The Perception of the Vertical Dimension (3D) through the Lens of Different Stakeholders in the Property Market of China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Aim of the work is to conduct semi-structured expert interviews, focus groups and questionnaires in Xi’an, China, to investigate how different stakeholders in the property market perceive 3D. The topic is interesting but some improvements are required:

• clarify why the 3D perception is important in the abstract
• distinguish clearly the 3D factors among the different outdoor and enviornmental variables that affect the property prices
• provide for more details on the sky view factors influences
• explain better the current housing policies, especially how they influence the 3D perception

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1

We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewer for the evaluation of our work and for the time spent and efforts to provide us with helpful comments. We have addressed all indicated suggestions and recommendations. We have provided a new version of the paper with the changes according to the reviewer's suggestions.

Aim of the work is to conduct semi-structured expert interviews, focus groups and questionnaires in Xi’an, China, to investigate how different stakeholders in the property market perceive 3D. The topic is interesting but some improvements are required:

Point 1: clarify why the 3D perception is important in the abstract

Response 1:

We appreciate your comment. A sentence has been added into abstract to emphasis 3D perception. Line 20-21: “The 3D perception helps to understand a myriad of social and psychological effects of living in high-rise buildings.”

Point 2: distinguish clearly the 3D factors among the different outdoor and enviornmental variables that affect the property prices

Response 2:

Thanks for your valuable comment. In the Table 1 and Table 2 (secton 3.3., page 7 and 8), we have added new attribute to identify whether one specific factor belongs to 2D, 3D or others. We also added a table footer to further explain the details of why some factors do not belong to 2D or 3D (line 272-274).

Point 3: provide for more details on the sky view factors influences

Response 3:

We thank you for the comment. We have added one reference to highlight the importance of sky view factor (SVF) in urban environment. Line 54-55, “It has been well studied as a significant factor in urban heat island studies, which im-pact human behavior, thermal comfort and space usage”.

The reference is: Lin, T.P.; Tsai, K.T.; Hwang, R.L.; Matzarakis, A. Quantification of the effect of thermal indices and sky view factor on park attendance. Landsc. Urban Plan. 2012, 107, 137–146, doi:10.1016/J.LANDURBPLAN.2012.05.011.

Point 4: explain better the current housing policies, especially how they influence the 3D perception

Response 4:

First, we would like to state that currently there is no concept of 3D perception or similar ones in current housing policies in Xi’an so we can not provide further explanations on that. Besides, we would love to provide more details of housing policies to enhance the background understanding. To not interfering with the main contexts, we put explanation in the footnote in page 3. Now the footnote is as follows (the sentence highlighted is new):

PLP aims to control the speculation purchase and satisfy buyers with actual housing demands for living other than investment. For example, the group who do not own their properties enjoy purchasing priority and the first-hand property cannot be put into second-hand property market in five years. FPP aims to curb the soaring property prices. Under this policy, real estate developers do not have the rights to determine the property price; instead, the price shall be approved by Price Bureau of Xi’an. If the price is considered too high, the permit shall not be issued.

We are happy to respond further if you have specific interests in certain fields of the housing policies.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The paper presented "The perception of the vertical dimension (3D) through the lens of different stakeholders in the property market of China" shows an interesting point of view over the problem of features of the high-rise residential building in China.

The paper is extremely interesting, but some inconsistencies make the work of interpreting the concepts complicated.
Before expressing my doubts, I would like to give some tips to make the whole paper less verbose.
The introduction seems to me very long, and not always effective. For example, the sentence between Lines 47 and 52 is correct but also banal, above all because in theory the paper is aimed at an auditorium of experts.
Also the analysis of the "hedonic price" between Lines 62 and 74 is extremely long and repeats concepts that are now stable.
The innovative part, on the other hand, concerns more planning and design aspects of the public space, which are analyzed in an exhaustive manner.
The "PLP" and "FPP" policies are also dealt with in a hurry, without actually analyzing whether they have achieved the expected results or not. Both policies could play an important role in defining the detrimental or beneficial effects of price and market control.
 
