

Line 67: It is claimed that “recently” issues were encountered; however, the reference is from 2008.

Line 72: Effective and efficient (one is redundant)

Line 83: The term section suits better than Chapter

Line 118: WTP abbreviation missing

Table 1. The font is too large for a table.

Table 1: NR abbreviation not mentioned

Line 151: space between table and next paragraph

Line 184: Font size too large

Line 204-208: These lines should be combined into the introduction

Figure 1: Labels too small and hard to read. This figure needs clarification (left figure and right figure).

Table 2. The font is too large for a table. The first column is unnecessarily too large. Also the format can be improved like Table 1.

Line 256: Check this sentence

Figures: The quality of figures can improve. The axis numbers can be written as 0.2 rather than .2.

Line 286, 294: How is significance determined.

Line 296: What are the stars

Line 298: Estimated or calculated?

Line 342: Avoid using “Interestingly” to describe results.

Figure 5: Partially missing in the current version. Figures 4 and 5 size and quality can improve.

Line 382-389 and Lines 429-434: The authors must be careful in generalizing the findings. For example, what percentage of university-level education did not prefer? Was it all of them? The same for the rest.

 

General Comments:

 

  • I suggest combining the literature review into the introduction section. Also, the literature review and introduction have some redundancies and can be summarized. For example, the objective is mentioned in both introduction and literature review. This can be unified.
  • Throughout the paper, “Causal Effect” is mentioned many times. Can the reviewers elaborate why their findings is causal rather than correlational?
  • While concluding on the subsample I suggest using a different language to describe the findings for example: Single people tend to … because the current language is too definitive. Also, the other description like ethnics and .. can be mentioned not to have significant effect.
  • What is the objective of analyzing subsamples? How can the results possibly be helpful for policy makers? Any suggestions or recommendations? Please elaborate on these questions in the text.
  • The writing needs many improvements including removing redundancies. It is encouraged to have an English native speaking review.
  • The study mentions 400 households. How does the number of samples compare with other studies?
  • The discussion and conclusion can be improved with including some recommendations based on the results. 
  • I recommend combining internal and external answers in one figure next to each other to make it easier for the reader to compare. (at least for the first two figures).  

 

Author Response

I’d like to thank anonymous referees for giving us important and constructive comments.

I have revised our draft according to your comments as follows:

Referee2:

1)      Line 40: The sentence needs further clarification. Why is the term “even” used?

Reply

Added the reason in this sentence: “because solid waste management is often well established”.

 

2)      Line 47: issue

Reply

Thank you for pointing it out. We have changed it.

 

3)      Line 47: Check “Cities”

Reply

Have changed the word into “a city”.

 

4)      Line 49: Please mention the ADB abbreviation is and the year for citation

Reply

Mentioned the year of the book in the parenthesis.

 

5)      Line 63: Check grammar

Reply

Modified the sentence.

 

6)      Line 67: It is claimed that “recently” issues were encountered; however, the reference is from 2008.

Reply

Thank you for pointing it out. We have changed the word “recently” into “has”(perfect tense).

 

7)      Line 72: Effective and efficient (one is redundant)

Reply

Deleted an unnecessary word.

 

8)      Line 83: The term section suits better than Chapter

Reply

Thank you for pointing it out. We have changed the word “chapter” into “section”.

 

9)      Line 118: WTP abbreviation missing

Reply

Added the full name for WTP at the first appearance in the manuscript.

 

10)   Table 1. The font is too large for a table.

Reply

Changed the format of the table.

 

11)   Table 1: NR abbreviation not mentioned

Reply

Added a simple explanation at a note under the table, saying that “NRs” means Nepalese rupee. 

 

12)   Line 151: space between table and next paragraph

Reply

Inserted a space between the table and the next paragraph.

 

13)   Line 184: Font size too large

Reply

Change the font size to be suited to the body.

 

14)   Line 204-208: These lines should be combined into the introduction

Reply

Thank you for suggesting an appropriate recommendation. We have placed that part into another line explaining the necessity of efficient SWM in the Introduction.

