Is Environmental Awareness a Good Predictor of an Individual’s Altruism Level?

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript proposes (also in the title) an alternative method of measuring altruism, respectively through a scale of environmental awareness. It does not become clear, even after reading the whole paper, why such a replacement of instruments would be needed and what would be the arguments that plead for the scientific value of such a research.

In fact, the stated objective of the study changes along the way: “to determine how suitable the Likert-type environmental awareness index is for measuring an individual’s altruism level” (line 44-45), then “to compare the environment index with the altruism index ”(Line 103-104) and finally “to determine the effectiveness of using environmental awareness indices as an alternative for measuring an individual’s altruism level” (Line 143-144).

In addition to this confusing and inconsistent formulation of the objective, the study suffers in terms of research design and scientific method. The author(s) applies a statistical modeling method (an ordinal regression) which could result in a prediction related to the association of the two variables, but instead of the equation modeling of one variable to be used to see some contingencies on any of various hypothetical levels of the other variable, the conclusions are expressed in terms of causality. It is not scientifically acceptable to say that "study revealed a causal relationship between the environmental awareness index and SARS scores" (Line 12), as long as an experimental method was not used to test causal hypotheses. In fact, the hypotheses of the study are not even mentioned as such.

It is also unclear why the instrument chosen by the author(s) to measure altruism is the SARS (Rushton), a scale built in another culture and about which it is not mentioned whether, before application, it went through a transculturalization process; the modification of some items and the preservation of psychometric properties it’s mentioned indeed, but this is only part of the process. In addition, we know from the literature that there are self-report scales for altruism measurement especially built for the Japanese population (Prof. Ryo Oda is one of the authors) and that could have been used on the study group, being already culturally adapted. (see Oda, R., Dai, M., Niwa, Y., Ihobe, H., Kiyonari, T., Takeda, M., & Hiraishi, K. (2013). Self-Report Altruism Scale Distinguished by the Recipient (SRAS-DR): Validity and reliability. Shinrigaku Kenkyu, 84(1), 28–36; Oda, R., Machii, W., Takagi, S., Kato, Y., Takeda, M., Kiyonari, T., … Hiraishi, K. (2014). Personality and altruism in daily life. Personality and Individual Differences, 56, 206–209)

Another observation is related to the scientific background in which this study is anchored. Multiple and extremely varied, explanatory theories on altruism and / or pro-social behavior are subject to many classifications, the most common being biological, sociological and psychological theories. As formulated in the objective and subsequently in results and conclusions, the concept of altruism is superficially investigated and understood in this paper; beyond the fact that there are multiple facets of the concept revealed in the scientific literature - from calling it an instinct, personality trait, result of a decision-making process or a response derived from needs related to evolution, it is important to specify the complexity of this construct, which poses problems of conceptualization, measurement and interpretation in various sub-fields of psychology. In addition, there are studies that identify the lack of associations between what is called self-reported altruism (as measured in the present study by the SARS scale) and manifest (overt) altruism (which often includes generosity - also mentioned in the study ) - and which is usually measured by economic games (like Dictator Game). Such studies are not mentioned in the theoretical background of the paper and the author(s) do not operationalize in any way the concept of altruism. However, given that the altruism is a complex construct, with various measuring instruments for its various dimensions, we cannot help but wonder why the authors want to find an alternative scale and thus propose the Environmental awareness scale? The motivation of this approach should be clarified in the introductory part, the theoretical background should be completed with a conceptualization and operationalization of the analyzed variables - in the light of existing literature - and the conclusions should be reformulated, in terms of prediction, according to the methodology used. Also, the references should be supplemented accordingly.

Overall, I would recommend this manuscript for publication, only after a major revision.

Author Response

Thank you very much for reviewing my paper.

I have now responded to all your comments. Please see the attached file for details of my responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper examined the relationship between a Likert type environmental awareness index and the self-report altruism scale (SRAS) by using an on-line survey of a sample of Japanese respondents. The results indicated that there exists a relationship between the environmental awareness index and SRAS scores.

