Child-Friendly Environments—What, How and by Whom?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript Title: “Review: Child-friendly Environments – What, How and by Whom?” (sustainability-1672025)

The current paper provides a comprehensive investigation on the environmental and child-friendly environments can lead to positive changes. I find this paper of high quality. Overall, this is a good case study, and the data provides important information for scientist workers devoted to the SDGs. The topic of research and the creative ways to prove the hypothesis are commendable. The stated objectives have been achieved and the discussion is adequately supported with published literature.

I have no hesitation in recommending this paper provided the following correction are implemented:

The specific comments are as follows:

1. Is this topic of interest? Yes, this study provides essential or interesting information for the industry sector. A research title is specific.
2. The paragraphs in Introduction section is OK. However, in this part, authors should add more details about the previous studies of others. In the original context, no detailed information about the historical references or studies were presented, which should be added more. Especially the significance and child-friendliness/environmental management implications of this study should be highlighted briefly at the beginning. It needs to be addressed what the originality or novelty of the present work is in comparison with these previous works.
3. The introduction is too long to focus on the topic of manuscript, and need be rewritten to add research gap and novelty of this manuscript.
4. The authors mentioned that there is no standard analytical method, and even no reference materials. The results did not compare with anything that recognized. The key factor of accuracy is uncertain.
5. Based on the outcome of the present study, the author(s) should recommend the extension of the present study as future scope of study. Especially in industrial section.
6. The conclusion should be expanded and the meaning of this paper should be mentioned in detail. This part should include and report the major outcomes of the study emphasizing towards fulfillment of the scope of the study.
7. Author(s) are suggested to elaborate the conclusion drawing major inferences from the results followed by the secondary conclusions/recommendations reached through the critical analysis/investigation.
8. Please add one topic of “Implications” for some case with and try to link out.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your report, which pointed out needs for improvement. We have now adressed these as below, with focus on the Introduction and Conclusions.

2-3: The Introduction has been developed, mainly by adding a section pointing at the knowledge gap and the significance of the approach just before the aim (lines 106-114).

5-8: The conclusions have been extended and developed, with recommendations and summary of all the main conclusions as connecting to the paper scope, with more analysed parts.

Reviewer 2 Report

1. In-text references are numbered, but numbers cannot be found in the References section, and this prevents from checking them. Please fix.

2. Line 100: please integrate [21] with the name of the author(s)

3. The introduction is composed of nearly 80 lines of literature review and nearly 10 lines of research questions; please add a short paragraph linking the former and the latter (i.e. literature gaps and potentials, reasons leading to this study, etc.).

4. Please provide further justification and references for your search keywords and for your choice about including JSTOR.

5. Please state whether non-English papers were looked for; if not, please acknowledge the reasons and limits of this choice.

6. Please fix Table 3's key/legend; at present the larger dimension (as well as the different style) of the text is confusing.

7. Line 571. Please shortly/incidentally recall what the UNCRS and the three of four P's stand for. (A general reader may skip the sections where you explained their meaning).

8. "The research literature on CFE shows a multitude, but can also be grouped into ten 656 themes which are reoccurring"; please double check the grammar of this sentence.

9. Conclusions should be expanded a trifle; please also consider using bullet points for your main findings.

10. Speaking of socio-physical urban environment and questions like your "What, How & by Whom", you may be willing to check out "Cristiano & Zilio (2021). Whose health in whose city?", also published in this journal.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your very constructive and useful review.

1. Yes, although they are numbered, the layout has turned out to make the gap between numbers and references so large, the numbers don't always show when printed. This will be fixed at latest in the work with the proofs.
2. Thank you for spotting this. We've added the author name.
3. We have added a section (lines 106-114) on the problem and reasons for the study.
4. A bit more argumentation for the methodological choices has been added.
5. We have clarified that only papers in English were searched for, and added this to the delimitations of the study presented in the Methods discussion.
6. The legend has been both separed from the rest of the table, and given similar style.
7. The Ps were added
8. The sentence was rephrased into "The knowledge in the multitude of research literature on CFE can be grouped into ten themes which are reoccurring"
9. The Conclusions have been expanded, including all main findings from the study, using bullet points.
10. Thank you for this recommendation! We have not added it as a reference to this paper, but it is very useful for us and our colleagues.