 

15)   Figure 1: Labels too small and hard to read. This figure needs clarification (left figure and right figure).

Reply

According to another referee's comment, we have deleted the left figure and enlarged the right one. The basic purpose of this figure is to show the Kathmandu Metropolitan City area so that we believe only this map is good enough to grasp the study area.

 

16)   Table 2. The font is too large for a table. The first column is unnecessarily too large. Also, the format can be improved like Table 1.

Reply

Changed the format of the table.

 

17)   Line 256: Check this sentence

Reply

Thank you for pointing it out. This sentence does not make sense. It should be placed in a line for an explanation of the estimation model. So, we added a general explanation about the interpretation for the constant term of the model (in lines 207-208).

 

18)   Figures: The quality of figures can improve. The axis numbers can be written as 0.2 rather than .2.

Reply

We’re sorry for this. This axis style depends on Software for the analysis. So far, it’s a bit difficult to change the decimal number from .2 to 0.2. Instead of that, we made figures clearer.

 

19)   Line 286, 294: How is significance determined.

Reply

The word  “significant” means more than 95% from statistical significant level. So, we added the percentage in the sentence.

 

20)   Line 296: What are the stars

Reply

The stars mean the significant level as well, but it’s not necessary here. We have deleted them.

 

21)   Line 298: Estimated or calculated?

Reply

This number is an estimated value because it comes from the regression results behind the graph.

 

22)   Line 342: Avoid using “Interestingly” to describe results.

Reply

Changed the word to “It’s remarkable that”.

 

23)   Figure 5: Partially missing in the current version. Figures 4 and 5 size and quality can improve.

Reply

Figures were improved to see clearly.

 

24)   Line 382-389 and Lines 429-434: The authors must be careful in generalizing the findings. For example, what percentage of university-level education did not prefer? Was it all of them? The same for the rest.

Reply

Thank you for your suggestion. Here, for example, university-level education respondents account for around 55% of all respondents, and they didn’t show a significant preference for incineration as their choice. So, we added such an explanation in the paragraph.

 

General Comments:

1)      I suggest combining the literature review into the introduction section. Also, the literature review and introduction have some redundancies and can be summarized. For example, the objective is mentioned in both introduction and literature review. This can be unified.

Reply

According to this comment, we combined the introduction and the literature review as one section. The description of the objective has been simplified.

 

2)     Throughout the paper, “Causal Effect” is mentioned many times. Can the reviewers elaborate why their findings is causal rather than correlational?

Reply

This method is based on random sampling and the list on the survey is generated randomly to avoid having some biases such as selection bias and cognitive bias. So, the results from this method, which is often called the Randomized Control Trial (RCT) or Causal Inference, can be interpreted as causality which is different from just correlation. But as you mentioned, the term “causal effect” frequently appeared in our draft, so we deleted the words to some extent.

 

3)                  While concluding on the subsample I suggest using a different language to describe the findings for example: Single people tend to … because the current language is too definitive. Also, the other description like ethnics and .. can be mentioned not to have significant effect.

What is the objective of analyzing subsamples? How can the results possibly be helpful for policy makers? Any suggestions or recommendations? Please elaborate on these questions in the text.

Reply

The objective of this subsample analysis is to clarify some differences among categorized groups, but as you mentioned this part does not look clear very much. So, we revised this part to clarify the different points with overall results like Figure 1 and 2. I  believe that this part’s analysis shows how almost all categorized groups want to change the current situation for SWM, and also gives some hints to decision-makers.

 

4)                  The writing needs many improvements including removing redundancies. It is encouraged to have an English native speaking review.

Reply

I agree. We already proofread our draft once. But if there is time left, we’d like to improve English more used in the draft.

 

5)                  The study mentions 400 households. How does the number of samples compare with other studies?

Reply

As mentioned above, our method is based on random sampling. So, these 400 households were also selected randomly from randomly selected areas (2-step random selection). So, if other studies’ data selection were also based on random sampling, the characteristics of the data should be similar although the size of data is different.

