What Role Does Sustainable Behavior and Environmental Awareness from Civil Society Play in the Planet’s Sustainable Transition
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a fine piece of research that I think must be published because of the interest to readers.
However, at this version, there are few shotcomings which must be fixed before acceptance:
- the literature is suggesting a bidirectional causality of the latent dimensions then presented in the model. It is important to clarify which is the direction of causality and then properly tested.
- the use of SEM/CFA could clarify this issue.
- why H3 is not H1 (given the literature)?
- there is potentiality to use ordered logit models in order to assess the robustness of the findings.
Author Response
We appreciate the opportunity to review our article and the suggestions that allowed us to improve the quality of our manuscript. Our answers can be found in the attached file.
Thanks.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1. The title needs rephrasing.
2. The language used is difficult to understand or even incomprehensible in many sentences, e.g, Lines 28-31, 33-34, 90-92, 110, 148, 215-217, 325-327, 329-331)
3. Lines 100-106: Please remove the instructions for authors from your manuscript.
4. Lines 108, 164, 210: Once an abbreviation is introduced, the whole phrase should not be mentioned again. The abbreviation should be used instead. Please proceed to correct this (e.g. Lines 120, 165, 218 etc.).
5. Line 320: Table A1,
6. Line 332: do their hygiene routine or tasks
7. There are many repetitions within the manuscript. Please proceed to eliminate repetitions e.g., Lines 501-504.
8. The reference list as well as in text citations should abide by the journal's reference style. Also, the size of the numbers in the reference list should be corrected.
Author Response
We appreciate the opportunity to review our article and the suggestions that allowed us to improve the quality of our manuscript. Our answers can be found in the attached file.
Thanks.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In my opinion, the article: “What role Do Sustainable Behaviours and Environmental Awareness of Civil Society for a Sustainable Planet Transition?”, is very interesting and very well structured. The investigation seems to be carried out in a very smart way and the obtained results have been statistically processed, by mean of correct models and useful tools. The study contains some limitations, as also indicated in the concluding sections by the authors, but it absolutely deserve to be published after a minor revision and a slight improvement in the English language
Here some other question or consideration:
· Page 1: raws 30 to 32. The authors claim: “….has ignored them or has been pretending to be concerned without making any contribution to reverse the damage caused they, collectively, caused”.
- Probably there is a typing error. Anyway, the first “caused” could be eliminated to make the sentence clear;
· Page 2: raws 46 to 48. The authors claim: “Only in this way will it be possible to answer the momentum question: how humanity repositions itself in time to occupy a safe and just space within planetary boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009).”
- The authors are recommended to rewrite the sentence, as it can’t be understood.
· Page 2: raws 70 to 73. The authors claim: “The present paper tackles the factors contributing to adoption two types of individual sustainable behaviours: sustainable consumption behaviours (translated into purchasing recyclable packaging, conscious shopping, and zero plastic), and daily sustainable domestic behaviours (translated into energy and water saving)”.
- In my opinion the performed approach is quite correct and can be considered as a preliminary pathway to give people reliable guidelines for a behaviour, aimed to a real environmental sustainability. The selected factors could be improved or integrated with other ones in future works. In example, also the consumer availability in choosing short supply chain (km 0) products, regardless the related price.
About the topic of “zero plastic”, the authors are invited to better explain the reason of this selection and what kind of products they refer to. On this regards, the “zero plastic” could be - sometimes or for particular products - considered as a mere slogan, from a scientific point of view (the result of a “witch hunt”). This, because alternative materials are often characterised by a considerably lower environmental, other than functional, performance. Moreover, plastic pollution is mainly due to user and producer bad attitudes, more than to the real nature of this materials, which can be repeatedly recycled (or down-cycled), if correctly disposed.
If “zero plastic” is not referred to materials for food contact (due to current regulation), this indicator can be integrated or replaced by “zero virgin material” (my personal point of view);
· Page 3: raws 133 to 135. The authors claim: “For example, according to Donnelly et al. (2017), recycling an item we no longer want and donating it to someone in need can contribute to the donors’ well-being”.
- It can be agreed, as the Donnelly approach is correct and very interesting, but I’d like to invite the authors to overcome this topic and expand the system, in order to involve in the related boundaries, not only the donor of the given good, but also who receive it. If the former contributes to extend the product service life, as it is diverted from a waste disposal, the latter, accepting an used good, avoids every environmental burden allocated to the production of a new/virgin product. A double (and not double counted) environmental benefit is obtained in this way.
This value chain is very similar to an industrial scale operation named “open-loop recycling”, where the scrap/waste for an upstream company became an exploitable matter for a downstream one. In general, Life Cycle Analysis practitioners attributes nearly the whole environmental benefit to latter node of the value chain, among the above mentioned ones;
· Page 5: Section entitled: “Environmental Concerns”.
- Also in this case the performed approach can be agreed and it is very interesting, but within the section keyword, as “beliefs”, “opinion”, “ideas”, etc., are repeatedly used. Very often these “opinions and beliefs” on EC are correct, but there are a wide range of exceptions. In the text the reference to some objective tools or elements, to scientifically assess a real environmental concern to the proposed topics seems to be lacking or not sufficiently/clearly described. The work seems to deal mainly with the mere consumers inclination to assume on environmentally sustainable behaviours (ok; it is a very good result), but where and how they can take information on the actual sustainability of their choice?
In example, the scheme of figure 1 includes the indicator: “Conscious shopping”. The authors are invited to explain the meaning of this term. What are the main objective features characterising the Conscious Shopping?
Does it includes the purchase of products subjected to environmental labels, as Ecolabel, Environmental product Declaration (EPD), carbon footprint, etc.?
· Page 7. Raws 330-331. The authors claim: “Concerning sustainable household practices, respondents show energy-saving habits (M = 3.19) which is not so evident with water saving and less with water saving (M = 2.47)”.
- The message included into the sentence is not sufficiently clear. The authors are invited to provide a better explanation;
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
We appreciate the opportunity to review our article and the suggestions that allowed us to improve the quality of our manuscript. Our answers can be found in the attached file.
Thanks.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
