Determining Factors Affecting the Protective Behavior of Filipinos in Urban Areas for Natural Calamities Using an Integration of Protection Motivation Theory, Theory of Planned Behavior, and Ergonomic Appraisal: A Sustainable Disaster Preparedness Approach
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article addresses a relevant topic on the factors that affect the protective behavior of Filipinos. The text is well-written and presents methodological consistency. However, there is a need for significant revisions (MAJOR REVISION) to adjust certain aspects of the text.
Major comments
A central issue permeates the entire text and is related to the concept of natural disasters, sometimes also presented as natural calamities. It must be considered that the risk of disasters comprises the following elements: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. Among them, only the hazard can (eventually) be exclusively natural; exposure and vulnerability (which are essential for the disaster to materialize are anthropic elements and, therefore, not natural. In this way, presenting disasters as natural is an approach that naturalizes disasters and excludes the human component in causing the disasters. More actual discussions treat disaster as a socio-natural or socio-environmental process, which seems more appropriate to the text (https://www.undrr.org/publication/natural-hazards-unnatural-disasters -economics-effective-prevention). The issue becomes even more evident when the hazards are not just natural. For example, an earthquake may be considered a natural event, but floods or landslides are not, unless they occur in unoccupied areas. However, Landslides and floods that occur in urban areas have a robust anthropic component that contributes to their causality, as soil impermeability, removal of vegetation cover, among others, directly contribute to the increase in the magnitude of the hazard, in addition to the aspects of exposure and vulnerability. For this reason, a revision of the entire text is recommended to address disasters as socio-natural processes.
The introduction section seems too long, making it difficult to get an overview of the work. The bibliographic review from line 106 onwards is directly crucial for the work, so it is recommended that it be transferred to section 2.
Section 2 is also part of the methodology and should be presented as a subsection of the methodology section.
Several arguments in section 5 have already been presented in section 2. It is recommended to briefly mention the hypotheses in the methodology section and leave the discussion based on the bibliography for section 5, avoiding repetitions.
Minor comments
In line 39, it is worth reflecting that environmental degradation is not limited to pollution.
On line 148, I suggest replacing 'ON A SINGLE NATURAL DISASTER' by 'ONLY ONE DISASTER TYPE'.
The texts of the figures are illegible; it is recommended to increase the font size.
In line 278, it is unclear how the 'response efficacy' (RE) will influence the 'behavioral intention to prepare for natural calamities. In the first analysis, the 'behavioral intention to prepare for natural calamities' will influence the response's effectiveness. The response variable seems to be 'Response efficacy' and not the other way around.
On line 299, shouldn't the variable 'Response Cost' negatively influence the 'behavioral intention to prepare for natural calamities'? The higher the cost, the lower the population's willingness to respond.
On line 312, hypothesis 8, it is unclear whether 'Attitude' is cause or effect. If 'attitude' means a predisposition to act, or proactivity, then it is a cause. Otherwise, it seems to be an effect. I suggest treating it as a 'positive attitude' and not just as 'attitude', as the Likert scale increases with positive aspects.
On line 324, in hypothesis 9, it is necessary to characterize the 'subjective norms' better. Denial norms, for example, clearly act against the 'behavioral intention to prepare for natural calamities'. Therefore, I suggest treating them as 'positive subjective norms' and not just 'subjective norms', as the Likert scale increases with positive aspects.
On line 370, the assertion depends on the hazard. For example, in the case of earthquakes, houses made of stone or brick may perform worse than houses made of wood or bamboo.
Please explain better hypothesis H14.
On line 423, clarify which groups the public posts were directed to.
'Perceived Behavioral Control' should also be treated as 'Perceived Positive Behavioral Control', as the Likert scale increases with positive aspects.
'Physical Ergonomic Appraisal' should be treated as 'Favourable Physical Ergonomic Appraisal', considering the Likert scale increases with favorable aspects. Same for 'Macro ergonomic Appraisal', 'Cognitive Ergonomic Appraisal'.
Line 821. Aren't they 14 latent variables?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The article is well structured and written, I was enjoy to read this paper. I believe it will contributes to the discourse of Protective Behavior from disasters studies. However, All figures are poor resolution and unclear, I recommend to replace all figures with the better ones.
1. Introduction: various aspects have been stated before the aim on Line 175. Please give an overview of the gap and the contribution above this.
2. The figures included in the document are not clear and need to be replaced with better-quality images. The author must ensure that the figures are high-quality, easy to read, and provide clear visual representations of the presented data.
3. Please mind the header of splitting tables, such as Table 3. The author needs to ensure that the headers of tables are appropriately labelled and that any tables that are split over multiple pages are clearly identified.
4. Section 5: the author must provide suggestions for future research directions to build on the current study and further advance the field
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Detailed comments for authors:
1. Since the respondents of the survey are mainly from urban areas, who have access to social media and internet, so it seems the scope of the study should be urban focus with young generation people, not generalized for all Filipinos and for all areas. So, the title and objective of the paper could be framed in that way.
2. Location map of the respondents and hazard map for those location would be good to understand the case better.
3. While three theories are integrated in the model, it seems some factors are overlapping or closely related to each other (such as ‘attitude’ in Theory of Planned Behaviour and ‘cognitive ergonomics’ in Ergonomic factors are similar). So, it would be hard to differentiate them by the respondents. A comparative table or clear difference between the factors could be presented in a table.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The comments were duly addressed and I consider the work ready to be published.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your review and your significant contribution to improving my paper.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for revising the manuscript. One minor comment: Figure 1 could be replaced with better one with readable legends.
Author Response
Figure 1 has been replaced with a clearer image and readable legends.
Thank you for your review and significant contribution to improving my paper.
