Public Support for Sustainable Welfare Compared: Links between Attitudes towards Climate and Welfare Policies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper provides useful information on an important topic, but I think it could be improved in some areas.

  The introduction didn't give a clear sense of what questions the paper was intended to answer.  It seemed more like a general overview of the area rather than an introduction to the specific piece of research. 

On the results, there should be more background on multiple correspondence analysis for people who are not familiar with it.  If I remember correctly, it's similar to a principal components analysis, so Figure 1 would be the loadings and Figures 2 and 3 would be the average scores by nation and demographic characteristics.  It would be useful to say this, or explain how it is different (and if it is different, why MCA is the best way to analyze it). 

It should say what the Schwartz "universalism" items are.  I looked them up, and it looks like one of them mentions the environment, so it's not surprising that it go with favorable climate attitudes.  But it's interesting that the other two also seem to, even though on the surface they are about quite different things. 

Expanding on point 3, there should be more discussion of the significance of the findings.  The authors should highlight those that they regard as surprising, interesting, or important.  There is a lot of information in the paper, so readers need more guidance in order to get a sense of what the major new findings are.  A more focused introduction would help on this point too. 

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Reviewer 2 Report

No comments

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript deals with emerging concept of sustainable welfare, as Authors say. It can be considered as interesting novelty and suitable topic for Sustainability journal, but this manuscript in its current form has many shortcomings which need serious improvement:

1) The title of the manuscript is not precisely consistent to the content of the manuscript. Authors analysed more than only European countries as title indicated. Such the title needs correction (e.g…. and Welfare Policies in Europe, European part of Russia and Israel) or Authors should exclude data from Russia and Israel from Results and remove it to the section Discussion.

2) There is some shortcoming in Methodology connected with the title of manuscript. I cannot find anywhere in section Materials and Methods, which European countries exactly Authors analysed. This information needs to be added (e.g. in the form of a new table in this section).

3) I feel, the methodological problem is in using terms such as “social-democratic countries, conservative countries” etc. Using of these terms is confusing in scientific paper. All of European countries and Israel are democratic states, but dividing of countries by current state of political establishment is not correct. It depends only on results of elections and, as we can see in obvious political trends throughout Europe, it is changing and it will change importantly in close future. Thus interpretation of results based on this is strongly limited to the time of investigation and it is not portable to any time and regions. I recommend remove these a bit confusing terms from the manuscript or seriously rephrased it more precisely in order to increasing objectivity of results interpretation.    

4) Formally, Authors did not follow all rules of scientific writing. Authors should use past tense in the whole manuscript as usual in scientific papers. Authors should better use a numbering of citations (e.g. in line 112 there should be: “Gough [7] addressed issues of…”). The same should be improved in line 209 etc. Terminology: Authors must replace the terms “ecologically” (line 19), “ecological” (line 77) by the correct terms “”environmentally” etc. “Ecology” is a biological discipline.

5) The manuscript is based only on one major resource of data, as Authors say in line 159. It seems to be an important constraint of the manuscript. Authors should explain it in more details, why this source can be considered as sufficient. What validation of input data Authors did? Some data from ESS seem to be not precisely correct – I am from the Czech Republic and I know that information about coal mining and fossil fuel production in the Czech Republic from ESS are not correct (lines 311-312). The economy of the Czech Republic is based on cars production industry.        

6) If Authors want highlighted to “sustainable welfare concept”, they should pay more attention to the theoretical background of this concept and avoid to using redundant general text about well-known items such as 2015 summit in Paris (first paragraphs in section Introduction). This potentially interesting concept needs to be explained in more details in section Introduction based on relevant literature cited. This concept should be involved to the frame of SDGs as are only briefly mentioned in line 120. This framework of SDG needs also more relevant citations (e.g. Oprsal Z. et al., What Factors can Influence the Expansion of Protected Areas around the World in the Context of International Environmental and Development Goals? Problemy Ekorozwoju 2018, 13, 145-15).   

7) Authors deal with “welfare variables” (line 223). But it is unclear, what variables precisely authors mean. It should be explain (e.g. as a new table of list of variables).

8) Some long part of the section Results seems to have got a character of discussion. I recommend the moving of text in lines 285-386 to the section Discussion (including fig.3).

9) Results of the study at the individual level (as Authors say in lines 26-27) are not surprise and were be probably expected. Authors should better explain/highlighted in section Conclusion what main new (novelty) scientific findings are in this study under the sustainable welfare concept. Authors suggest increasing education (line 29) in European countries and Israel – but in in these countries the current level of education is obviously reaching the highest top of education worldwide. Authors should explain this suggestion or rephrase it better.    

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

 

This is a very interesting topic and the manuscript has a good structure.

Comments:

Introduction: Explain what you understand by “double” and “triple” injustice (lines 46, 48).

Lines 71-89: In relation to sustainable welfare theory, an emphasis must be placed on public responsibility.

L 186-198 “The new variables measuring attitudes towards the welfare state have four categories: 1 = the government is not responsible, 2= the government is somewhat responsible, 3 = the government is responsible a great deal, 4 = the government is entirely responsible.” Please explain how you grouped the 0-10 option to generate these new four ones. Why did you replace a scale with an odd number of points with one with an even number of options? You should have 5-point scale.

L 99-200 “Again, the statements were evaluated on a five-point Likert-scale from ‘agree strongly’ via ‘neither agree nor disagree’ to ‘strongly disagree’.” Is this the original scale or one created by you after data collection?

L 206-208 “study the interrelations between all 21 variables”. Which are these variables? Please include them in a list/table.

Please mention what programs you have used for MCA calculations and map.

L 338-339 “Universalism is also to some extent the value foundation of the original social-democratic welfare state”. Please cite the source.

Fig 3. is quite difficult to read. Could you add a color code for each variable category? (e.g., color1 for religion, color2 for political orientation)

“crowding-out” and “synergy” Please explain their meaning when you use them for the first time (not at the end, L. 397-399).

Please mention the limitations of your study.

Revision of English language is needed (e.g., “However, ambitious climate policies haves distributional repercussions”- lines 39-40).

 

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I am satisfied with this revision.