Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper reports the results flowing from a major project of migration data analysis followed by in-depth focus groups involving 27 participants. It is clearly structured, is generally well written and illustrated, and cites a good set of references. There are just a few places where improvements could be made and/or the meaning clarified, as follows.

 

Page 4 repeats the list of three research questions that are already presented on page 2. Decide which should be kept (I suggest the list on p4) and modify the other text accordingly.

 

Pages 5-6 identifies ‘Covid-era in-migration hotspots’ with Figure 1 and Table 1. For these two illustrations, make clear how the inflow rate is defined: is it the total number of people who moved into each county between 2016 and 2020 divided by its total population in 2020, as suggested by page 5, paragraph 3? If so, this cannot truly be defined as ‘Covid-era’ because it contains at least three pre-Covid years out of the five.

 

As a matter of interest, does the SOI annual data refer to each calendar year, so that indeed there are five full years of migration counted here from January 2016 till December 2020? Also, when exactly did the ‘Covid era’ start in the NE US, i.e. how late into 2019? I seem to recall that this phenomenon came to international attention only in autumn 2019, so the real ‘Covid era’ covered by these statistics may be little more than the last 13-14 months of the five-year period covered here.

 

Table 2 looks wrong. The first data column sums to just 24 rather than the stated 27, so it looks to me as if the housing experts have not yet been included.

 

Pages 8-10 and Figures 2, 3 and 4: The text at the top of page 10 says that during the Covid years Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont ‘experienced an unprecedented influx of incomers’, but this is based on comparing 2018 and 2020. According to Figure 2 the rate of inward movement based on SOI exemptions was higher in 2016 than in 2020 in all three states. Won’t that year have been more of a challenge to the regional planners than the peak Covid year of 2020?

 

This issue comes to the fore again in the paper’s final paragraph on page 20, which again refers to ‘an unprecedented influx’. Two questions arise here. First, if these communities had already been receiving sizeable numbers of newcomers in the pre-Covid years, surely they already had experience of coping with these sorts of numbers? But secondly, if these particular communities had not shared in their state’s pre-Covid influx, how realistic is it to make advance preparations for a further disaster-related influx in some future year? In my experience, residents are very reluctant to pay extra taxes now to provide facilities for a future influx that may not materialise in their local areas anytime soon. Please clarify.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall Assessment

The paper examines population mobility in the Northeast during the early COVID-19 years and discusses the challenges faced by receiving communities. Overall, the manuscript is well-written, with a clear structure and good flow.  The topic is timely and relevant for regional planning.  Strengthening the visual presentation, expanding the theoretical background, and presenting more thorougly the results of the qualitative analysis will significantly enhance its contribution.  Below are some suggestions to further strengthen the paper:

General Comments

• The visual quality of figures should be improved for better readability.
• The presentation of qualitative results could be enhanced to provide more clarity and objectivity.
• The results—particularly the quantitative analysis—focus mainly on the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is unclear what timeframe was covered in the interviews. Please clarify this in the text and avoid using ‘we investigate the population movement trends during the COVID years’.
• Different formatting styles are identified across the document with variations in line spacing.

Specific Suggestions

• The research questions are repeated in lines 156–160; this repetition is unnecessary and can be removed.
• Incorporating literature on migration modeling and theories (e.g., gravity and radiation models) would enrich the background and support observations regarding relationships between distance traveled, opportunities (such as lower urban density and better living conditions), and seasonal housing availability.
• Figure 1:
  • Increase resolution for clarity.
  • Consider adding boundaries for each subdivided level to aid interpretation.
  • Instead of only highlighting hotspots with points, clarify what these hotspots represent—perhaps include population size or indicate which counties were analyzed.
• Figure 5:
  • Provide a definition and source for the amenities dataset in Section 2.
  • Add more explanation to relate bubble sizes to their geographic locations.
  • Improve visual quality and resolution.

Qualitative Results

A quantitative representation of qualitative findings would make the narrative more objective. Currently, it is unclear how intense certain observations were or whether they were emphasized by multiple focus group participants.

The description of domino challenges is holistic and well-presented, but the process for extracting observations lacks transparency. Including spatial patterns of responses would add depth. For example, Table 2 could include a column summarizing the most significant topics or categories discussed in each county.

Discussion

Add a section on limitations of the qualitative study, particularly regarding the number of participants and their roles. This will help contextualize the findings.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have addressed all previous comments.

The new paragraph in L139–155 focuses on the role of strategic planning and scenario analysis, which are indeed important, but it seems to divert the flow of the introduction rather than strengthen the motivation for this specific paper.

L170: revise for accuracy.

A thorough proofreading is suggested to address minor typos (primarily missing spaces).

Author Response

Dear reviewers,

Thank you very much for your constructive comments. We incorporated the comments and suggestions made by the reviewers and highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Please see below the point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments. All page and line numbers refer to the revised manuscript file with tracked changes.

Below are our point-by-point responses to your specific comments:

1. The new paragraph in L139–155 focuses on the role of strategic planning and scenario analysis, which are indeed important, but it seems to divert the flow of the introduction rather than strengthen the motivation for this specific paper.

We agree that the paragraph diverted the flow and moved it above to the end of the introduction (between the lines 97-113).  Thank you very much for helping us improve the flow. 

      2. L170: revise for accuracy.

We revised the sentence to clarify its meaning and make it more accurate. 

     3. A thorough proofreading is suggested to address minor typos (primarily missing spaces).

Thank you for your feedback on this issue. We proofread the paper and corrected the typos.

 

We appreciate the time and effort you dedicated to improving our paper.

Best regards,

Omur Damla Kuru (corresponding author)