Exploring Barriers for Circularity in the EU Furniture Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is very interesting research. 

Author Response

Thank you very much! Based on the received reviews we have made a number of modifications that aim to improve the manuscript further and to format it in the style of the journal.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments to authors:

1. The abstract mainly introduces the research background, and more content related to this paper (e.g. methods used, research results) should be further supplemented.
2. The research participants are 30 companies, whether they can objectively represent the furniture industry in Europe. Supplement the justifications or limitations.
3. The reference format of 7 seven selected categories in the paragraphs of 5 page of 28 (210 line) needs to be improved.
4. Some abbreviations are not explained in the paper, such as the Table 4. Identifying in alphabetical order all abbreviations used by Nomenclature.
5. The specific meaning of PQ method in 4.1. Factor analysis is not explained.
6. Different from the thinking of scientific confirmationism, the main feature of Q-method is the emphasis on subjectivity and individuality, and the limitation of this method should be supplemented appropriately.
7. For the first time that the analysis of four factors appears in 4.1, the four factors referred to should be explained in detail.
8. Statistical analysis of variance (two-way or N-way) is suggested be used to further analyze the correlation between the attributes of the surveyed company and obstacle factors.
9. 5. Further analysis describes and summarizes the problems encountered by different types of companies. Could authors supplement the application of the analysis conclusions of this article to highlight the significance of this research?
10. Consider providing conclusions using number bullets point-by-point for better readability. It will be easy to co-relate.
11. It is suggested that related new and important references need to be updated including Sustainability.,e.g., Wang, G. Tian, M. Chen, F. Tao, C. Zhang, A. Ai-Ahmari, Z. Li, and Z. Jiang, “Dual-objective program and improved artificial bee colony for the optimization of energy-conscious milling parameters subject to multiple constraints,” Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 245, 2020;Fuzzy Grey Choquet Integral for Evaluation of Multicriteria Decision Making Problems With Interactive and Qualitative Indices, 2021, 53: 1855-1868;Green decoration materials selection under interior environment characteristics: A grey-correlation based hybrid MCDM method,2018,81:682-692,2018,81:682-692.
12. The size of the figures and corresponding labels in the figures are very small. Provide clear figures.

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 2

 

Comments to authors:

 

The abstract mainly introduces the research background, and more content related to this paper (e.g. methods used, research results) should be further supplemented.
Authors: Thank you. The abstract has been edited in order to show more of the findings and less of the background of the study.

The research participants are 30 companies, whether they can objectively represent the furniture industry in Europe. Supplement the justifications or limitations.
Authors: We understand your comment. The discussion of limitations of the study has been developed further as part of the Conclusions paragraph and includes the limitation your comment addresses. However, we feel that the question whether the perceptions of the participants is representative of the total population is a question that is inherent to the use of Q methodology, and usually not considered a limitation, as a larger P-set in Q not automatically leads to the identification of more patterns.

The reference format of 7 seven selected categories in the paragraphs of 5 page of 28 (210 line) needs to be improved.
Authors: The referencing format has been adjusted to the standard of the journal.

Some abbreviations are not explained in the paper, such as the Table 4. Identifying in alphabetical order all abbreviations used by Nomenclature.
Authors: Abbreviations are now explained or written in full.

The specific meaning of PQ method in 4.1. Factor analysis is not explained.
Authors: PQ method refers to the software used in the data analysis, which is revealed in section 3.6. We feel that this is therefore sufficiently explained.

Different from the thinking of scientific confirmationism, the main feature of Q-method is the emphasis on subjectivity and individuality, and the limitation of this method should be supplemented appropriately.
Authors: The discussion of limitations of the study has been developed further as part of the Conclusions paragraph. However, your comment relates more to the quality of Q-methodology than to its limitation.

For the first time that the analysis of four factors appears in 4.1, the four factors referred to should be explained in detail.
Authors: Following the structure that is used in several Q-methodology studies, we have chosen to devote the first section of the findings (4.1) to the analysis of the number of factors. The analysis of the content of these factors, and their explanation, is included in the following sections. We feel that this is a logical flow in the presentation of the findings.

