Do Consumers Intend to Use Indoor Smart Farm Restaurants for a Sustainable Future? The Influence of Cognitive Drivers on Behavioral Intentions
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript highlights the cognitive drivers, including bio-spheric value, environmental concern, problem awareness, and ascription of responsibility, to form the consumers’ behavioural intentions in the context of indoor smart farm restaurants in Korea. The title is brief and straightforward. The abstract describes the aim of the study, thorough methodology, significant results and conclusion. The introduction part is well written with enough background of the study. The literature review is appropriate. The method is sound and well-written. Compared to other authors, the discussion of the results is very detailed and presented tangibly. The authors mainly refer to the latest knowledge published in reputable scientific journals.
Author Response
This manuscript highlights the cognitive drivers, including bio-spheric value, environmental concern, problem awareness, and ascription of responsibility, to form the consumers’ behavioural intentions in the context of indoor smart farm restaurants in Korea. The title is brief and straightforward. The abstract describes the aim of the study, thorough methodology, significant results and conclusion. The introduction part is well written with enough background of the study. The literature review is appropriate. The method is sound and well-written. Compared to other authors, the discussion of the results is very detailed and presented tangibly. The authors mainly refer to the latest knowledge published in reputable scientific journals.
Response: Thank you for this encouragement and we appreciate your positive assessment.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors. The following comments have the objective that the authors improve the content of the quoted document. There are methodological and analytical flaws that should be resolved.
In general, the core idea of the manuscript sounds well. It also presents a coherent structure. However, the state-of-the-art needs more convincing arguments, and your statistical analysis requires much better statistical work derived from a better-explained methodology (measurements, sampling, fieldwork).
1. The first sentence of the abstract is not true. It should be changed because it does not add relevant information to the abstract. Moreover, the abstract needs to explain better the methodology used, and it does not present the differential value of the work. What makes your paper valuable over the dozens of papers going to be published on the same topic?
2. Section 2.1 goes directly from “smart farm” to “smart farm restaurant” without explaining their meaning. In L75, you say that only a few restaurants use smart farms, but you have previously stated its outstanding importance. I wish the ISFR segment were widespread, but the paper seems to present it as a paradigm when it is not shown in the literature to be so.
3. Hypotheses 1 to 4 should be better supported. Your state-of-the-art is short and shallow. It is an easy problem that you can solve because you have a good knowledge of the literature.
4. In Figure 1, you present your "causal model" but do not apply any causal statistical technique. In fact, you use principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce dimensionality. It has only an exploratory technique. The problem with PCA is that it considers that all items have equal weight in generating the construct and reliability, which is not true.
5. In section 3.1, there is no justification for using the measures presented.
6. In section 3.2, using terms such as "samples" and “panels” is wrong. Perhaps “individuals" and "panelists?”
7. The description of the participant profile lacks behavioral descriptors (restaurant attendance, average expenditure, etc.).
8. What fieldwork justification is there for using a panel of 1.5 million panelists but obtaining only 310 responses?
9. Reliabilities are presented, but no data support the convergent and discriminant validities of the scales, which are essential information. Moreover, some reliabilities are higher than recommended by the statistical literature, implying redundant content that artificially increases the reliability of the scales.
10. There is no estimate of the degree to which the data structure conforms to the theoretical model presented.
11. There is statistical redundancy. You first apply a PCA technique to reduce dimensionality. The PCA is a form of linear regression. Later, you use another linear regression. This must be more consistent since the literature clearly states that confirmatory factor analysis should be performed, simultaneously testing reliability, validities, and effects. In this way, you can check the degree to which measurement errors condition the findings and estimate their influence on the results.
I hope that my comments help you to improve your manuscript. Best regards.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear authors. The following comments have the objective that the authors improve the content of the quoted document. There are methodological and analytical flaws that should be resolved. In general, the core idea of the manuscript sounds well. It also presents a coherent structure. However, the state-of-the-art needs more convincing arguments, and your statistical analysis requires much better statistical work derived from a better-explained methodology (measurements, sampling, fieldwork).
