Household Food Waste Awareness in Relation to Motivations

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, household’s food waste awareness in relation to motivations was investigated. The idea of the article is positive, but there are still some problems:

1.     In the introduction, the research problem is not explained clearly. Please keep the text concise and to the point.

2.     “2.2. Data collection” chapter should be divided into two parts “2.2.1 Diaries” and “2.2.2 Questionnaires”. Please revised.

3.     There have some formatting issues in the paper. References in articles should be in numerical format. And comments on the figures should be placed below the figures. The tables should center right and fit the page. Thus the manuscript should be carefully checked to avoid such mistakes and the languages need to be improved.

4.     The figures are not very clear. The text of the bar chart in Figure 1 should be adjusted to the bottom. All three figures are too vague to see clearly. And the color is not bright. It is suggested to redraw the figures.

5.     The charts, data and formulas in the results section should be more detailed to show the data analysis process.

No.

Author Response

In this paper, household’s food waste awareness in relation to motivations was investigated. The idea of the article is positive, but there are still some problems:	Thanks to rev 1 comments, we deeply reshaped our paper, hopefully for the better.
1. In the introduction, the research problem is not explained clearly. Please keep the text concise and to the point.	Introduction: we cut a little bit this section and went straight to the point. Please, let us know if this works.
2. “2.2. Data collection” chapter should be divided into two parts “2.2.1 Diaries” and “2.2.2 Questionnaires”. Please revised.	Data collection has been divided. Thanks for this suggestion!
3. There have some formatting issues in the paper. References in articles should be in numerical format. And comments on the figures should be placed below the figures. The tables should center right and fit the page. Thus the manuscript should be carefully checked to avoid such mistakes and the languages need to be improved.	- References have been elaborated according to MDPI style.  - Comments on the figures have been placed below the figures.  - Tables and figures have been elaborated again and then, correctly placed in the page.  - We tried to improve the language, also by cutting over-explanations and long sentences.
4. The figures are not very clear. The text of the bar chart in Figure 1 should be adjusted to the bottom. All three figures are too vague to see clearly. And the color is not bright. It is suggested to redraw the figures.	Figures have been redrawn.
5. The charts, data and formulas in the results section should be more detailed to show the data analysis process.	We added some section with explanations after each figure (track change in red). Please, let us know if it’s clearer.

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript reports about an investigation on the type of motivations that could induce a reduction of the household food waste quantities. In particular, the study aims to establish if a certain set of motivations could influence the perceived quantity of produced food waste. The perceived quantity of produced food waste was established respect to the leftover evaluation given by a diary survey that responders had to prepare, while questionnaires were obtained by computer assisted Web interviews. The random forest technique allowed to build a model capable to capture the relationship between explanatory and dependent variables.

The study is very interesting and could represent a useful tool for the design of political interventions for food waste reduction. Indeed, the implementation of the right communication campaigns can help in reducing food waste production and improve the consuming behaviour. However, this adopted approach presents some methodological limitations. The main limitation is represented by the use of diaries for the determination of household food waste quantities, that clearly fails in detecting the real data. Household food waste quantities could be more correctly determined by direct garbage weighting. Future studies should take in account such an aspect. The manuscript can be publish in his present form.

English style and grammar are of good quality.

