Sustainable Foods: Consumer Opinions and Behaviour towards Organic Fruits in Poland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is a well-written manuscript, and I congratulate the authors for it!

However, I have certain comments and recommendations.

1. The research methods are not sufficiently explained and detailed. I also recommend the motivation of the choice.

2. The shortcomings of the research are not sufficiently motivated, and what are the future research directions, in this context. This addition would give even greater value to the manuscript, and implicitly could generate many citations later.

3. The fact that out of 66 references, 4 are by the authors and involve self-citations, it can be good or it can be bad. My recommendation is that the authors review, re-evaluate and re-decide if these self-cited references are really needed (at least to ensure that they are not manipulative citations, to re-check and then re-evaluate a hypothetical question mark from other colleagues ). All the authors' self-citations are in line with 6 other citations (rows 53-54): "is safer for the environment and is richer in selected nutrients such as antioxidants and vitamins (12-17)"

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

For research article

Manuscript ID: sustainability-2951364

We would like to thank the Reviewer for such a comprehensive review and for the very valuable and important suggestions which allowed us to correct the manuscript and significantly improve its quality.

Below we present our replies to each of the comments:

Comment 1: The research methods are not sufficiently explained and detailed. I also recommend the motivation of the choice.

Authors’ response: In accordance with the Reviewer's comment, motivations for conducting the survey were added at the beginning of the Methodology section. Additionally, this section have been supplemented with citations of scientific articles that were used in the development of the research methodology and details regarding the Likert-type scale used during the study (see lines 135-140, 173-175, 180, 182, 186 of the revised manuscript).

Comment 2: The shortcomings of the research are not sufficiently motivated, and what are the future research directions, in this context. This addition would give even greater value to the manuscript, and implicitly could generate many citations later.

Authors’ response: Following the Reviewer suggestion, the section Conclusions, limitations and recommendations has been enriched with shortcomings of the research and the future research directions (see lines 508-521, yellow parts in the revised manuscript).

Comment 3: The fact that out of 66 references, 4 are by the authors and involve self-citations, it can be good or it can be bad. My recommendation is that the authors review, re-evaluate and re-decide if these self-cited references are really needed (at least to ensure that they are not manipulative citations, to re-check and then re-evaluate a hypothetical question mark from other colleagues ). All the authors' self-citations are in line with 6 other citations (rows 53-54): "is safer for the environment and is richer in selected nutrients such as antioxidants and vitamins (12-17)".

Authors’ response: We thank the Reviewer for this comment. However, we have decided to leave our cited works because we have been dealing with the quality of organic food for many years and we want to emphasize it. The results we obtain are similarly oriented to other authors cited, so our goal is not to manipulate information, but to confirm many scientific studies in this area.

Reviewer 2 Report

The Authors presented a very interesting paper on consumer behaviour in the organic food market, considering the case of organic fruit. The paper is very well elaborated, including the structure, methodological part, detailed presentation, and discussion of results as well as properly drawn final conclusions and implications.

The article definitely deserves publication, however, to raise its scientific value, I would advise providing more information on the specificity of the organic food market in Poland, as well as the profile of the Polish organic food consumer.

The Authors could also demonstrate a theoretical background on the significance and place of price in purchasing decisions in general, as well as the willingness to pay, including for organic food. 

Author Response

For research article

Manuscript ID: sustainability-2951364

We would like to thank the Reviewer for such a comprehensive review and for all the very valuable and important suggestions which allowed us to correct the manuscript and significantly improve its quality.  

Below we present our replies to each of the comments:

Comment 1: The article definitely deserves publication, however, to raise its scientific value, I would advise providing more information on the specificity of the organic food market in Poland, as well as the profile of the Polish organic food consumer.

Authors’ response: According to the Reviewer's suggestion, we have enriched our manuscript providing more information about issues mentioned in the comment. In the section Introduction we have added some details on the specificity of the organic food market in Poland, as well as the profile of the Polish organic food consumer. We have added an additional reference to organic food prices in Poland in the Discussion, confirming most of the statements in this regard (see lines 63-77, yellow parts in the revised manuscript).  

Comment 2: The Authors could also demonstrate a theoretical background on the significance and place of price in purchasing decisions in general, as well as the willingness to pay, including for organic food.

Authors’ response: We thank the reviewer for this comment. In the Discussion section, we have added a general summary from the report on the situation of organic farming in Poland regarding the prices of organic products as the main barrier to their purchase.  We did not decide to expand the manuscript with theoretical considerations on price (see lines 393-396, yellow parts in the revised manuscript). 