Statistical analysis of variance (two-way or N-way) is suggested be used to further analyze the correlation between the attributes of the surveyed company and obstacle factors.
Authors: We understand your comment, that relates to section 4.5 of the manuscript. In short: the limited number of the participants in each pattern (Resp. 7, 5, 8 and 3) limit the possibility of a statistical analysis. Next to this technical limitation, we also want to be careful with this analysis, as it might suggest that the characteristics of the participants of the study that represented a certain pattern are representative for the fraction of the total population that experiences the same pattern of barriers. A comment in this line is also included in the introduction of section 4.5. Of course, you might now challenge the analysis of paragraph 4.5 altogether, but we feel that the literature on Q-methodology, esp. Watts and Stenner (2005), open up the opportunity for a very prudent level of analysis in order to develop insights that can be tested in further research. This very explorative analysis does not necessarily need statistical underpinning.

5. Further analysis describes and summarizes the problems encountered by different types of companies. Could authors supplement the application of the analysis conclusions of this article to highlight the significance of this research?
   Authors: We are not completely clear on this comment. However, we have redeveloped the final paragraphs (discussion, conclusion and limitations) of the manuscript.

Consider providing conclusions using number bullets point-by-point for better readability. It will be easy to co-relate.
Authors: Thank you for this advice, we have added a final Conclusion section where we summarise the key aspects of our paper. Also, and according to this suggestion, we have added an additional final table with a bullets summary of the implications and limitations of the study for a quick read.

It is suggested that related new and important references need to be updated including Sustainability.,e.g., Wang, G. Tian, M. Chen, F. Tao, C. Zhang, A. Ai-Ahmari, Z. Li, and Z. Jiang, “Dual-objective program and improved artificial bee colony for the optimization of energy-conscious milling parameters subject to multiple constraints,” Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 245, 2020;Fuzzy Grey Choquet Integral for Evaluation of Multicriteria Decision Making Problems With Interactive and Qualitative Indices, 2021, 53: 1855-1868;Green decoration materials selection under interior environment characteristics: A grey-correlation based hybrid MCDM method,2018,81:682-692,2018,81:682-692.
Authors: Thank you for the suggested sources. We have looked at these specific articles, but concluded that they did not provide a useful reference for our study. The more general point you are making, about recent sources, has been addressed and a number of new and recent sources have been added.

The size of the figures and corresponding labels in the figures are very small. Provide clear figures.
Authors: We assume that you are specifically referring to Figure 2. This figure has been improved and after acceptance, we will work with the publisher to provide the highest possible quality of this figure.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript investigates the perceptions of EU furniture firms on barriers to Circular economy, collecting and synthesising views of 30 participants from various regions via the Q-methodology. The paper provides a fit to the aim and objectives of the Sustainability journal, contributes to the existing body of knowledge, and addresses a hot research topic i.e. Barriers to Implementation of Circular Economy practices.

On the other hand, the following areas are recommended to be improved, prior to publication:

• A figure to visually demonstrate the 7 key categories (policy, market etc.) and potentially their sub-divisions, of the barriers framework adopted in the study would further enhance the impact of the Literature Review section.
• Q-methodology is introduced and described well in the Research Strategy section. However, what other methods were available to the authors? What other qualitative or quantitative methods could have also been adopted? For example, could ‘Delphi Study’ for data collection and ‘thematic synthesis’ for analysis been adopted? The inclusion of the answers to these questions will strengthen the argumentation behind the key research decision of proceeding with the Q-methodology.
• Did the authors identify their framework for the barriers (the universe of viewpoints on the subject) first, and then undertake their Q-study? If yes, this needs to be clarified and concours section presented before the Q-methodology section in the Research Strategy section.
• Authors are advised to check and replace the phrase ‘Paragraph’ with ‘Section’ throughout the manuscript, and ensure that this is coherent throughout the paper (E.g. Page 2 – Lines 63 to 68).
• It is recommended that the factor analysis performed is explained more clearly, with the wider reader base in mind, who might be unfamiliar with the Q-methodology analysis. For example in Section 4.1, 5 factors are initially mentioned and then the analysis carries on with 4 factors. Please elaborate on these factors and their implications for the study.
• Most of the information presented in the Conclusions section and further analysis section would be appropriate for a Discussion section. It would be advisable to capture and expand these in a Discussion section, providing critical review and implications of the study in a Discussion section that will improve the impact of the paper. Preventing adoption of long Conclusions section would also be a good practice and enhance the flow of the paper.
• Review against extant, similar works would increase the impact of the Discussion (proposed section) and Conclusions section.
• Authors are advised to adopt the appropriate referencing system for the Sustainability journal.