From a methodological point of view, however, I have the greatest doubts, it is not clear how the focus groups are related to the questionnaire and the number of interviewees is statistically irrelevant compared to the population described. In fact, if the population is over 10 million inhabitants, and the stock of high-rise buildings is about 10%, of which we can imagine 60% occupied, the statistical sample is insufficient for the significance of the research.
Could it make sense to better define where the samples were collected? For example, if in an area characterized by the presence of tall buildings or in a downtown?
Could it make sense to imagine it only as a pilot project that presupposes the collection of more precise data, better defined from a geographical point of view?

Despite that, I recommend the authors proceed with their research. The potentiality is huge and the topic absolutely pivotal for our understanding of market real estate dynamics.

Hope my comments are useful to the authors

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2

We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewer for the evaluation of our work and for the time spent and efforts to provide us with helpful comments. We have addressed all indicated suggestions and recommendations. We have provided a new version of the paper with the changes according to the reviewer's suggestions. 

Point 1: The introduction seems to me very long, and not always effective. For example, the sentence between Lines 47 and 52 is correct but also banal, above all because in theory the paper is aimed at an auditorium of experts.

Response 1:

We appreciate your comments. To avoid banal expression, we deleted part of the sentences in line 47-52, added descriptions of the importance of sky view factor (SVF) to enhance background understanding, and added a new reference. Now from line 48-53 it reads as follows:

Therefore, 3D factors should be paid attention to in urban areas with increasing building density and height. For example, sky view factor (SVF), the indicator representing the proportion of the sky visible from a particular observer location [10], can be considerably different between a low-story property with shadows cast by other buildings and a high-story one without any blocks. It has been well studied as a significant factor in urban heat island studies, which impact human behavior, thermal comfort and space usage [11].

Point 2: Also the analysis of the "hedonic price" between Lines 62 and 74 is extremely long and repeats concepts that are now stable.
Response 2:

We thank you for the valuable comment and can understand some of the reasoning. Between Lines 62- 74, we aim to provide a brief introduction of how existing literature treats such locational and environmental factors in hedonic price modelling, and we pick up typical examples for illustration. We hope through these papers the audience can have a basic understanding of how these factors can influence property prices. Furthermore, we point out that 3D and people’s opinions might be missing in these papers, which is the motivation of this research. We agree that the expression may be banal, and we revise the texts for simplification as follows (now line 63-75):

Literature of how different locational and environmental factors influence property prices in urban areas has been well established. Lan et al. [12] reported that buyers were willing to pay a 4% premium to stay away from the haze. Rivers have positive in-fluences for their amenity value [12], while polluted ones have negative impacts [13]. Premium education and close park proximity both exerts positive external effects [13,14] [15]. Instead of approaching buyers directly on the housing concerns, the abovementioned studies constructed different statistical models with multi-source da-ta and inferred influences of specific factors. There are studies investigating people’s preferences in the property market [16,17], some constructed from residents’ perspectives, e.g., youth and elderly [18,19]. Nevertheless, they did not focus on 3D factors in urban areas, and the knowledge also necessitates updates concerning different stake-holders comprehensively.

We are happy to respond further if you have more ideas on this paragraph.

Point 3: The innovative part, on the other hand, concerns more planning and design aspects of the public space, which are analyzed in an exhaustive manner.
Response 3:

We thank you for the valuable comments. It is true that we spend a lot of time discussing the planning and design of public space based on the questionnaire results. We cite papers that are not frequently concerned with property valuation fields (e.g., architecture, psychology, and design) to connect high-rise residences with these fields so that we can improve the high-rise residents’ living quality in the future. With abundant empirical evidence, we believe such interdisciplinary connection or collaboration can bring a change, i.e., make the 3D count in urban areas with increasing amounts of buildings.

Point 4: The "PLP" and "FPP" policies are also dealt with in a hurry, without actually analyzing whether they have achieved the expected results or not. Both policies could play an important role in defining the detrimental or beneficial effects of price and market control.
Response 4:

We thank you for the valuable comment. The two housing policies were very harsh and executed strictly, so the goal of stabilising the property market was achieved. The relevant texts in section 3.2. are revised as follows (line 254-258):

As mentioned before (section 2.1.), two important housing policies on a relatively macro level were established to stabilize the property market, and they have achieved expected goals to stabilize the property market. However, the local government have not yet involved anything related to 3D factors and 3D modeling technology in the housing policy.