Reviewer 3 Report

The research presented is interesting. Please see below my recommendations for improvement:

Abstract: Lines 15-16 – not sure what authors want to say by “global population”. Studies usually generalise on country level, but even this is rare because they all acknowledge that the sample size should be extented.

Introduction section: More recent references should be provided to support statements regarding the effects of consumptions, concerns, claims refering to increased consumer awareness, demand etc. A lot has been done recently, and should be acknowledged even though old statements still hold.

Line 88 – please rephrase. This is a statement is more a conclusion of the work done and should results from the work presented later in the paper.

Line 153 – which seven-point Likert scale?

Lines 155-158 – please explain how this transformation was done

Line 159-160 – which papers exaclty were used as reference in developing the instrument?

Line 163 – which papers exaclty were used as reference ifor the scale?

Table 2 – add as a note the official exchange rate for income (Euro or USD)

Household income is before or after taxes?

Tables 4 and 5 – the current look can be improved to make it more simpler and easier to read – can add a collumn before the proportion with the unit of measurement

Results sections should be organised in subsections based on the 3 research hypothesis to clearly visualise which analysis respond to each.

In conclusion section please delete 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 unless subsections are created in which case pleas esee instructions for the formatting

List of references should follow authors instructions.

Author Response

For research article

Manuscript ID: sustainability-2951364

We would like to thank the Reviewer for such a comprehensive review and for all the very valuable and important suggestions which allowed us to correct errors and significantly improve the quality of the manuscript.

Below we present our replies to each of the comments:

Comment 1: Abstract: Lines 15-16 – not sure what authors want to say by “global population”. Studies usually generalise on country level, but even this is rare because they all acknowledge that the sample size should be extended.

Authors’ response: We agree with the Reviewer and have corrected the sentence according to Reviewer’s suggestions in the manuscript to avoid misleading readers (see lines 15-16 of the revised manuscript).

Comment 2: Introduction section: More recent references should be provided to support statements regarding the effects of consumptions, concerns, claims referring to increased consumer awareness, demand etc. A lot has been done recently, and should be acknowledged even though old statements still hold.

Authors’ response: The references in the introduction part has been enriched with recent ones, supporting the statements about consumers attitudes towards organic food, in that addressing the consumer choices about organic food products in Poland, as suggested by the Reviewer. (see line 83 of the revised manuscript). We have added following references:

1. Mazur-Włodarczyk, K.; Wódkowska, A.; Gruszecka-Kosowska, A. Risk-indicative or sustainable consumption ? Consumers ’ risk perception on conventional and organic food products in Poland. 2024, 50, 39–59.
2. Dobrowolski, H.; Obidzińska, J.; Rembiałkowska, E.; Kazimierczak, R.; Włodarek, D. Perception and Consumption of Organic Food in a Group of Organic and Conventional Fruit Growers—A Pilot Study (CO-FRESH Project). 2024, 225, doi:10.3390/proceedings2023091225.
3. Török, Á.; Yeh, C.H.; Menozzi, D.; Balogh, P.; Czine, P. European consumers’ preferences for fresh fruit and vegetables – A cross-country analysis. J. Agric. Food Res. 2023, 14, doi:10.1016/j.jafr.2023.100883.

Comment 3: Line 88 – please rephrase. This is a statement is more a conclusion of the work done and should results from the work presented later in the paper.

Authors’ response: According to reviewer’s suggestion, the sentence was reformulated in the revised manuscript (see lines 102-104, yellow section of the revised manuscript).

Comment 4: Line 153 – which seven-point Likert scale?

Authors’ response: To address the reviewer's comment, we would like to underline that the Likert scale is a commonly used scale in research, i.e. a grading scale with the assumption of using values at equal intervals, depending on the number of possible answers (e.g. very bad, bad, neither good nor bad, good, very good). Therefore, there may be 4, 5, 7, 9 digits corresponding to the number of answers. In our case, there were 7 answer options regarding the frequency of consumption. This quite large (step by step) spectrum of choices offered independence to a participant to pick the ‘exact’ one. In the manuscript we have cited a source regarding the use of the Likert scale (see lines 173-175, yellow section of the revised manuscript).

Joshi, A.; Kale, S.; Chandel, S.; Pal, D. K. Likert scale: Explored and explained. British journal of applied science & technology, 2015 7(4), 396-403,doi:10.9734/BJAST/2015/14975

Comment 5

Lines 155-158 – please explain how this transformation was done.

