The Climate of My Neighborhood: Households’ Willingness to Adapt to Urban Climate Change
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Driven by the assumption that it is necessary to understand society's perception of climate change to foster collective action towards mores climate adapted cities, the manuscript intends to understand how wiling are residents of a Lisbon neighborhood to change their behavior facing a climate change scenario. For this, two climate scenarios are established and presented to residents interviewed via an online form.
The manuscript address an actual and relevant discussion and brings light to the need of appropriate scales to address mobilization and collective action. Indeed, while many documents address the large scale tendencies and impacts of climate change, the municipal level is the level where such impacts are felt and must be dealt with in a daily basis. The question posed by the authors is an intriguing one, and has been calling the attention of academics as Wolf and Moser (2011), Valkengoen and Stag (2019), and Brosh (2021) to cite some reviews on the issue. I also applaud the authors for presenting gender disaggregated data.
However, although this manuscript presents an interesting method proposal to combine scenario modelling to discuss behavioral changes, the insights driven from the case study have limited contribution to the field. I am afraid that the data, presented and discussed as is, is not robust enough to support deeper discussion on the role of perceptions as drivers of social change. The method applied does not guarantee that the recognition of the need to change can be related to the scenarios presented or are based on common sense (since the respondents are characterized as well-informed about climate change and sustainability), a premise of the manuscript. What is more, some of the suggested adaptations may already been in practice (such as the use of car sharing or electric car) and may not represent a change at all. Many changes are structural changes, and it is not clear as they will affect residents to be understood as a change in their "behavior and way of life", as phrased in the guiding question. To drive more meaningful insights from this data collection, the authors would have to apply a great effort to discuss the data in deeper dialog with related literature, which is missing. This would entail restructuring the entire manuscript.
Other specific comments and attention points:
- Introduction: Needs to present the problem more concisely. The introduction goes from Climate Change Scenarios to behavioral science, social participation (in environmental assessment?) and engagement, back to the problem of scale on scenario modelling. The focus of the manuscript is not clear, as well as the problem in stake. Although I understand the importance of scenario modelling for the method of the manuscript, this does not seem to be the focus of the discussion, but only a strategy used to address perception. Thus, I would not spend more than two paragraphs on the topic and suggest that greater attention is given to framing the problem focusing on the key concepts of the question you intend to answer: perception, behavioral changes and willingness to act.
Revise acronyms definitions and be consistent on how you present and use them. Sometimes the acronym is presented before its definition, sometimes after. Sometimes translated to English, others not.
- Study area: Since perception is context-dependent, It would be interesting to present more socioeconomic and environmental data on the neighborhood. What is their status in relation to other Lisbon areas? You comment they are "a very active local population", but what does this mean? How have they been suffering climate change impacts over the years?
Lines 227 - 230 you call B and C west and A and C western - revise.
- Methods: As I said regarding the introduction, I am not sure that the scenario modelling is the focus of this manuscript. I understand it is a tool to discuss perception and, regardless of the importance as such, should not be the focus of the methods section. I suggest that the description on how you designed the scenarios should be moved to supplementary material or even another manuscript to discuss, e.g., how the planned interventions for the area (data you mentioned gathering - l. 280-282) address anticipatory climate change adaptation.
You describe your questionnaire's aim is "To understand the population's perception of the sustainability of their neighborhood and all the problems that climate change may add" (l. 348-349) and that "The main objectives of this questionnaire were: i) to assess the perception of residents of the Alvalade neighborhood about the future climate projections (2070-2100), according to scenario RCP 8.5; ii) to assess the knowledge of the residents have about the concept of urban sustainability; iii) to assess the extent to which citizens are willing to change their current behavior to face the climate crisis that is already being felt in the place where they live." (l. 351 - 356). - This seems to be a very overstated description of your questionnaire. In my opinion, it does not allow understanding what is on lines 348-349, do not access perception of the scenarios (note that perception is a complex and broader concept); does not access the knowledge of urban sustainability (but the perception of the residents about their own knowledge), and do not measure the extension of the willingness to change.
More information is needed regarding the interview mentioned on l. 277-279.
- Results and discussion: Still regarding the questionnaire, not all the results are presented, such as question 10. Some information presented in this section are better fitted and/or repeat information from the methods section (l. 445 - 452; 458-465).
Be consistent on the way you present your data. Some data is presented disaggregated and others not, some are classified considering gender and age, other not. I also suggest that you design infographics or figures to summarize your data, dashboard style.
The discussion is lacking external references to move from a descriptive approach to a more critical analysis. Also, some arguments do not seem to be supported by data. Where is the evidence that the residents of Alvalade have a conscious attitude to make it more resilient? (l. 508-509) What are they doing on the matter? What supports the assumption that there is "lack of credibility that institutions attribute to residents concerning decision-making." (l. 513-514). Although you present gender disaggregated data, you do not use the gender lens to discuss it, consider revising this.
- Conclusion. It is not clear to me how your data and your discussion support your two conclusions.
- References: Review direct citations on the text, sometimes you use number instead of names of authors.
I also suggest that you update some literature and expand your readings to incorporate literature rooted in social sciences or social-ecology. There is a vast discussion related to perceptions-action-changes and climate change that are missing in your discussion, and also on social participation and participatory planning, if you are willing to go in this direction. Some suggestions:
Wolf, Johanna, and Susanne C. Moser. "Individual understandings, perceptions, and engagement with climate change: insights from in‐depth studies across the world." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2.4 (2011): 547-569.
Owusu, M., Nursey-Bray, M. & Rudd, D. Gendered perception and vulnerability to climate change in urban slum communities in Accra, Ghana. Reg Environ Change 19, 13–25 (2019).
