Consumer Preferences for Sustainability in Food and Non-Food Horticulture Production
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors assessed consumers' preferences for different sustainability characteristics. The paper is interesting, well structured and written. I have the following comments:
- Authors stated that they studied consumers' preferences for different sustainability characteristics, however, they do not known whether respondents are or not consumers of the products in question. Something we do not know.
- Authors forced respondents to take a position using a 4-point scale. I think it was not a good idea. To assess the different dimensions of sustainability, respondents need to have sufficient knowledge about the production of the crops in question. So, I prefer to use a scale which includes the option "I don't know".
- Authors should justify why they used t test for the mean value comparison between the two samples (normality, homogeneity, etc.).
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is generally well written. I have only some minor comments.
The motivation should be improved. If I understand correctly the main motivation of the paper is the location of research (Germany) where authors analyse consumer preferences for sustainability in food and non food horticulture production. I am not fully convinced that this is enough motivation. Why Germany is interesting from this point of view comparing to other places where previous analyses have been conducted? Please elaborate this point in more details.
I suggest to a table on the demographics of survey respondents in Section 4.1. Reading lot of numbers in the text is not really reader friendly.
Erros messages can be found in page 4, 6. (cf. Error! Reference source not found) Please correct them.
I suggest to add a figure to compare the difference between food and non food means bar charts. Perhaps it is enough to show those variables where you have found significant differences.
I would consider to use non-parametric test to check the mean equality instead of t tests (see table in the Appendix).
I would also speculate to explain differences between two main horticultural products groups using information on demographics of respondents. You can estimate a simple regression to explain the differences.
Similarly it worth to use the demographic variables to explain the preferences for each horticultural segments separarately.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have addressed the comments apropriately. The paper is publishable.
