Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study successfully applies the TAM but does not significantly advance it. The external variables are logical but not novel.

 

The sample is a significant limitation that must be explicitly acknowledged and discussed. With “57.1% students and 81.7% of participants aged between 20-29”, the sample is not representative of the broader population. This likely biases the results, potentially inflating the scores for PEOU and PU.

 

The description of the experimental procedure and the AR system's functionality lacks sufficient detail for full reproducibility and critical appraisal.

 

The diagram is helpful but has a typo ("Pcrccived" should be "Perceived"). The final model (Figure 7) is informative, but the path coefficients and t-values in the diagram are partially cut off and need to be clearly legible.

 

The construct "Perceived Playfulness" (PP) seems to blend items measuring enjoyment (IV1: attractive and enjoyable) with items measuring motivational value (IV2: makes the concept more interesting and motivating). This conflation might have diluted the pure "playfulness" effect.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript is generally understandable but would benefit from professional proofreading to correct minor grammatical errors and improve sentence fluency. Examples include: "Users expressed interests" (should be "interest"), "causing operational difficulties" (awkward phrasing), and "In present digital environment" (should be "In the present").

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article aims to enhance consumers' environmental awareness by recording the types of unsold bread at four bakeries in Macau in real time, and integrating the data into an application system equipped with interactive AR scanning technology. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this study surveyed 163 local participants in Macau. The content of the research is meaningful, but this study lacks innovation and the adopted methods are already existing ones.
The research in this paper is more like a research report rather than meeting the standards of an academic paper.
The pictures in the paper are not clear, and even in Chinese.
There are grammatical errors in the paper.
Therefore, the entire manuscript is not suitable for publication in this journal.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article examines the potential of immersive augmented reality to address food waste, with a specific focus on leftover bread in Macau. The research is grounded in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and extends it by incorporating system quality, information quality, and perceived playfulness. This integrated framework provides a basis for analysis. Employing a mixed-methods approach that includes experiments, surveys, and qualitative feedback, the study offers a comprehensive investigation. The study methodology enhances understanding of the relationship between user perceptions and their intentions to act.   One thing that appears to need a detailed author’s revision is that the standard academic practice dictates that hypotheses, along with their justification and definition based on existing literature, must be presented at the end of the literature review section—or in the introduction, if the review is brief and integrated there. The typical hypothetical deductive approach demands that the literature review establish current knowledge on the topic; also, at the literature review section, the authors identify gaps in existing research, and finally, the authors develop the theoretical framework of the study. Hypotheses are, by definition, tentative explanations or predictions that arise directly from this theoretical framework and the identified gap, in this case from TAM and other related theoretical approaches. In consequence, placing the hypotheses after the literature review provides a logical flow in the article, showing the reader how previous research has led to the specific predictions of the current study.   Further, within the hypothetical deductive approach, authors use the paper methodology section to describe how the research was conducted to test those hypotheses—participants, instruments, data collection, and analysis procedures. Furthermore, the methodology section could refer to the hypotheses. For example, when authors are explaining how they were statistically tested.  In short, I suggest to re organize the article considering that the literature review of the hypotheses belongs in the section where the argument for the study is constructed (literature review/introduction) and not in the section where the study design is described (methodology).

All in all, the authors' findings are useful for sustainability challenges and for the broader domain of human-computer interaction. On one hand, the study confirms that perceived usefulness and ease of use substantially influence user attitudes, consistent with previous TAM research in this particular technological setting. In the other hand, the results underscore the importance of perceived playfulness, demonstrating that while engaging and enjoyable elements in augmented reality foster positive attitudes, they do not necessarily motivate users to adopt sustainable behaviors. Such an interesting finding points towards a disconnection between user attitudes and actual behaviors. Such disconnection suggests that enjoyable experiences alone are not enough to produce enduring changes in attitudes or actions.

Even though the study is well-structured, there are some areas for future research that need to be more explicitly tackled in this study. First, the participant group is biased towards younger students, so their views might not reflect older age groups. This is an important limitation of the study.  A new study that includes a more diverse participant sample—taking into account a random selection process—could provide more robust insights about how different age groups accept and use these technologies. Additionally, this research looks at people's intentions rather than their actual behaviors. I foresee a potential long-term study tracking users of the "Haan Food" app could reveal whether initial excitement fades and what influences the development of sustainable habits. Such a behavioral study will lead to a deeper understanding of the connection between playfulness, positive attitudes, and actual actions aimed at reducing food waste.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Nothing

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Nothing

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I still hold my position that this manuscript is not suitable for publication in academic journals.