Response: Thank you for this encouragement and for all of your comments. Our responses to your comments are summarized in the attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
I would like to offer some friendly suggestions to improve the clarity and organization of your manuscript.
Firstly, the abstract could benefit from further explanation of your methodology and how sustainability factors into your research. This will give readers a better understanding of your approach and what you hope to achieve.
In the introduction, you introduce several concepts and pieces of information that require more explanation and references to support your arguments. This will help readers better understand the context of your research and why it is important.
I noticed that section 2.2 does not contain any information about cognitive drivers and is the same as section 2.1. Additionally, section 2.3 seems somewhat disconnected from the rest of the paragraph. It would be helpful to revise these sections to improve the coherence and flow of your manuscript.
Lastly, I recommend that you improve the quality of your references by ensuring they are up-to-date and relevant to your research.
Overall, your methodology and analysis are clear and will be considered further after the revisions to sections 1 and 2. The same goes for the discussion and conclusions.
I hope these suggestions are helpful and wish you the best of luck with your manuscript.
Author Response
Dear authors,
I would like to offer some friendly suggestions to improve the clarity and organization of your manuscript.
Response: Thank you for this encouragement and for all of your comments. Our responses to your comments are summarized in the attached file.
Reviewer 4 Report
· As your paper investigates the consumers’ behavioral intentions in the context of indoor smart farm restaurants, it is necessary to compare different theories and models that could explain this behavior.
· Authors are also invited to end up their paper by mentioning not only the main (theoretical, methodological and practical/managerial), but also the limitations of their research and open up other research orientations. Indeed, these parts must be developed separately.
· Authors should integrate control variables that might explain behavioral intentions in the context of ISFR.
· Even though the paper contains some changes regarding the previous review results, there is still room for improvement.
· In terms of form, the discussion and conclusion section calls for a comment: this part is expected to include Research contribution / Implications (probable and possible implications of the findings for both theory and practice to be discussed) /Limitations / Future research.
· It is essential to discuss the findings in terms of how they relate to the literature review depicted, in light of what existing theories say. Empirical Analysis and Discussion should be developed separately.
· The hypotheses of the study (H1, H2, H3, H4) should be developed separately, but the authors can formulate them more clearly and broadly.
· In Empirical Data Analysis, which software to process the data. explain your choice!
· Authors are also invited to end up their paper by mentioning not only the main (theoretical, methodological and practical/managerial), but also the limitations of their research and open up other research orientations.
· Future direction of conducting research in this area is not also clearly written.
· More detail about Analysis of Findings is required
· There should be more discussion about the population, sample, and sampling technique
· Please take a look at the comments above and think more about potential readers. We publish papers not for the sake of publishing. We want them to be read and cited.
I hope my comments help you to move your project forward!
Author Response
Thank you for all of your valuable comments. Our responses to your comments are summarized in the attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors. Please, read the attached file.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Authors.
Thank you for your comments. With some of these comments, I can’t agree, but it would be a lengthy discussion, and this is not the appropriate channel. In general, I see that you have improved the original manuscript. However, I have detected some issues that I would like to raise with you:
Response: Thank you for this encouragement and for all of your comments. Our responses to your comments are summarized in the following section.
1. Abstract. OK, to the deleted. The added I do not understand. Your paper is empirical and does not present any theoretical extension; it only mixes nominally two theories but does not use any of them. Actually, you do not use the TPB nor an extension of it but a part of it. You must rectify this part because what you claim needs to be corrected.
Response: First of all, this paper is not a study on the TPB. The study mixing nominally two theories you mentioned is another previous study, which is mentioned in our study. However, as our study is also an empirical study, we revised “theoretical extension” to “empirically identified ...”.
