Italian Sustainable Living—Survey on Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviours Among the Italian Population

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

First of all, I would like you to congratulate for your hard word and for your paper which, in my opinion has a good contribution to the scholarship. I find your paper has a good methodology and it is analysing a very actual topic. Moreover, I find that your results are very clear presented in the figures, and that’s why I will make you as a first recommendation if you have more table or figures, I will encourage you to add, because it will be easier to follow your findings. 

Even I find your paper it is very rigorous, I will make you some suggestions that could help you to improve your paper:

-I appreciate your recent citations, but I will encourage you to add in the first part of the study (literature review) at minimum 12 citation of studies which are analyzing the same topic, and by example you can detail the situation in other Mediterranean countries;

-at the same time I will encourage you detail more in a paragraph the research questions (and hypothesis if it is the case) and the conceptual model (if you can do it in a figure, it will be great);

-in the least, I will encourage you to develop the conclusions and limitations; 

Good luck! 

Best regards!

Author Response

we thank the reviewer for the suggestions, attached find the manuscript version in track changes, and following a response point-by-point to the comments:

Comment 1: I appreciate your recent citations, but I will encourage you to add in the first part of the study (literature review) at minimum 12 citation of studies which are analyzing the same topic, and by example you can detail the situation in other Mediterranean countries

response 1: thank you for pointing out the issue, this gave us the possibility to clarify the overview of the present literature. we have added a consideration on the available literature: few literature on the topic is available, and not easily summarisable since it covers different aspects of sustainability.

 

comment 2: I will encourage you detail more in a paragraph the research questions (and hypothesis if it is the case) and the conceptual model (if you can do it in a figure, it will be great)

response 2: we thank the reviewer for the suggestion, and as per the comment 2 of reviewer 2, we detailed better the research question, and added some figures for the conceptual models.

 

comment 3: I will encourage you to develop the conclusions and limitations

response 3: thank you, we have improved conclusions and limitations, according also to comment 5 of reviewer 2

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Italian Sustainable Living – Survey about sustainable knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours among the Italian population

General Comment: This is a good, insightful paper. In their study, the authors tested the potential educational requirements of several socio-demographic categories of Italian people, to determine to the level of knowledge in the area of sustainable living. Their level of awareness, practices and attitudes towards sustainability were surveyed through questionnaire-base data, in real-life areas of life, such as cleaning, water, energy, and others.

Some relevant and timely references into the paper - well done!

The title: Sustainable Knowledge cannot be used in the context of this study if it refers to the knowledge of the survey respondents; as it is now, the title may be misleading to the reader.

Is it meant to say Sustainability Knowledge? Not clear as currently presented, and it only becomes clear when the paper is read. The authors may want to reconsider the title in light of the definition provided in lines 63-66, and line 67. A title has to be straightforward and to reflect accurately a paper’s content.

 

The abstract provides the context for the study and states the study aim, the basic procedure used, main findings and the main conclusion.

 

The introduction

Provides pertinent and sufficient background for a good understanding of the study’s aim and objectives.

Gives sufficient background to the reader so that they understand the paper, setting the stage for the rest of the paper and highlighting gaps in the current knowledge.

The introduction ends with the description of the study purpose and aims, and the reasoning behind these.

Please check with the reviewed version of the manuscript. There are a few requested changes in this section (lines 48-49 and 59-63).

 

Materials and Methods

The authors provided sufficient detail about where, when and how the study was performed, describing the statistical methods used to analyze the obtained data. Necessary sources for the statistical tests are also provided in this section. The authors stated the power of the study and criteria for exclusion of the samples from the study. Please check with the reviewed version of the manuscript for a few suggested edits in this section (lines 167 and 174).

 

Results

The data and the observations obtained in the study are presented, organized in self-explanatory tables, and figures, which are appropriately referred to into the text. The section is consistent with the previous section, Materials and Methods, and is supporting the testing of the proposed hypothesis presented in the Introductory section.

Probability level is indicated. The results state the power of the experiment, the statistical significance and confidence intervals of the data.