We illustrated more empirical examples of PLP and FPP in the footnote on page 3 to enhance understanding. Now the text reads as follows:

PLP aims to control the speculation purchase and satisfy buyers with actual housing demands for living other than investment. For example, the group who do not own their properties enjoy purchasing priority, and the first-hand property cannot be put into the second-hand property market in five years. FPP aims to curb the soaring property prices. Under this policy, real estate developers do not have the right to determine the property price; instead, the price shall be approved by Price Bureau of Xi’an. If the price is considered too high, the permit shall not be issued.

Point 5: From a methodological point of view, however, I have the greatest doubts, it is not clear how the focus groups are related to the questionnaire and the number of interviewees is statistically irrelevant compared to the population described. In fact, if the population is over 10 million inhabitants, and the stock of high-rise buildings is about 10%, of which we can imagine 60% occupied, the statistical sample is insufficient for the significance of the research.
Could it make sense to better define where the samples were collected? For example, if in an area characterized by the presence of tall buildings or in a downtown?
Response 5:

Thanks for your helpful comment. We added further details about where we collected data concerning questionnaire in section 2.4. Now it reads as follows (line 204-209):

The paper-based version was equally distributed in public spaces (e.g., main street, shopping mall, sports center) in Yanta, Lianhu, Qujiang New, Beilin, Xincheng districts. Yanta district contains several biggest shopping malls in Xi’an and has great passenger flows. Qujiang New district is the first national cultural industry plot and an economic centre with arts, premium high-rise residences, and tourism. Lianhu, Beilin and Xincheng districts are downtown areas close to the centre of Xi’an.

Point 6: Could it make sense to imagine it only as a pilot project that presupposes the collection of more precise data, better defined from a geographical point of view?

Response 6:

We thank you for the valuable comment. We select Xi’an as the study area as it is one of the fastest-growing provincial capital cities regarding population, economics and city size in China. It is also the biggest city in northwest China, so it is quite representative. Professionals were approached using our local connections to ensure we could obtain quality-guaranteed outcomes from interviews and focus groups, i.e., more precise data. We added one paragraph in the discussion to acknowledge the nature of pilot study (line 550 to 553):

The limitation of this study lies in the nature of the small-scale pilot study. We attempted to offset the negative influence of small sample collection by approaching professionals directly, organizing active focus groups and distributing questionnaires in downtown areas. The target population were well investigated in-depth in the research.

We hope our answer can solve your question and we would love to discuss more regarding this point.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The presentation reflects the present state of knowledge. The paper is very well structured. The Introduction section is good, in this section the authors presents clearly the objectives and the main contributions of the study. The authors had provided sufficient background and include relevant references. The research design is innovative and appropriate. The method is adequately described. The results are clearly presented. The conclusions are supported by the results. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3

Point 1: The presentation reflects the present state of knowledge. The paper is very well structured. The Introduction section is good, in this section the authors presents clearly the objectives and the main contributions of the study. The authors had provided sufficient background and include relevant references. The research design is innovative and appropriate. The method is adequately described. The results are clearly presented. The conclusions are supported by the results. 

Response 1: We would like to thank the reviewer for their time dedicated to evaluating our work and showing the appreciation.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The efforts made by the Authors in order to improve the work are apprecciated. Otherwise, some minor suggestions are provided:

• explain the importance of the 3D perception in the Introduction;
• if possible, add some references reguarding the effects of the sky view factor on the housing prices;
• Literature of how different locational and environmental factors influence property prices in urban areas can be enriched with the following references: Morano, P., Guarnaccia, C., Tajani, F., Di Liddo, F., & Anelli, D. (2020, September). An analysis of the noise pollution influence on the housing prices in the central area of the city of Bari. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1603, No. 1, p. 012027). IOP Publishing and Cano, H., Ríos-Rojas, J. F., Hernández-Fernández, J., Bernal Herrera, W., Bautista Betancur, M., De La Hoz Vélez, L., & Agámez González, L. (2022). Impact of Environmental Pollution in the Sustainability of Architectural Heritage: Case Study from Cartagena of India, Colombia. Sustainability, 14(1), 189.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1

We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewer for the evaluation of our work and for the time spent and efforts to provide us with helpful comments. We have addressed the suggestions and recommendations proposed by the reviewer. We have provided a new version of the paper with the changes according to the reviewer's suggestions.

