Sustainability Trade-Offs in Climate Change Geographies in England

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The aim of the manuscript is to analyse bottom-up approaches to transport planning to address the trade-offs between the need to reduce car-based travel and the social consequences of poor mobility options in rural areas.  This research attempts to addresses a specific gap in the field.   Through the relevant literature review and the application of the so-called, Sustainable Communities and Communities of Practices the authors focus on the implementation of the Robin Demand Responsive Transport service in the West of England, presenting new data relating to the effectiveness of this service in providing low carbon transport alternatives to rural residents.

Although their findings are interesting, I have the following comments:

1.       It would be formative to include in the introduction the impact of the current energy crisis and how this may affect their discussion. See “Default Nudge and Street Lightning Conservation: Towards a Policy Proposal for the Current Energy Crisis - Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2023”.

2.       Authors should expand more the “discussion” and form a separate section for the conclusion.

3.       Limitations should be added.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments. Our specific responses are:

1. Thank you for the suggestion, we have added a brief mention of this in the introduction, but given our focus, we have not gone into detail on the important issue of the energy crisis.
2. We originally had a single discussion/conclusion section following the guidance on the Sustainability website, but are happy to split them, and have now done so.
3. Limitations have been added to the conclusion, which in turn has been developed further. Indeed, the conclusion suggests directions for further research. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript (sustainability-2778044) highlights the increasing evidence of human-induced climate change and the inadequacy of political responses. It focuses on the effectiveness of bottom-up transport solutions, such as the Robin Demand Responsive Transport service in rural England, demonstrating their potential to provide low-carbon alternatives and integrate with larger governance systems for transformative change. Keywords in alphabetical order;

The introduction section is not adequate. It is written in the first person and lacks historical contextualization on the topic. The hypotheses and objectives are not clear.

How did the authors conduct data collection? The materials and methods section is not appropriate. What are the samples? How did the authors carry out the experimental design?

What does section '3. Rural vs. Urban in Climate Change Geographies 99' mean? Results? I think not, but it is not suitable; it needs to strictly follow the instructions for authors on the website.

Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 are not adequate. Where are the scales, legends defining the map appropriately, and the north orientation? The image quality is also low.

The results section should not contain references. These are your findings.

Why is there a single section for '6. Discussion and Conclusion'? Moreover, there is no discussion in this work. The conclusions do not reflect whether the hypotheses and objectives were achieved. What about future perspectives?

The references section contains outdated sources.

English needs major corrections.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments. Our specific responses are:

We have amended the ordering of the keywords so they are in alphabetical order.

The use of the first person in the introduction has been removed, and our research questions clarified.

More detail and the appropriate sources have been added to the methods section and we have clarified the fit between the use of secondary data we selected and the Practice Theory framework.

There is no suggestion on the website that authors’ need to strictly follow the suggestions, and there are multiple examples of Sustainability papers which do not. We have renamed section 3 as the Literature Review for the avoidance of doubt.

We have removed Figure 1, and added scales and north arrows to figure 2-5. The quality is low in the paper, but the attached jpegs are, we believe, perfectly adequate.

It is standard academic practice to cite sources in the Results section, in particular for articles reporting research drawing on Practice Theory (PT). For an example, see Pantzar and Shove (2010) and Halkier and Jensen (2011). There is a reason for this use: PT is at least in part an historical approach because it studies practices along their evolutionary trajectory, so, unlike, for example, behavioural approaches, it is common to compare empirically observed practices with historical ones. Therefore, we have left the references in situ.

We originally had a single discussion/conclusion section following the guidance on the Sustainability website, but are happy to split them, and have now done so.

Without specifics, it is hard to know which of the references the reviewer considers outdated. We have reviewed them and are satisfied all are relevant.

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper report on the potential of bottom-up approaches to transport planning to address the trade-offs between the need to reduce car-based travel and the social consequences of poor mobility options in rural areas, and analyze the implementation of the Robin Demand Responsive  Transport service in the West of England, presenting new data relating to the effectiveness of this  service in providing low carbon transport alternatives to rural residents.Confirmation of Robin's validity. The conclusion is that  such bottom-up transport options can be transformed, subject to the support of key stakeholders and integration with top-down systems of governance.For the sustainability study of climate change geography in the England.The specific amendments and suggestions are as follows:

1.     There is an ambiguity in the sentences in the introduction，“we use it as an example of a trade-off”Refers to the this case or this argument？

2.     "A proportion at least of the electorate did not wish to make the personal trade-off of higher personal expenditure vs. better local air quality and a more diffuse contribution to mitigating climate change"Without the support of the references, and it is recommended to replace the word "proportion" with a more precise word.

3.     Under the current research situation at home and abroad, it is necessary to highlight the incompleteness of current research and the innovation of our own papers.

4.     The title of the second part is "Materials and Methods", but its content does not refer to "Materials", so the title is inappropriate and it is recommended that it be revised.

5.     In 5.2,the meaning of the color shades in Figure 1 needs to be described in more detail.

6.     Images in the text are incorrectly formatted and should be centered and aligned consistently.

7.     The "Discussion and Conclusion" section is overloaded and needs to be more concise.

8.     References are incorrectly formatted, such as end the document with "." instead of ";"

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments. Our specific responses are:

1. We have clarified this sentence as part of the removal of the use of the first person in the introduction.
2. We have added a reference to support this point.
3. We assume this point refers to the need for a clearer research question, adding to the pre-existing statement of the paper’s contribution, which we have added.
4. More has been added to this section – we kept the title “Materials and Methods” as per the journal instructions, but are happy for it to be varied if the editors prefer.
5. We have removed Figure 1.
6. We have centred each image.
7. We have split the discussion and conclusion into two sections, and developed the conclusion sections with more detail and future directions for research.
8. References have been checked and formatting adjusted where needed.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Unfortunately the authors did not include my suggested citation. 

Minor editing of English language required

Reviewer 2 Report

Accept in present form

Minor corrections in grammar and spelling