☞ This study empirically identified the direct effect of cognitive drivers on consumers’ pro-environmental behavior and their demographic differences, and also presents practical suggestions from the perspective of green marketing.
2. Section 2.1. The new paragraph has an error at the beginning. What standard population projection speaks of agricultural productivity? Perhaps they have used an automatic translator.
Response: "Standard population projection" are estimates of the population for future dates by conducting mathematical methods, economic methods, and cohort component methods. For instance, The United Nations (UN) estimated the continent’s population to be nearly double from 1.3 billion in 2019 to 2.4 billion in 2050 during standard population projection. "Standard population projection" has also widely been mentioned in the extant literature as follows.
References
Edmonston, B., & Passel, J. S. (1992). Immigration and immigrant generations in population projections. International Journal of Forecasting, 8(3), 459-476.
Buckland, S. T., Newman, K. B., Thomas, L., & Koesters, N. B. (2004). State-space models for the dynamics of wild animal populations. Ecological modelling, 171(1-2), 157-175
Inoue, T. (2017). A new method for estimating small area demographics and its application to long-term population projection. The Frontiers of Applied Demography, 473-489..
Feng, Q., Wang, Z., Choi, S., & Zeng, Y. (2020). Forecast households at the county level: An application of the ProFamy extended cohort-component method in six counties of Southern California, 2010 to 2040. Population Research and Policy Review, 39, 253-281.
3. If the measures have been widely used, a small reference to that use would settle their work. This part is weak, despite being the basis of their work. Without adequate measures, the whole framework and objective sink.
Response: Thanks for your helpful comment. We added the references which used the measures as follows.
☞ The four constructs of cognitive drivers, which include biospheric value, environmental concern, problem awareness, and ascription of responsibility, were measured using 12 items that were drawn from Choe et al. [11], Han et al. [13], Liang et al. [20], Siyal et al. [21], Li et al. [22], and Joshi and Rahman [23].
References
11. Choe, J.Y.J.; Kim, J.J.; Hwang, J. The environmentally friendly role of edible insect restaurants in the tourism industry: Applying an extended theory of planned behavior. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 2020, 32, 3581-3600.
13. Han, H.; Olya, H.G.; Kim, J.; Kim, W. Model of sustainable behavior: Assessing cognitive, emotional and normative influence in the cruise context. Business Strategy and the Environment 2018, 27, 789-800.
21. Siyal, S.; Ahmed, M.J.; Ahmad, R.; Khan, B.S.; Xin, C. Factors Influencing Green Purchase Intention: Moderating Role of Green Brand Knowledge. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 10762.
22. Li, H.; Haq, I.U.; Nadeem, H.; Albasher, G.; Alqatani, W.; Nawaz, A.; Hameed, J. How environmental awareness relates to green purchase intentions can affect brand evangelism? Altruism and environmental consciousness as mediators. Revista Argentina de Clinica Psicologica 2020, 29, 811-825.
23. Joshi, Y.; Rahman, Z. Consumers’ sustainable purchase behaviour: Modeling the impact of psychological factors. Ecological Economics 2019, 159, 235-243.
24. Roberts, J.A. Green consumers in the 1990s: Profile and implications for advertising. Journal of Business Research 1996, 36, 217-231.
4. If you review section 3.2, you will see that there is still inadequate "samples" word.
Response: Thank you for pointing out it. We revised “samples” to “panelists”.
5. I have detected a new error in Table 5 using asterisks.
Response: We also revised the error (*p < .001 ***p < .001)
The work has improved, but some stylistic and detailed problems must be fixed. Although I am not a native English speaker, I can detect understood but incorrect expressions. I leave this in the hands of the editor and suggest a revision of the English style.
Response: Your comments and suggestions definitely have improved the quality of this manuscript. Thank you.
Reviewer 3 Report
Now it’s fine for publication.
Author Response
We truly appreciate your time and help.
Reviewer 4 Report
I have no additional comments. All the best
Author Response
We truly appreciate your time and help.
