The Assessment of Residents’ Perception of Possible Benefits and Challenges of Home Vertical Gardens in Kigali, Rwanda

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review this paper. The paper is very interesting, but I have the following suggestions for improvement for your consideration.

1.sustainability provided the writing template. Obviously, the author did not provide the draft according to the requirements of the template, which resulted in a very mediocre reading experience for reviewers. Following the rules is often a necessity rather than an expression of personality.

2. The discussion in the introduction seems to be relatively complete, but the problems intended to be solved and potential possible contributions of this paper have not been shown. Of course, the chapter arrangement of the article also needs to be mentioned here.

3. It seems that the theoretical framework is not closely related to the subsequent data analysis, so please seriously consider the necessity of this part and make appropriate simplification. This is not a quantitative analysis paper, and it is not necessary for the author to expend a lot of ink on the theoretical source of the questionnaire design, because in many cases, it is necessary to combine the actual situation of the survey area. The theoretical framework is more combined with variable design and causal analysis to complete the empirical hypothesis and show the scientific rationality of the research. In this article I personally believe that there is little need for the existence of a theoretical framework.

4. Methodology includes research design, data source, investigation process and selection of specific methods. Other contents should be included in the result analysis part.

5. The chart reported by the author is more like the copy and paste of the spss report chart, please make it more beautiful.

6. Readers expect the author to clearly report the research findings of this paper in the research results and conclusions, and it is difficult for people to capture this information in current writing.

7. The author mentioned the limitations of this paper in the part of methodology, but I have searched through this paper without finding the limitations of this paper. The writer should not make such a mistake. Therefore, in the discussion section, the author should explain the limitations of this paper.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1

I attached a file to respond to the comments and recommendations. 

Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for involving me in reviewing the paper titled "Evaluating Inhabitants' Perception of Benefits and Risks Associated with Home-based Vertical Gardens in Kigali, Rwanda". After carefully reading the paper, I have observed that the research mainly focuses on urban green spaces but also on vertical gardens. However, the treatment of the topic led to some ambiguity regarding whether the research was referring to all green areas or just hanging gardens. Therefore, the paper should undergo a substantial revision, considering these recommendations.

First, I recommend building a logical sequence from the abstract to study the literature, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. This paper should focus on vertical gardens. Authors should also develop a theoretical and conceptual framework that includes the foundations and criteria for reviewing vertical gardens. This framework will form the basis for formulating questions, extracting, analyzing, and discussing results. By doing this, the authors' contribution will be clear and direct, and the paper will be distinguished by originality. Below are some general observations that may help develop and present this work more effectively. 

First, when writing an abstract, it is preferable to present the methods and purpose of the research before including the results in the abstract. Moreover, the abstract must highlight the study's contribution to the field of knowledge.

Second, moving the study gap from the theoretical framework section to the introduction is preferable.

Third, in the introduction, the authors discuss green spaces in urban areas. Instead, researchers should focus primarily on introducing vertical gardens, giving examples and demonstrating their relationship to the research problem and goal. Moreover, the research aim must align with the title, indicating inconsistency.

Fourth, the theoretical framework serves as a guide for collecting results from an academic study. It includes essential concepts, definitions, and foundations derived from academic literature and used to form questions. Therefore, these elements must be present in the theoretical framework.

- For more information, review the following research paper: https://doi.org/10.1186/s44147-021-00022-y.

Fifth, changing the chapter title to Materials & Methods and organizing it based on scientific literature is preferable.

Sixth, it is necessary to reorganize the Materials & Methods section based on scientific principles. I can assist you in restructuring the section to ensure that it is clear, concise, and accurately represents the methodology used in your study.

Seventh, it is necessary to collect all the results in one section, separate from the Materials & Methods. How the discussion chapter is written should differ from how the results are reported. The discussion should be devoted to comparing the results of this research with other research instead of just reviewing the results of further research. It is imperative to write critically in this chapter, highlighting essential or interesting findings by comparing them to previous research findings. This includes negative findings and potential limitations of the paper.

Eights, Minor notes:

• Urban planning and landscape architecture define green spaces in urban areas. This should be done by referring to specialized literature instead of just making a simple statement about the trees, shrubs, and flowers they include. Such a statement creates a distorted perception of green areas.
• Vertical gardens, which should be a focus in green areas, require discussion of history, origins, examples, issues, solutions, opportunities, obstacles, positives, and negatives.
• Vertical gardens were first introduced in paragraphs on pp. 4-5, lines 149-155, despite being mentioned earlier in the research.
• Many paragraphs mentioned are not closely related to the research aim, such as: "The studies showed that wood trees support other animals' biodiversity less."

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2

I attached a file to respond to the comments and recommendations. 

Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for inviting me to read this research paper on “Evaluating the perception of inhabitants about benefits and risks associated with homebased vertical gardens in Kigali, Rwanda”. The paper raises an important question about how people in Kigali perceive vertical gardens. However, I had difficulty understanding what a vertical garden means in the context of Kigali. I suggest adding pictures and a clear definition for better reader understanding.

The literature review contains a lot of information, and I recommend extracting key concepts for clarity.

 Research gap should be highlighted in the introduction section.

In the methodology section, you may consider referencing sources to support survey questions.

 The results section appears repetitive, and sections like analysis, research findings, and discussion can be merged. Similarly, the discussion of the methodology seems lengthy and confusing due to multiple subheadings and repetition (for instance see time and location)

 The conclusion section is brief, lacking details on potential limitations and weaknesses. The novelty of the study could be emphasized more in the introduction and conclusion. Additionally, information about the study's reliability and validity is important for replicability of the process as well as assurance of the findings. Kindly provide more details regarding your recommendations based on your analysis for practitioners and policymakers. Additionally, could you outline potential areas for further research?

 The paper's structure is confusing. Overall text feels disconnected, and the argument structure needs improvement.

In the references, some seem unnecessary, like Huertas-Delgado et al., 2019, which is only used for the Likert scale method (even though there are other papers available on this topic in this paper which are more directly suitable).

Line 454 mentions Madanipour's year incorrectly, as the paper does not discuss green space shrinkage.

Think about reducing unnecessary references in both the text and the reference list.

Figure 1 would benefit from a better map, and tables in the results section should be combined into one.

I suggest undergoing English language editing, as several sentences are lengthy and challenging to understand.

Given these issues, the manuscript requires major revisions, and in its current state, it does not meet the criteria for publication.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3

I attached a file to respond to the comments and recommendations. 

Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

1. It is very easy to put the draft content into the template, but the author shows a very casual and disapproving concept. Please take my suggestion into serious consideration.

2. The figure of empirical research can improve the quality of the paper, and I believe this work will not take too long.

3. Although limitations have been discussed, I think the current limitations are insufficient to cover the study, that is to say, there are more limitations.

4. There are too many references in the paper, please reduce the number by at least half.

Author Response

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author,

I could observe a significant update compared to the previous draft. The content is more structured and supported with sufficient literature and discussion, and the conclusion and discussion have been improved. However, the theoretical framework should be restructured to represent the academic studies.

The following research can be reviewed:

- Notes on developing research review in urban planning and urban design based on PRISMA statement

- Developing process for selecting research techniques in urban planning and urban design with a PRISMA-compliant review

- Improving visitor satisfaction in Egypt’s Heliopolis historical district

Author Response

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you. This paper has been improved; however, I still see room for further enhancement (specifically in the method section). Please see my comments in the PDF file. Additionally, I recommend another round of English editing, as there are instances where the meaning is unclear (see examples on page 4 and page 8). 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response