 

6)                  The discussion and conclusion can be improved with including some recommendations based on the results. 

Reply

Added some policy implications at the conluding remarks, based on our results.

 

7)                  I recommend combining internal and external answers in one figure next to each other to make it easier for the reader to compare. (at least for the first two figures).  

Reply

According to your suggestion, we have combined some figures in the subsample analysis.

 

Thank you for all your comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

please find the comments in the note of highlight parts

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Annonymous Referee,

Thank you for your comments again.

I have revised our draft according to your comments as follows:

 

  • Regarding comments on line 88-89 and 93-94

Reply

To avoid unnecessary mislead, we deleted these sentences.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 118

Reply

Changed our explanation for the usefulness of the conjoint approach.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 125.

Reply

Regarding the current situation of SWM in KMC Ward no.10, we have already mentioned it in a paragraph above (line 48-66) but added some explanations more.

  • Regarding comments on line 126.

Reply

According to the previous comment from the referee, we simplified the Introduction and the Literature Review. But we added the research objective clearly, once again.

  • Regarding comments on line 145.

Reply

                   Changed the expression for the explanation of the actual questionnaire that we used.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 146.

Reply

Added a word to the “baseline”.

  • Regarding comments on line 148.

Reply

Of course, these levels can be flexibly changed according to the purpose of the research. In this study, we decided these levels as reasonable option examples that we thought. So, we added such an explanation in the body.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 150.

Reply

Changed the table format to be suited to our explanation in the footnote.

  • Regarding comments on line 162.

Reply

Added a sample of choice set as Figure 1 to make the image clearer, and wrote a sentence to explain the survey.

  • Regarding comments on line 163.

Reply

That was a typo. Changed the word.

  • Regarding comments on line 167.

Reply

We have added sentences to explain the difference between the Internal choice and the External choice in the lines.

  • Regarding comments on line 173.

Reply

We have already explained how we conducted the survey in other lines (207-218) but added a bit of words to explain clearly. Also, we will submit the sample of our questionnaire with the choice-set example as a supplementary file.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 236.

Reply

                   Deleted the unnecessary word.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 252.

Reply

                   We have already explained it in line 176.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 274 - 281.

Reply

Added some sentences to explain the interpretation for the estimation result, and also added a word, “statistically significant” to make it clearer.

In addition, since there were still unclear points for the interpretation of our results, we elaborated more to clarify the meaning of the results.

I’m afraid that the referee’s comment might be misunderstanding the meaning of the result. To avoid such misunderstanding, we added sentences to clarify the interpretation of the result.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 285.

Reply

As the referee mentioned, this sentence was misinterpreted. So, we revised this part drastically as another paragraph. People in Kathmandu still tend to prefer the current SWM, so far. According to this revision, we revised the abstract and the concluding remarks as well.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 312.

Reply

                   Added a word, “statistically significant” to make it clearer.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 338.

Reply

Changed the sentence a bit to clarify the meaning. But the difference between “Internal” and “External” has been given on another page (see Reply 11)).

 

  • Regarding comments on line 348 and 351.

Reply

We revised this paragraph to clarify the exact meaning of the results.

These significant percentages indicate that respondents tend to increase their probability to choose improved SWM services to this extent.

Also, we revised Table 3.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 350.

Reply

                   Changed the word to “It can be noted”.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 350.

Reply

Changed the expression.

 

  • Regarding comments on line 378.

Reply

This comment looks the same as points before, and we have given the explanation about the difference between “Internal” and “External” and subsample analysis which is focused on features among heterogenetic respondents.

 

Thank you for all your comments, again.

 

Sincerely,

Masaru Ichihashi

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The article can be published in the present format

Author Response

Thank you for your useful comments and understanding.

 

Regards,

M. Ichihashi

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the revision. There are only a few minor corrections suggested as below:

 

The references can be double checked (not matching, for example Fukuda et al is not clear if 2019 or 2018). 

Figure 1, the numbers are too small to read. The figure may be improved by pointing to Ward. 10. 

Line 303, the 95% confidence can be written more clearly (now it only says more than 95%).

 

Figure 4 caption: space between choice and parentheses.

 

Figures quality have improved. I am wondering if the program (or any other program to re-create plots) can be used to change the scale on the vertical axis. For example, in Figure 5, 6, 7, if a different scale (higher height) can be used, then it will be easier to distinguish between each value. And there will be more space between y-axis values. If possible, this would be a good improvement. 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments again.

I have revised our draft according to your comments as follows:

 

1) The references can be double checked (not matching, for example Fukuda et al is not clear if 2019 or 2018).

Reply

Thank you for pointing it out. Revised the mismatched year of the reference.

 

2) Figure 1, the numbers are too small to read. The figure may be improved by pointing to Ward. 10.

Reply

We have changed Figure 1 to a much clearer one and put the source information under the figure.

 

3) Line 303, the 95% confidence can be written more clearly (now it only says more than 95%).

Reply

Thank you for pointing it out. Changed the expression to ”within the 95% confidence interval”.

 

4) Figure 4 caption: space between choice and parentheses.

Reply

Inserted a space there.

 

5) Figures quality have improved. I am wondering if the program (or any other program to re-create plots) can be used to change the scale on the vertical axis. For example, in Figure 5, 6, 7, if a different scale (higher height) can be used, then it will be easier to distinguish between each value. And there will be more space between y-axis values. If possible, this would be a good improvement.

Reply

Agree. It’s convenient if we can freely change the size of the figures. But these figures are based on the outputs from software, and we’ve tried to change the scale with a command for running a program.

So far, the figure sizes can be enlarged to vertical direction on the draft as picture materials. It’s good enough to see these figures, we believe.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

  1. Thank you for the various revisions to the paper, which is now much clearer and easier to understand.

 

  1. In terms of the application of conjoint analysis to SWM, your revised wording suggests that that has been done just the once, by Fukuda et al.; you do not attempt to point out or review the methodological aspects of that work, nor to point out any other prior applications.

 

  1. You have addressed most of the previous review comments, but one that you chose not to address was the long comment on Table 1, asking you to explain clearly the meaning of the various attributes, and justify why you have selected these particular attributes and levels. At the corresponding point in the text, you cite the paper by Setiawan et al., so I sought out that paper to try to find the missing information. I was surprised to find that it too applied conjoint analysis; that it used a wider range of attributes and levels (including segregation at source, which you dismiss out of hand), which were explained clearly to the reader; and that the conjoint experiment was accompanied by a two-part information campaign to ensure that the survey respondents had the information they needed to make informed choices. Indeed, the main focus of the paper was on the effect of different types of information on household preferences. (As an aside, when I scanned the citations of the paper, I found a follow-up paper by the same authors which looked at (water supply in) Nepal).

 

  1. I found the Setiawan et al. paper to be good, with both the methodology and the application clearly explained. By comparison, this paper appears to be a rather poor imitation. You have simplified the methodology without any acknowledgement that you have done so, nor any explanation or justification of the changes made, which undermines confidence in the approach used. In addition, your simplification of their attributes and your failure to explain the levels undermines confidence in your understanding of SWM systems; and the apparent absence of parallel information to ensure informed choice by the survey participants undermines confidence in your results.

 

  1. Part of the intended ‘added value’ of this paper is the conclusions from your results in Ward 10 in Kathmandu and their potential for use by decision makers elsewhere. Even setting aside the reservations above, the one point which you do demonstrate is that households do not wish to pay more for SWM services; one could respond that that is exactly what one would expect. The final conclusion based on this at the end of the paper is that ‘public expenditure should improve the current waste management in Kathmandu’; I would suggest that that is at best naïve, as public expenditure has to be paid for ultimately by the people, if not via direct charges, then from their taxes. The other correlations which you make are marginal, and you do not try to justify why those results should be able to be extrapolated to other cities.

 

  1. For all of these reasons, I cannot recommend publication of this paper.
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