Review Reports - Consumer Behaviour Regarding Food Waste in Romania, Rural versus Urban

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (New Reviewer)

General comments

The manuscript is well written in general and presents a very interesting and useful study. However, some points need to be improved before publication. The article is unnecessarily long and the organization must be reviewed. For example, in the methodology section, there is a lot of theoretical information, and statistical analysis section presents some information that can be presented shorter and in more precise way.

Abstract

1. Modify the last idea since conclusions should be drawn from the methodology and results.

Introduction

2. Fig 3. I recommend authors to change the X-Y scales in order to make the figure more visible.

3. Authors should add information related to previous studies carried out in the field of research. Has urban vs. rural food waste been studied before? What were the findings?

Materials and Methods

4. The entire questionnaire should be included in annexes.

5. Participants section should include the criteria for the selection of participants explicitly, including geographical localization and age range.

6. Figure 6. Mark on the map the regions of the study and use a better quality image.

7. Tables 1 and 2 should be placed in Results section, since it corresponds to the characteristics of the interviewed people.

8. Lines 180-190 Theoretical information should be placed in introduction section.

Results and discussion

9. Lines 220-223 should be placed in the introduction section.

10. The consumer typology should be placed in methodology section because it mentions the classification of consumers according to different considerations.

11. Table 3, Table 4, Information in the way presented is not clear. Please use graphs to make it clear or specify the meaning of acronyms in tables and reorganize, use fewer decimal places.

12. Information in tables should not be repeated in the text, just discuss the most relevant findings.

Conclusions

13. Conclusions should be mainly drawn from methodology and results.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

First of all thank you for time, spend to review our paper, then for your kind observation and proper suggestions. Your proper suggestions were beneficial to help us order/direct our scientific paper work. So we re-organized our paper, more logically as you recommended us.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear Authors!

There is a need for re-designing the "Discussion" part. Also "Limitations" and "Future directions" are missing!

All my comments are attached!

All the best!

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

This paper examines an important but more work is needed before it can move forward.

To start, the paper needs to be more clearly framed. What are the main research questions to be answered? What is the main research gap? The introduction is a bit too sprawled out at the moment. It should be a more focused section where the research goals are delineated and the purpose/structure of the paper to come are made clear.

The literature review is underdeveloped. While some of the literature is discussed in the intro, more is needed to situate the paper. What has been written on this topic - in particular, on food waste and food systems as well as the urban-rural continuum. This is a conceptual gap in the paper.

The context of the case study is not developed. Why was this case study chosen? What does it provide analytically, and what are the strengths and weaknesses of the methods used.

The results need to be more carefully examined - description of what is found and analysis of why it is important.

The conclusion falls flat because the results are not adequately tied to the literature. Moreover, they are not particularly surprising. What is unique about this research conducted and what do the findings suggest for current research, future research, and policy.

Other items

-Abstract needs to be rewritten. It should state the paper's goals, methods, and findings in a clearer way

-The writing is an issue - Very often, the writing is unclear or not specific enough

Author Response

Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear Authors,

thank you for your time and efforts. I accept your modifications and answers. There remained some formal issues, but I think the Editing Team would deal with these (in case of accepting).

All the best!

Author Response

Thank you for your help and appreciation!

Authors

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

The author has started revisions to this paper; however, the revisions are not complete. More attention needs to be given to my comments, as they were not sufficiently addressed in the revised manuscript.

First, the paper needs to be more clearly framed. Very little was changed in the introduction in this version of the draft. The introduction is a bit too sprawled out at the moment. It should be a more focused section where the research goals are delineated and the purpose/structure of the paper to come are made clear.

Second, the context of the case study is not developed. Why was this case study chosen? What does it provide analytically? Also, more could be said about the urban-rural continuum.

Third, the writing is an issue - Very often, the writing is unclear or not specific enough.

It is important that the author takes this round of revisions seriously, as these items above need to be addressed with more attention.

Author Response

Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper addresses a very important issue - food waste and how relevant it is to reduce it. The aim of the paper is to present the behavior of Romanian consumers regarding food waste using data collected through a semi-structured questionnaire applied to 267 consumers, both in urban as well as in rural areas.

Nevertheless, as it is the paper is not in a state to be published because it has several weaknesses.

The paper needs to be re-written form the beginning:

1. It needs to clarify what the objective of the paper is

9 The paper aims to bring to the debate the importance of reducing food waste by stating the negative effects it produces

201 to clearly highlight the way consumers act in relation to food waste was the purpose of this study, precisely to emphasize the importance of consumer behavior and at the same time that education in this regard is very important

411 Considering the main theme of this paper, Figure 12 shows what an average shopping basket contains, according to the main categories into which food is divided, and also what percentage of each category is thrown away

717 The main purpose of the paper was to emphasize the importance of combating food waste, due to the negative effects resulting from it, the most important effect being that of environmental pollution

2. Authors often jump around subjects making it unclear what the connection is with the previous or next sentence

110 In order to understand food waste, it is necessary to characterize the food supply chain.

The authors introduce the food supply chain issue in one paragraph (110) and immediately jump to purchasing decisions by consumers (115).

3. The references used are very unclear; these are only a few examples:

116 Food waste is the result of purchasing decisions by consumers, or decisions by retailers and food service providers that affect consumer behaviour [27, 14].

27. FAO. The State of Food and Agriculture. Moving Forward on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. Rome, 2019.

