Exploring the Opportunities and Challenges of ICT-Mediated Food Sharing in Japan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The current manuscript “ICT-mediated Food Sharing: Opportunities to prevent food loss and waste emissions and encourage consumers’ behavioral change ” by Yamabe-Ledoux et al. deals comparative case study of 10 food-sharing platforms operating in Japan drawn from a web content analysis and semi-structured interviews. My specific comments are:

1.      The title is confusing, please rewrite and concise it. Also, indicate the country and region name.

2.      The abstract should be rewritten in the following order: research problem, objectives of the study, research design, major findings, overall outcome, and novelty of the work.

3.      There are several statements and claims made by authors in the whole paper which need strong references. Please revise this point carefully.

4.      Define all abbreviations used in the table under their footers.

5.      Extend the captions of figures and tables to indicate more information about them. The current versions are not informative enough.

6.      The figures are blurred.

7.      Interpretation of obtained data is poor.

8.      Several parts of the conclusion can be shifted under the discussion part. Please revise it to 250 words focusing on the major outcome, usefulness, shortcomings, and future directions of ICT-medicated food sharing in the selected region.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Author(s),

Please find below my concerns and recommendations regarding your manuscript proposal entitled "ICT-mediated Food Sharing: Opportunities to prevent food loss and waste emissions and encourage consumers’ behavioural change".

The Introduction is prety-well written, but you should clearly define and describe the following important elements:

- the research gap;

- the research goal;

- the research question(s).

By clearly specifying this aspects, the readers will understand from the very beginning of the article what you want to cover by your research proposal.

After the Introduction chapter, you should include a distinct "Literature Review" chapter and present the previous results from the extant scientific literature.

Thus, I recommend you to include the following useful resources: https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9121898 (food and society), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2018.09.004 (sentiment analysis - food consumption), http://www.ecoforumjournal.ro/index.php/eco/article/view/759 (ICT and the ethics of food safety), https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072892 (global food waste). By including these recommended references, you will improve the general context of your research proposal.

In the section "2.2 Consumer-sidet survey", at the rows 141 - 143, you say that "A large-scale survey of 10,000 individuals capturing a representative sample of Japan’s sociodemographic and geographic characteristics was conducted to acquire an understanding of the users-side attitude towards food sharing practices."

Please offer the following details:

- when did you conduct the survey (period of time)?

- how did you choose the respondents?

- how did you conduct the survey (online/physical survey/third party company etc.).

- were the respondents rewarder for their answers? If yes, how?

I recommend you to shortly describe the methodology, step by step. At this moment, you haven't such a clear description in your text.

Please offer more details about the content of the survey: number of questions, the questions themselves etc. Now, I don't understand what kind of questions you included in your survey.

The Conclusions chapter should also highlight the managerial implications of your research results.

Dear Author(s),

Please consider all the above remarks as being constructive recommendations in order to improve the general quality of your manuscript proposal.

Kind Regards!

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

The paper deals with the interesting and very important topic of food sharing.

The comments are like the followings:

1.     What is the aim of the study? Authors have to identify the research gap for their study based on all recent studies published.

2.     The Methodology  Chapter does not contain the necessary information about the research sample:

-        How was the selection of the sample?

-        What method was used in the study (CAWI, CAPI...?)

-        In what respects the sample was representative?

-        The description of the questionnaire is missing. It would be good if in the methodology, in the form of a bullet, the type of questions that were asked during the research (or a questionnaire was added to the annex).

-        Which the factors were taken into account in the segmentation of the respondents?

This chapter has mixed information, please sort it out.

Information on the statistical tools used is missing.

I recommend moving the text (lines 157-160) to Results.

The authors put forward 2 hypotheses which they did not refer to in the further part of the article.

3.     Results

- figure 3 is illegible.

4.     Discussion section should be improved.

5.     There is lack of such parts like Recommendations and Limitations.

6.     Conclusions need to be revised according to the aim of the study and hypotheses.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Author(s),

I appreciate your effort to improve the manuscript proposal. For the current version of the article I have the following recommendations:

First of all, there are some references that are not synchronyzed with the final bibliograhpic list:

- at row 129, you have the text: "...more sustainable production and consumption, especially in the food domain [0]." But you don't have the reference [0].

- the same remark for the rows 190, 201 ([0, 0]), 518.

Please carefully correct these issues.

The chapters Introduction and Literature Review should be improved by including the following additional relevant resources: https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc7010088, https://doi.org/10.3390/su12104142, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2019.09.004, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2019.01.009. 

From an editorial point of view, the final reference list is not aligned in a consistent way: please see the references #1, 2, 10, 12, 13, 15 - 20, 25, etc. I recommend you to revise the "align" attribute of that sections.

Table 4 from pages 9 - 10 should have a table header describing the meaning of the columns.

Kind Regards!

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Accept in present form

Author Response

We would like to thank the reviewers for accepting this paper in its present form.