Brosch, Tobias. "Affect and emotions as drivers of climate change perception and action: a review." Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 42 (2021): 15-21.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-018-1357-z
van Valkengoed, A.M., Steg, L. Meta-analyses of factors motivating climate change adaptation behaviour. Nature Clim Change 9, 158–163 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0371-y
Xie, Belinda, et al. "Predicting climate change risk perception and willingness to act." Journal of Environmental Psychology 65 (2019): 101331.
Bradley, Graham L., et al. "The role of climate change risk perception, response efficacy, and psychological adaptation in pro-environmental behavior: A two nation study." Journal of Environmental Psychology 68 (2020): 101410.
Arnout, Boshra A. "Climate values as predictor of climate change perception in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." Frontiers in Psychology 13 (2022).
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
I congratulate the authors for choosing this theme, which is very relevant in the context of climate change. The suggestions made in the revised manuscript sent attached to this comments seek to make the article more consistent in terms of form and content. For this, it is necessary to present in the introduction other articles that researched the theme addressed by the authors at least in the last five years. These works will provide authors with information to discuss the research findings in the item "Discussion item" (that must be introduced in the manuscript) since in the current format, the authors only presented the research results without comparing them with those obtained by other authors (for example, in other countries in Europe).
In the conclusion, the authors should respond to the addressed questions made in the introduction. Provide at least one paragraph for each question made.
It is important to state that some modification suggestions are indicated in the revised manuscript. Please, consider adjusting them in the final version of manuscript.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
I have gone through the manuscript entitled: “The climate of my neighborhood: households’ willingness to adapt to urban climate change..” and found it interesting. However there is a few modification required towards improving its readability:
The introduction should be improved with regard to the critical research gap and also show the novelty of the work
Figure 1, 5, 6, should be more readable and of better quality. If possible please replace with a graphic of better quality
Figure 2 contains three maps, also of poor quality. The abbreviation found in the legend (AML) , should be clarified by the authors, as it is not obvious what it means. It would be worthwhile to add designations to the maps, e.g. (a), (b), (c), and mention in the text what they represent. It is not obvious why the authors added the maps to the article and what they want to show. One can guess that the authors present the city from general to detail . I suggest making it more visible .
The authors write that Figures 4 (Alvalade Square) and 5 show examples of the Alvalade street typology. Is baby an sure Figure 5 represented a typology? Is one figure missing? In the article Figure 5 - shows the modeled air temperature of the last hot day in the current situation (July 3, 2019). I have the impression that one figure is missing that would correspond to the yellow marking in Figure 3.
Conclusions section, is presented more as a summary and it is worth to highlighting more of the conclusions of the research
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
This manuscript aims to elucidate views of local residents on climate change awareness and mitigation action in a Lisbon neighbourhood. However, what is promised by the title and the abstract is not exactly what the results reveal. There are said to be two main conclusions (according to the Abstract) – resistance to adopt behaviour change and responsibility to change being assigned to higher authorities rather than themselves. However, the results presented in the paper do not back these up. What is presented is that a vast majority of respondents (96.4%) are said to be ‘pre-disposed to change’ (however, this is not backed by the Figures; this is a totally different point, see below). In general, the key part of the results (residents’ views on willingness to change and responsibility to change) are not discussed/only too briefly discussed. In contrast, the model setup, background on global warming etc. are way too excessive.
I recommend the paper be fully re-written to present more of the results of the survey to highlight the two areas promised by the Abstract. And, the implications of these two areas should be discussed in detail.
I also recommend that the manuscript be thoroughly proof-read and checked for grammar.
Specific comments
Ln 32 – why is global warming a ‘remarkable threat’ specifically in urban areas?
Ln40 – 2019
Discussions on global warming (especially explanations of RCPs, SSPs, etc.) is too excessive; this is a paper on ‘urban’ warming as such, focus should be limited to urban warming (of course in the context of global warming)
Ln 84 – better to ‘sealed surfaces’ rather than ‘waterproof areas’
Ln 94-95 – ‘into de knowledge’??
Ln 111 – ‘In 1990 [9] defined . . .’ is rather inelegant. Perhaps re-word as ‘Collective action is defined as . . . [9]’ (similar comment applies to the next para, ref [11])
Ln 177 – a better justification needed as to why the Alvalade neighbourhood was chosen as the case study
Ln 227 – Sectors B and D should be in the east?
Ln 233 – Although there is a Figure 5 later on, this figure pertains to ‘Results’ – it would be better to have a new Fig 5 to explain what is denoted by ‘Y’ in Figure 3
Ln 260 – Is the ‘provisional data’ for 2021 or later? (since the previous reference to Census data is also 2021)
Ln 360 – The population of Alvalade is said to be 8,869, is this the population of the study area (or the whole parish?)
Section 4.2 – Keeping in mind UTCI needs wind measured at 10m height, the discussions on the cooling effect of wind in this section needs to acknowledge this limitation of UTCI. A better comparison would be PET (or simply MRT) both of which are derivable from ENVI-met
Fig 9 and ln 520-524 do not tally; ln 521 says around 96.4% of the respondents are predisposed to make changes but Fig 9 indicates the percentage answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are more or less the same? Similar queries in Fig 10 as well?
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
After revising your manuscript, I still have some concerns on its content. As a general, the manuscript can be improved with more detailed description of your methods. This will allow readers to better understand your results, discussion and conclusion. Also, make sure that all results (related to the method's description) are presented, even if you do not focus on discussing all of them. After such changes, there is still need to provide more detailed discussion of your data.
Specific comments on the attached response letter.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
Thank you for taking on board some of my suggestions on the original version. there are a few points that still remain to be tackled. I have added these in red, in the attached document
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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