This is not the most adequate reference for purchasing decisions by consumers

121 FAO shows that, along the food chain, the greatest waste of products occurs in the consumption phase, but also in the process of making them, in the infrastructure, due to insufficient recovery, management practices [30].

Again, this is not the most adequate reference

30. Popescu, D.V.; Dima, A.; Radu, E.; Dobrotă, E.M.; Dumitrache, V.M. Bibliometric Analysis of the Green Deal Policies in the 842 Food Chain. Amfiteatru Economic. 2022, 24(60), 410-428,

229 Regarding education, the studies by Monier et al and others [42, 43, 44]; you don’t mention even one study by Monier..

42. European Commission (DG ENV) Directorate C-Industry. Preparatory Study on Food Waste across EU 27. 2010,

43. Secondi, L.; Principato, L.; Laureti, T. Household food waste behaviour in EU-27 countries: a multilevel analysis. Food Pol. 871 2015, 56, 25-40,

44. Di Talia, Elisa; Simeone, M.; Scarpato, D. Consumer behaviour types in household food waste. Journal of Cleaner Production. 873 2019, 214, 166-172,

209 At the same time, it is known that women waste more than men [41].

This is not consensual, the authors need to further support the statement, the reference is not the most appropriate and is already very old

41. Gallo, A. E. Consumer Food Waste in the United. Food review/National Food Review, 1980. 12 (1), 13-16

4. Kurt Lewin's model description is very confusing and it is not obvious why it was chosen or the relation to the paper's topic;

5. The methodology needs to be more clearly explained (how the sample was calculated? How it was distributed among rural/urban regions..);

6. Besides data collection also data analysis needs to be much improved; so far it is a very confusing descriptive analysis;

7. The design of the graphics needs to be improved; the quality is poor, some are not needed and the source needs to be mentioned not only and a reference number;

8. Furthermore, the paper needs a deep language review, some sentences are unclear.

Author Response

Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I regret to say it but the reviewed paper is of low quality in all of its aspects: substantive, formal, methodological, and linguistic. There are numerous serious problems that justify the decision to reject it in the current form despite the high importance and timeliness of the presented topic.

See the file for the details of the assessment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors did good work from an experimental point of view, and I recommend the article for publication after some major revisions.

More specific:

L9: Don’t use paragraphs in the abstract.

L81: Increase the resolution of Figure 1. Also, you could make a format axis to zoom in on a specific area.

L125: Figure 3 needs to increase the resolution.

L169: The same as above for Figure 5.

L188: Statistical analysis is missing.

L189: Results and discussion?

L192: Replace the work ‘’kilograms’’ with ‘’Kg’’.

L212: You could merge Figures 6 and 7. The data from Figure 6 was used in a legend for Figure 7.

L223: The names of the red and yellow columns in Figure 8 are missing.

L248: It is difficult to understand. Change the colors of columns and the resolution of the legend.

L409: Improve the resolution of Figure 12.

General comment: All figures need to improve the resolution. But some figures may convert to tables. Too much information and all this make confusion. The paper needs many corrections, such as the format and the reading order.

Author Response

Please see the attachment!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The text needed considerable improvement but revision did not improve it enough for it to be published.

The text is still confusing and still needs a deep English review. It is also too long.

Some information is contradictory or confusing.

An example- in the same paragraph different amounts of food waste in Romania are provided and there is no information about the study and the authors

130 "A local-based project in 2019 (which one??) also provided some important elements regarding food waste in Romania. Approximately one-third of all products in Romania end up in the trash or are unnecessarily wasted annually. This amount corresponds to about 2.55 million tons of food products. Food waste in Romania represents a major social problem: we throw away approximately 250 kg of food per inhabitant annually (above the European average), while 4.74 million people live on the poverty line and have difficulties securing food. In Romania, statistics indicate 5 million t of food waste annually, representing between a third and a half of the total amount of food intended for human consumption produced in a year, i.e. approx. 250 kg/inhabitant, compared to 179 kg/inhabitant, the European average, while approximately 25% of the country's population (4.74 million people) live on the poverty line and encounter difficulties in procuring daily food."

Author Response

Please see the attachment!

Happy New Year and thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

It is very difficult to assess quality of a paper that includes all editorial notes, several colours, in which much of the text is crossed out. It is impossible to see which objects are left and which will be removed.

The introductory part is significantly better, however methodological part and results section are still poor.

What is 'observational analytical study' and 'sociological analysis method' that the authors claim to have used for data collection? And in the previous version they claimed it was a survey... And in several places they mention a questionnaire which is an instrument used in surveys. Unbelievable chaos. Please, use the precise, commonly recognized names of methods.

The participants of the reserach make a sample, not a cohort.

Line 347 writes: "In order to answer the purpose of the homework, we present the results obtained when applying the questionnaire:" What homework???

Why do the authors mention ordinal logistic regression or ANOVA among the statistical analysis tools, if the only method of analysis they used were contingency tables? They haven't even checked the independence of the variables they have crossed.

The tables that were used instead of charts did not help - as they are no better, especially in this format. Instead of exchanging the charts with the tables, the authors should have corrected the charts - to make them clear and readable.

But the biggest weakness of the article are still the comments on the data and conclusions. This is the first time I have encountered a scientific article in which the description of the research results consists of transcribing all the data from the tables (graphs). Then why include tables or graphs at all? It is difficult to read, to comprehend, to make any reasonable general conclusions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment!

Happy New Year and thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has been revised according to the suggestions and criticisms of the reviewers. In this revised version, the paper has improved its quality and I recommend the article for publication.

Author Response

Thank you and

Happy New Year!