Author Response

This manuscript reports about an investigation on the type of motivations that could induce a reduction of the household food waste quantities. In particular, the study aims to establish if a certain set of motivations could influence the perceived quantity of produced food waste. The perceived quantity of produced food waste was established respect to the leftover evaluation given by a diary survey that responders had to prepare, while questionnaires were obtained by computer assisted Web interviews. The random forest technique allowed to build a model capable to capture the relationship between explanatory and dependent variables.	We would like to thank rev 2 for her/his comments. We fully agree with rev 2 about the limitations of the diary, and we tried to clearly describe it in the text with all the references in the limitations section. However, it is very challenging to organize a large-scale and representative sampling study with reference to household food waste quantities detection, as the entire organization of waste collection falls behind the single municipality in Italy. In Italy, we have 7901 municipalities, most probably with 7901 different collection methods (door to door, curbside common bins; daily, biweekly, etc)!
The study is very interesting and could represent a useful tool for the design of political interventions for food waste reduction. Indeed, the implementation of the right communication campaigns can help in reducing food waste production and improve the consuming behaviour. However, this adopted approach presents some methodological limitations. The main limitation is represented by the use of diaries for the determination of household food waste quantities, that clearly fails in detecting the real data. Household food waste quantities could be more correctly determined by direct garbage weighting. Future studies should take in account such an aspect. The manuscript can be publish in his present form.	- This is why, when thinking to a large-scale assessment, we end up using diaries, which is still considered “legit” from the EU Commission Delegated act. But we fully agree with rev 2 about this consideration: we have run several waste compositional analyses in past years and results are always impressive. Our paper Giordano et al., 2018, specifically enquired into this difference.  - Thanks to Rev2 for the time spent in reading our paper and giving us advice!

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is well written and very well composed. The methods are thorough and applied to give specific answers, The results are well presented and discussed and the entire work represents continuation of elaborate research. The Introduction could be shortened. Otherwise, the paper is good for publishing.

Author Response

The manuscript is well written and very well composed. The methods are thorough and applied to give specific answers, The results are well presented and discussed and the entire work represents continuation of elaborate research. The Introduction could be shortened. Otherwise, the paper is good for publishing.

We would like to thank rev 3 for finding time to read our paper and giving her/his feedback. We have shortened the introduction consistently.

Reviewer 4 Report

 

Manuscript entitled "Household’s food waste awareness in relation to motivations" is acceptable with minor revisions. Please check comment below

.      Line 28: Please remove “According to Alexander et al. (2017) and Vanham et al. (2015)”

2.      Line 44: Remove […] or clarify the sentence

3.      Line 64 “of HFW, From their study”

4.      Better write Household food waste in full form throughout manuscript instead of HFW for better understanding

5.      Line 106: “a shopping voucher of 50,00 euros was granted” for each participant? Please clarify

6.      Line 112 – 114” please clarify

7.      Figure 1: Please include clear figure, change text color etc

8.      Figure 2.: Text is not displayed properly, please check and correct

9.      Figure 3. Figure is blurry, replace with high resolution

1.  Compare your results with published literature in discussion section

1.  Conclusion is lengthy, please summarize

 

Author Response

Manuscript entitled "Household’s food waste awareness in relation to motivations" is acceptable with minor revisions. Please check comment below	We would like REV 4 for her/his accurate review.
Line 28: Please remove “According to Alexander et al. (2017) and Vanham et al. (2015)”	Checked and deleted. Thanks!
2. Line 44: Remove […] or clarify the sentence	Removed.
3. Line 64 “of HFW, From their study”	This sentence has been deleted according to suggestions of rev 1.
4. Better write Household food waste in full form throughout manuscript instead of HFW for better understanding	Thanks for this comment. We discussed it internally and opted for living the acronym ( which meaning is reported in line 1 in the paper) as it is widely used and consolidated in scientific literature- sometimes HHFW is used as well.
5. Line 106: “a shopping voucher of 50,00 euros was granted” for each participant? Please clarify	Added, line 454
6. Line 112 – 114” please clarify	We tried to elaborate better (by clarifying English and punctuation)
7. Figure 1: Please include clear figure, change text color etc	Checked and changed.
8. Figure 2.: Text is not displayed properly, please check and correct	Checked and changed.
9. Figure 3. Figure is blurry, replace with high resolution	Checked and changed.
1. Compare your results with published literature in discussion section	We compared our results with both literature on HFW (especially lines 833-842) and on attitude -behavior gap (lines 844-862).
1. Conclusion is lengthy, please summarize	We agree with REV4, so we cut the final section.