Authors’ response: Explaining in line with the Reviewer's expectations,, the value assigned to consumption, e.g. once a year was calculated by dividing this frequency by 52 weeks of a year and the next values regarding frequency of fruit consumption were calculated analogously (see line 180 of the revised manuscript).

Comment 6: Line 159-160 – which papers exactly were used as reference in developing the instrument?

Authors’ response: As expected by the reviewer, relevant scientific articles were cited in the work (see line 182 of the revised manuscript).

We have cited following sci. articles as references:

1. Haws, K.L.; Winterich, K.P.; Naylor, R.W. Seeing the world through GREEN-tinted glasses: Green consumption values and responses to environmentally friendly products. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2014 24(3), 336-354, doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2013.11.002
2. Dorce, L.C., Silva, M.C.D., Mauad, J.R.C., Domingues; C.H.F., De, & Borges, J.A.R. Extending the theory of planned behavior to understand consumer purchase behavior for organic vegetables in Brazil: The role of perceived health benefits, perceived sustainability benefits and perceived price. Food Quality and Preference, 2021, 91, 104191, doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2021. 104191
3. Lazzarini, G.A., Visschers, V.H., & Siegrist, M. Our own country is best: Factors influencing consumers’ sustainability perceptions of plant-based foods. Food Quality and Preference, 2017, 60, 165-177, doi.org/10. 1016/j.foodqual.2017.04.008
4. Gershoff, A.D., & Frels, J.K. What makes it green? The role of centrality of green attributes in evaluations of the greenness of products. Journal of Marketing, 2015, 79(1), 97-110, doi.org/10.1509/jm.13.0303
5. Baalbaki, S., & Guzmán, F. A consumer-perceived consumer-based brand equity scale. Journal of Brand Management, 2016, 23(3), 229-215, doi.org/10.1057/ bm.2016.11

Comment 7: Line 163 – which papers exactly were used as reference for the scale?

Authors’ response: According to Reviewer’s comment, we have added the reference that we used for the scales (see line 186 of the revised manuscript):

Burkert, M.; Hüttl-Maack, V.; Gil, J.M.; Rahmani, D. The Influence of Green Consumption Values on How Consumers Form Overall Sustainability Perceptions of Food Products and Brands. J. Sustain. Mark. 2023, X, 1–19, doi:10.51300/jsm-2023-103.

Comment 8:  Table 2 – add as a note the official exchange rate for income (Euro or USD)

Authors’ response: Official exchange Euro rate according to Narodowy Bank Polski (National Bank of Poland) during the survey period was 4,5756. This information has been added in the manuscript (see lines 219-220 of the revised manuscript).

Comment 9: Household income is before or after taxes?

Authors’ response: Consumers declared household brutto income (before taxes). This information has been added in the manuscript in Table 2 (see yellow section under the Table 2 of the revised manuscript).

Comment 10: Tables 4 and 5 – the current look can be improved to make it more simpler and easier to read – can add a column before the proportion with the unit of measurement.

Authors’ response: In accordance with the Reviewer's suggestions, the tables 4 and 5 have been corrected (see yellow section of the revised manuscript).

Comment 11: Results sections should be organised in subsections based on the 3 research hypothesis to clearly visualise which analysis respond to each.

Authors’ response: In response to the Reviewer's suggestions, the results have been sorted into three visible thematic subchapters, which systematize them and make them easier for the reader to understand (see lines 208, 222, 264, yellow section of the revised manuscript).

Comment 12: In conclusion section please delete 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 unless subsections are created in which case please see instructions for the formatting.

Authors’ response: As for the subsections 4.1, 4.2 & 4.3, they were not in the conclusion section, but in the discussion section, but we removed them in the revised manuscript in accordance with the Reviewer's instructions.

Comment 13: List of references should follow authors instructions.

Authors’ response: We would like to thank the Reviewer for this comment and we have corrected the list of references in accordance with the publisher's requirements.

Kind regards on behalf of the authors, Renata Kazimierczak

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have sufficiently improved the manuscript, which was anyway a very good one. I appreciate that it can be published as such.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript was improved.

Regarding the Likert scale, the request was to report what type was used in your research (7 point scale) and not to explain what types can be found in the literature (which is known by researchers). The request can help the reader to follow and understand your research. Clarity about the methodology and results in a manuscript should be in the interest of any authors.