Point 1: explain the importance of the 3D perception in the Introduction

Response 1:

We appreciate your comment. We added a detailed description of the importance of 3D perception in the introduction and included three new references (below) (line 77 to 82):

The 3D perception, more specifically, how residents in high-rise buildings perceive their living environment, is of vital importance because it has a series of seminal social and psychological influences [24]. The high-rise housing system in Singapore is a typical example, and diverse concerns of high-rise living style have been discussed [25,26]. Similar concerns deserve attention in other densely-populated urban areas.

The references are:

Gifford, R. The consequences of living in high-rise buildings. Archit. Sci. Rev. 2007, 50, 2–17, doi:10.3763/asre.2007.5002.

Yuen, B.; Yeh, A.; Appold, S.J.; Earl, G.; Ting, J.; Kwee, L.K. High-rise living in Singapore public housing. Urban Stud. 2006, 43, 583–600, doi:10.1080/00420980500533133.

Yuen, B. Romancing the high-rise in Singapore. Cities 2005, 22, 3–13, doi:10.1016/j.cities.2004.10.002.

Point 2: if possible, add some references reguarding the effects of the sky view factor on the housing prices;

Response 2:

Thanks for your valuable comment. We added a description of how the sky view factor (SVF) influences housing prices with references and revised the texts as well (line 49 to 55, new contents are highlighted):

For example, the sky view factor (SVF), i.e., the indicator representing the proportion of the sky visible from a particular observer location [10], has been well studied as a significant factor in urban heat island studies, which impact human behavior, thermal comfort and space usage [11]. For example, Fu et al. [12] confirmed the positive correlation of sky and building view indexes (SVI) with property prices in Beijing and Shanghai, two megacities in China. The results indicated people’s preferences for sky openness.

The reference is:

Fu, X.; Jia, T.; Zhang, X.; Li, S.; Zhang, Y. Do street-level scene perceptions affect housing prices in Chinese megacities? An analysis using open access datasets and deep learning. PLoS One 2019, 14, e0217505, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0217505.

Point 3: Literature of how different locational and environmental factors influence property prices in urban areas can be enriched with the following references: Morano, P., Guarnaccia, C., Tajani, F., Di Liddo, F., & Anelli, D. (2020, September). An analysis of the noise pollution influence on the housing prices in the central area of the city of Bari. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1603, No. 1, p. 012027). IOP Publishing and Cano, H., Ríos-Rojas, J. F., Hernández-Fernández, J., Bernal Herrera, W., Bautista Betancur, M., De La Hoz Vélez, L., & Agámez González, L. (2022). Impact of Environmental Pollution in the Sustainability of Architectural Heritage: Case Study from Cartagena of India, Colombia. Sustainability, 14(1), 189.

Response 3:

We again thank the reviewer for the comment. We have added the relevant one to the research topic papers in the following section XXX (line 67-69):

A negative link between noise level and property prices were confirmed in central, semi-central and peripheral urban areas of Bari, Italy [13].

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors, thanks for your replies.

I do think the paper has improved, and the corrections help to better read the scientific apparatus.
The problem - regardless of the effects or the specific results of the article - always remains the statistical significance of the sample, despite the tests on page 13.

In each case, the corrections clearly specify the seminal nature of the research.

Small corrections are still needed, such as the correction of the tables on page 7/8 and a general revision of the text.

For the rest everything looks fine to me. 

My greetings to the authors.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2

We would like to express our gratitude to the reviewer for the constructive comments. We have addressed all indicated suggestions and recommendations. We have provided a new version of the paper with the changes according to the reviewer’s suggestions.

Point 1: The problem - regardless of the effects or the specific results of the article - always remains the statistical significance of the sample, despite the tests on page 13.