 

Section 3.6. Relationship between attitudes towards sustainable devices, behaviours, and participant characteristics: the title suggest it follows a discussion in this sub-section. The results of this part of the study must be presented here only. Hence, it is advisable that the obtained results be described in this section and move the discussions (as per the Comment inline 380-382) to the Discussion section. Alternatively, the authors may want to revise the text in this sub-section to only present the results obtained referring to the probability of using or adopting a sustainable product or behavior, but it is important that data obtained not be interpreted in this section.

 

Discussion

The authors re-state the main activity carried out during the study, presenting the results obtained in an interpretative way, also referring to the significance of differences examined by statistical tests used.

Interpretations and implications of the results are discussed, re-stating the primary goal of the research. The findings are interpreted in light of the present state of knowledge, including a wider view of the sustainable living and limitations of the study.

 

Conclusions

The findings are presented in light of the present state of knowledge and future needs for research.

The authors did not re-state the primary goal of their research, although this should be mentioned again here.

Sources of error and/or inadequacies should also be briefly re-stated in this section (one sentence).

A few inconsistencies of the language (American vs. British English) used throughout the text; as an example, see please my comments ref. lines 701-702.

 

Good luck.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The paper is written well, with good English. The only problem is there are some inconsistencies of use of Brittish/American English in several places. It should be used either Brit En or Am En throughout the manuscript. 

Author Response

we thank the reviewer for the suggestions, attached find the manuscript version in track changes, and following a response point-by-point to the comments:

comment 1: The title: Sustainable Knowledge cannot be used in the context of this study if it refers to the knowledge of the survey respondents; as it is now, the title may be misleading to the reader. Is it meant to say Sustainability Knowledge? Not clear as currently presented, and it only becomes clear when the paper is read. The authors may want to reconsider the title in light of the definition provided in lines 63-66, and line 67. A title has to be straightforward and to reflect accurately a paper’s content.

response 1: we thank the reviewer for the suggestion, we improved the title in order to avoid misunderstanding.

 

comment 2: Please check with the reviewed version of the manuscript. There are a few requested changes in this section (lines 48-49 and 59-63): (48-49) Not clear what the authors meant to say here. Please refine/clarify. 

response 2: thank you for the suggestion, this allowed us to improve this section. we defined better the framework and in accordance to comment 1 of reviewer 1 we added a figure to better explain the conceptual framework.

 

comment 3: Please check with the reviewed version of the manuscript. There are a few requested changes in this section (lines 48-49 and 59-63): (59-63) Not clear what the authors meant to say here. Please refine/clarify. This statement is not clear either. Please review and refine

response 3: we thank the reviewer for the comment. We rephrased and added contextual explanation in the previous paragraph.

 

comment 4: Please check with the reviewed version of the manuscript for a few suggested edits in this section (lines 167 and 174). Please cite from the literature or explain in the text what thi method is.

response 4: thank you, we missed the typo, grammar was corrected and literature in support of the sampling method was added.

 

comment 5: Section 3.6. Relationship between attitudes towards sustainable devices, behaviours, and participant characteristics: the title suggest it follows a discussion in this sub-section. The results of this part of the study must be presented here only. Hence, it is advisable that the obtained results be described in this section and move the discussions (as per the Comment inline 380-382) to the Discussion section. Alternatively, the authors may want to revise the text in this sub-section to only present the results obtained referring to the probability of using or adopting a sustainable product or behavior, but it is important that data obtained not be interpreted in this section.

response 5: we thank the reviewer for pointing out the detailed suggestion. we moved the abovementioned considerations in the discussion section.

 

comment 6: The authors did not re-state the primary goal of their research, although this should be mentioned again here. Sources of error and/or inadequacies should also be briefly re-stated in this section (one sentence). 

response 6: we re-stated primary goal of research, sources of error and idequacies.

 

comment 7: A few inconsistencies of the language (American vs. British English) used throughout the text; as an example, see please my comments ref. lines 701-702.

response 7: thank you, we corrected all mispelled words in American English, all the text was corrected according to British English.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx