Understanding Private Preferences in Urban Development—Analysing Spatial Patterns of Food Discount Stores Locations in Switzerland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The objectives of the manuscript fit perfectly into the current trends of analyzes in the area of urban planning, taking into account the principles of sustainable urban development. The research results are of great application value for entities managing the city and for entities establishing legal and administrative regulations in the field of spatial management. The time of the research seems to be appropriate - the authors were able to analyze it from the point of view of almost seven years of changes.

Author Response

We appreciate this review very much and are pleased that the reviewer appreciates the added value of our article.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper deals with an interesting topic, which is currently relevant to research. This is an empirical study that uses a classification system for discount grocery stores that may be of interest and can be extrapolated to other studies in the future, so it may be an article with many citations.

The weakest part of the work is the bibliography, which could be more up-to-date, since the average age of the citations is more than 10 years old. Well, although the empirical study refers to establishments created before 2016, since then numerous works have been published that may be interesting to take into account in this work.

The presentation of the results can be improved, since "Sustainability" is a magazine that allows the inclusion of tables and graphs that help to better explain what has been achieved with the empirical study. Therefore, it would be good to include more numerical or graphic information on the results obtained.

The conclusions are interesting, since they show that when there are no urban planning regulations for the location of establishments, economic factors prevail, such as those related to construction costs, over others such as social or environmental ones, since they force consumers to to the use of means of transport to places further away from the houses with the consequent consumption of energy resources.

In general, if these changes are made, the article that can be published in "Sustainability"

Author Response

We appreciate this review very much.

We are grateful for the comment on the bibliography and have carried out further research. As a result, we were able to identify a few more recent contributions, which we have included. We are convinced that this gives us a good balance between current and timeless sources.

We have also gratefully taken up the suggestion regarding the illustration.  In order to illustrate the core message of our results graphically, we followed the reviewer's advice and created a graphic of the core message (see Figure 03). We are positive that this will enable readers to grasp our results much more clearly.

Thank you also for reflecting on the importance of our research. We hope that we have been able to contribute empirical evidence for precisely this idea and thus contribute to the debate on sustainable settlement development.

Reviewer 3 Report

Hi there

This is an interesting article and is generally well-written. My comments are below;

1. Considering the external validity of this paper, it is difficult without a control/comparison group. The observed association could be due to many different factors, such as economic factors specific to Switzerland and also specific to the study period (2005-2016) such as economic crises. Alternatively, authors should be careful when referring to 'effects' or making inference on 'causal relationship'. Associations or similar terms should be used throughout in the absence or a control group and experimental research resign. 

2. Some texts in the results section could be moved to introduction or methods. 

Regards

Author Response

Thank you very much for this review, which we appreciate.
Indeed, the legal and political situation does not allow for a control group. A comparison with the location decisions of these corporations in other countries over the same time period would involve too many uncontrolled variables. Unfortunately, in planning research we are in a research environment where only in situ research is possible.
The time period of the research stems from the planning regulations.
We have conscientiously included the comment on causality. We have checked our manuscript again and re-formulated the questionable passages more precisely. We are therefore now convinced that readers can now clearly see what contribution our research makes - without misunderstanding an overstatement.