Response 1:

We appreciate your concerns and would like to explain you more. Regarding the interviews and focus groups, we used our local connections to identify experts and active respondents with diverse backgrounds, so we can guarantee the diversity and avoid bias coming from singular gender or class. The focus group discussions were organized in an active way to stimulate an open discussion between the respondents. Based on the transcripts, we obtained abundant information from buyers with different perspectives. Regarding the questionnaire, we filtered out responses which were not in convincing quality and the final number is 142. We acknowledge that and we expect to enlarge it in future works. In summation, by using different data collection methods, including qualitative and quantitative, we were able to capture a diverse spectrum of opinions on the local property market in Xi’an. In the future, we would like to enlarge the sampling size and bring more 3D contexts into that.

            In order to emphasis our concerns on data collection and our expectations of future research, we added one paragraph in discussion as follows (line 561- 568):

            The limitation of this study lies in the nature of the small-scale pilot study. We used our local networks to offset the negative influence of small sample collection by approaching professionals directly, organizing active focus groups and distributing questionnaires in downtown areas. This study applied both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods to capture a diverse spectrum of opinions in the Xi’an property market at a local scale. Due to the time and cost limit, 142 responses in the questionnaire were eventually confirmed valid. It is preferable to have a larger sample size in future studies with more demographic data collected (e.g., income, educational background, job).

Point 2: In each case, the corrections clearly specify the seminal nature of the research.

Response 2:

Thanks for your valuable comment. We added texts to clarify our contributions in introduction (line 99 to 101).

The contributions of this study lie in twofold: (1) investigating how different stake-holders in the property market treat 3D in their respective fields, (2) identifying buyers’ preferences of 3D in high-rise buildings.

Point 3: Small corrections are still needed, such as the correction of the tables on page 7/8 and a general revision of the text.

Response 3:

We thank you for the comment. The Table 1 and Table 2 has been corrected into right formats and positions.

We add a detailed description of the importance of 3D perception in the introduction and three new references are cited (line 77 to 82):

The 3D perception, more specifically, how residents in high-rise buildings perceive their living environment, is of vital importance because it has a series of seminal social and psychological influences [24]. The high-rise housing system in Singapore is a typical example, and diverse concerns of high-rise living style have been discussed [25,26]. Similar concerns deserve attention in other densely-populated urban areas.

The references are:

Gifford, R. The consequences of living in high-rise buildings. Archit. Sci. Rev. 2007, 50, 2–17, doi:10.3763/asre.2007.5002.

Yuen, B.; Yeh, A.; Appold, S.J.; Earl, G.; Ting, J.; Kwee, L.K. High-rise living in Singapore public housing. Urban Stud. 2006, 43, 583–600, doi:10.1080/00420980500533133.

Yuen, B. Romancing the high-rise in Singapore. Cities 2005, 22, 3–13, doi:10.1016/j.cities.2004.10.002.

We added a description of how the sky view factor (SVF) influences housing prices with references and revised the texts as well (line 49-55, new contents are highlighted):

For example, the sky view factor (SVF), i.e., the indicator representing the proportion of the sky visible from a particular observer location [10], has been well studied as a significant factor in urban heat island studies, which impact human behavior, thermal comfort and space usage [11]. For example, Fu et al. [12] confirmed the positive correlation of sky and building view indexes (SVI) with property prices in Beijing and Shanghai, two megacities in China. The results indicated people’s preferences for sky openness.

The reference is:

Fu, X.; Jia, T.; Zhang, X.; Li, S.; Zhang, Y. Do street-level scene perceptions affect housing prices in Chinese megacities? An analysis using open access datasets and deep learning. PLoS One 2019, 14, e0217505, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0217505.

We enriched the introduction of locational and environmental factors as follows (line 67-69):

A negative link between noise level and property prices were confirmed in central, semi-central and peripheral urban areas of Bari, Italy [13].

We simplified the recommendations for researchers and deleted redundant sentences, now the text reads as follows (line 598- 603):

(4) researcher. We advise categorizing the visual quality in further detail by developing an index for quality evaluation either qualitatively or quantitatively, or both. For example, covering the specific contexts of view types is important to determine the aesthetic value (e.g., lawn, grassland, forest are all covered in green, but are they the same in practice and which type do people appreciate most?).

Author Response File: Author Response.docx