The authors may consider to address the following issues:

1. The author may consider to provide more supports or explanations on the measurements of some of the variables. For example, the conversion of SRAS scores (one of the major dependent or endogenous variables; the conversions of some demographic items (age, income); the mean/standard deviation of some dummy variables (gender, child, pure donation and gifted donation). In addition, the variable education has six scales (not a Likert or interval scale, instead, an order scale), how to incorporate variable education into this model?
2. The author argued that “the study revealed a causal relationship between the environmental awareness index and SRAS scores.” (LINE 11-12). The author may consider to provide more theoretical supports or explanations on the “causal relationship” for the structural equations.
3. This paper employed an on-line survey. However, no discussion or mitigation strategies have been proposed to the problems of on-line survey, such as “sample representatives and coverage error,” “external validity,” “sampling frame,” and “volunteer sample” etc. The authors may consider to explain more on the survey process and the mitigation strategies on the potential problems of this on-line survey.
4. The author may consider to put context before Table 5. (LINE 175-187).
5. The findings from demographic items provide very important information in making strategies. However, this article provides little information and implications to related stakeholders, such as policy-makers, environmental protection groups, etc. in developing strategies with different demographic items.

Author Response

Thank you very much for reviewing my paper.

I have now responded to all your comments. Please see the attached file for details of my responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

     The manuscript is clearly written and out of grammatical errors in general.  However, I have several major concerns on this study.  The research design is inadequate.  The justification of investigated the relationships is not sufficient.  The literature review is missing.  No any hypotheses were proposed and discussed.  The execution of survey is unclear.   The scale adaption was not sufficiently justified.  Construct validity discussion and testing are missing.  The statistical model created needs adequate justification.  All these concerns lead to the questions on the value and contributions of this study.  This manuscript a complete overhaul.  

Reviewer

Author Response

Thank you very much for reviewing my paper.

I have now responded to all your comments. Please see the attached file for details of my responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Although the author modified the research hypothesis, in order to have a consistent objective (“The study expects that if the environmental awareness index has a bidirectional relationship with the altruism index and is affected similarly from attributes (demographical characteristics, degree of political and social awareness, attitudes toward donation.) that have potential impacts on the altruism index, the environmental awareness index can become an alternative for the altruism index.”) we cannot agree to consider the awareness index as an alternative of the altruism index – given the differences in meaning of the psychological constructs and the actual results of the study in this paper. We may suggest using instead of “alternative” something more accurate/scientifically appropriate – like a PREDICTOR (as the study uses ordinal regression to investigate a bidirectional association) or a SCREENING measure/instrument.
 
To make a point, just consider that depression in usually associated with anxiety in many studies, but a depression index is never an alternative for an anxiety scale, it can only predict or be used in a screening battery for anxiety.

Author Response

We may suggest using instead of “alternative” something more accurate/scientifically appropriate – like a PREDICTOR

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. I totally agree that the environmental awareness index cannot totally replace the altruism index but can be used for predicting an individual's altruism level. Hence, I have now revised the whole manuscript to avoid using the word "alternative" and instead used the word "predictor" or "predicting." I also changed the title of the paper accordingly as below.

Is environmental awareness a good predictor of an individual’s altruism level?

 

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The quality of this manuscript has been improved.  Most of my concerns or questions have been responded.  Although I still feel the research design could be more rigorous, the revised version has been in a better shape.    

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable comments.

As suggested by another reviewer it seems that the use of the word "alternative" was somewhat misleading the reader. I feel the study does not really identify that the environmental awareness index can became an alternative index for the SRAS index but it does predict or reflect that people with a high environmental awareness tend to be altruistic.

Thus as suggested by one of the reviewers, I decided to remove the word "alternative" from the paper and instead use the word "predict" or "predicting." I also changed the title of the paper accordingly as below.

Is environmental awareness a good predictor of an individual’s altruism level?

I hope this reduces your concern.