Inequitable Changes to Time Spent in Urban Nature during COVID-19: A Case Study of Seattle, WA with Asian, Black, Latino, and White Residents
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript I have received has not been re-written, it is the same manuscript I had commented on May 27.
The authors only added their explanations on the methodology choice and informed that, they ‘de-emphasized the Sense of Belonging in Urban Nature Questionnaire’ role and they removed the Sense of Belonging from the title.
Therefore I still maintain my stance that the paper in present form does not contribute to the international scholarly literature.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Many thanks for all the improvements done in your paper. I now believe that major issues were properly addressed.
Good luck
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The study examines the inequality conditions of various people who have different socio-demographic backgrounds in Seattle, WA by the the using urban nature during the COVID-19. The paper offers very interesting notions while I have some comments to improve the quality.
The models and analyses should be explained elaborately with the implications and results.
Conclusion should be extended beyond city governances’ responsibilities
What makes this study uniqe among other inequality and COVID-19 studies?
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have further extended the ‘Methods’ section – explaining their methodology choice and the ‘Discussion’ section addressing the study biases.
But as I have already mentioned the conclusions are unclear and they are based predominantly on the Sense of Belonging Questionnaire, which is the weak point of the methodology.
The Sense of Belonging in Urban Nature Questionnaire created for this study by the authors is composed of the themes identified through a literature review of social barriers to urban nature only reported by the Communities of Color, thus missing the Whites point of view and the problems they encounter building their sense of belonging. This questionnaire concentrates also predominantly on negative emotions, while sense of belonging may also develop in neighbour community initiatives etc.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for addressing all my concerns.
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
Dear Authors,
I believe that the manuscript has a low overall merit, just as I consider low the interest for the readers and its scietific soundness.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
INTRODUCTION
Part of the introduction where the authors justified the importance of assessing race/ethnicity when investigating urban nature visitation is based on popular information rather than scientific publications (citations of the article from the Washington Post or personal opinion from Twitter). This part of the paper should be improved by adding scientific publications that demonstrate the importance of the issue raised by the authors.
METHODS
Sense of Belonging in Urban Nature Questionnaire created for this study by the authors is composed of the themes identified through a literature review of social barriers to urban nature only reported by the Communities of Color, thus missing the Whites point of view and the problems they encounter building their sense of belonging. For example Whites of Scandinavian descent may perceive police presence in a city park as security warrant.
This questionnaire concentrates also predominantly on negative emotions, while sense of belonging may also develop in neighbour community initiatives etc.
Perceived Green Space Quality Scale and Sense of Belonging Questionnaire were assessed only once as for both years 2019 and 2020. In 6 months of pandemic a character of green spaces in neighbourhood and their safety might have changed due to e.g. economic problems caused by lockdown, thus making those green spaces less frequently visited.
RESULTS
459 ‘table 4’ - it should be ‘table 3’
514-524 it is part of the ‘Material and methods’ section
in table 2 Are only differences in ‘took a walk with other people’ and ‘took a walk alone’ statistically significant?
in table 3 Are only differences in ‘2019 frequency’, ‘2020 frequency’, ‘change in frequency’ and ‘sense of belonging’ statistically significant?
‘Change in frequency’ - apart from average days per month data, also it would be worth including percent values.
In table 2 and 3 it would be more legible to e.g. put statistically significant values in bold.
CONCLUSIONS
The conclusions are rather unclear and they are based predominantly on the Sense of Belonging Questionnaire, which is the weak point of the methodology.
The authors also contradict their own statements on combating racial/ethnic inequities by recommending urban nature spaces created predominantly for Black and Latino residents, thus putting them in ‘green space ghettos’ as well. A city dweller is entitled to use common urban green space only on the basis of hers/his correct behaviour and following the social norms of the place, irrespective of hers/his race, sex, beliefs etc.
BIAS AND LIMITATIONS
1. In the study participated only people who use social media.
2. Were the FB posts equally distributed among groups, which consist of people of various race, income, dwelling place etc.?
3. The participants auto-declared their ethnic identity so for example someone might have declared oneself as mainly Asian but was raised in the multi-ethnic family with predominant White culture influence.
4. The White ethnic group is very unhomogenous; for example Whites of Norwegian descent are from their childhood involved in outdoor activities, thus they seek nature also within a city, while White of Italian origin in coronavirus pandemic missed most reunions in public places or family gardens,
5. The research lacks questionnaire dealing with habits and cultural background of participants, which may influence their urban nature interaction in prepandemic and pandemic time.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
It was a pleasure to read your work. You give a strong contribution to the complex understanding of structural inequalities regarding access and the benefits of urban nature. These kinds of inequalities go far beyond the environmental dimension and should be understood as within the city's spaces and historically grounded. We are also talking about that not anyone has the same rights to Nature. And this is quite obvious among ethnic groups which suggests environmental racism.
In the introduction section, despite being well focused and coherently presented, I believe that they could benefit from two major papers in this area recently published:
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24892-1 this paper explains how solving environmental injustice situations are not enough to deal with structural inequalities such as racism;
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40572-022-00343-x this one presents an amazing review on the historical battle against environmental racism.
I would like to alert the authors that only in point 1.3 is understood that you have developed a scale. Maybe you should make a reference in the abstract or even in the title. You are free to accept or not this suggestion of course.
In the material and methods section, please specify if you used a quota sampling or a convenience sample since are different sampling strategies.
Finally, in the survey instrument, you did not consider having some trees or small nature areas close to their residences, right? If not, please justify how these can affect your results since previous literature found that simply can see (or not) nature through the window may express an inequality issue.
I believe that this paper is a strong contribution to the field.
Congratulations on the work done.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
I certainly appreciated your proofreading work to improve the manuscript. Unfortunately I believe that the scientific peculiarity of the manuscript is always missing.
Reviewer 2 Report
Results
There is still no statistically significant data supporting urban nature interaction type before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in various racial group (the authors confirmed that it was only ‘analysed descriptively’).
Also the participants evaluated their Sense of Belonging in pandemic time, when their frequency of urban nature interaction – in case of Black and Latino individuals – decreased. Thus it is not possible to simply explain their decrease in urban park use by the Sense of Belonging alone.
Conclusions
The conclusions are still unclear and they are based predominantly on the Sense of Belonging Questionnaire, which is the weak point of the methodology.
The paper unfortunately has still substantial number of limitations and biases.
1. In the study participated only people who use social media and there is considerable uncertainty that the implemented method chosen to recruit participants (FB posts) fully represented people of various race, income, dwelling place etc.
3. The participants only auto-declared their ethnic identity but the research lacks questionnaire dealing with habits and cultural background of participants, which may influence their urban nature interaction in pre-pandemic and pandemic time.
4. The so called White ethnic group is very inhomogeneous.
Unfortunately, probably due to the lack of the data and/or the short deadline for the corrections, the authors could not manage to further improve the paper.
Though the Discussion and Conclusions sections may form the interesting observation for Seattle city government, the paper in present form does not contribute to the international scholarly literature.
The authors are encouraged to re-write the article in order to address from various points of view the interesting subject of urban green areas, their accessibility – also in pandemic time – and the urban nature preferences of various racial/ethnic groups.