Author Response

Reviewer 3

 

The manuscript investigates the perceptions of EU furniture firms on barriers to Circular economy, collecting and synthesising views of 30 participants from various regions via the Q-methodology. The paper provides a fit to the aim and objectives of the Sustainability journal, contributes to the existing body of knowledge, and addresses a hot research topic i.e. Barriers to Implementation of Circular Economy practices.
Authors: Thank you!

On the other hand, the following areas are recommended to be improved, prior to publication:

A figure to visually demonstrate the 7 key categories (policy, market etc.) and potentially their sub-divisions, of the barriers framework adopted in the study would further enhance the impact of the Literature Review section.
Authors: Thank you for your suggestion! We have considered several visualisations, but could not develop one that provided a satisfying positioning of all 7 categories of barriers, without getting ‘disfunctional' for an academic article. We feel that Figures should have an added value, but we did not find anything that adds something to the information included in table 1. 

Q-methodology is introduced and described well in the Research Strategy section. However, what other methods were available to the authors? What other qualitative or quantitative methods could have also been adopted? For example, could ‘Delphi Study’ for data collection and ‘thematic synthesis’ for analysis been adopted? The inclusion of the answers to these questions will strengthen the argumentation behind the key research decision of proceeding with the Q-methodology.
Authors: The choice of Q-methodology has been motivated at the intro of paragraph 3. We do not feel that describing other research methods and approaches would add value to this. Academic publications should be transparent and justified in their choices on research, but describing other methods would lead to a ‘research textbook’, which is beyond the scope of the study reported in this article.  

Did the authors identify their framework for the barriers (the universe of viewpoints on the subject) first, and then undertake their Q-study? If yes, this needs to be clarified and concours section presented before the Q-methodology section in the Research Strategy section.
Authors: That is correct and is also revealed in paragraph 3.2 which states: “In the study reported in this paper, this was done based on a bibliographical search with the search strings (“barriers” OR “challenges”) AND (“circular economy” OR “circularity” OR “circular business”). Based on the abstracts of the search results, we selected 15 articles that included relevant views on the barriers for circularity. From these articles we derived seven categories of barriers (policy, market, value chain, technology, resources, awareness and business case), as described in section 2.3 above. These views were then formulated in the form of statements. Some statements directly linked to earlier studies, whereas others were developed by the research team.” So we transparently connect ‘concours’ to the literature review which identified the 7 categories of barriers.

Authors are advised to check and replace the phrase ‘Paragraph’ with ‘Section’ throughout the manuscript, and ensure that this is coherent throughout the paper (E.g. Page 2 – Lines 63 to 68).
Authors: Thank you. We understand that this can be confusing. We have consistently used the term ‘paragraph’ for the first level headings (organised in the logical 6-paragraph structure: Introduction, Literature, Methodology, Findings, Discussion, Conclusion). The term ‘section’ is used for the second level headings, such as 2.1, 4.1, etc.

It is recommended that the factor analysis performed is explained more clearly, with the wider reader base in mind, who might be unfamiliar with the Q-methodology analysis. For example in Section 4.1, 5 factors are initially mentioned and then the analysis carries on with 4 factors. Please elaborate on these factors and their implications for the study.
Authors: We feel that in an academic publication, such as a journal article, we can assume that the reader has a certain level of understanding of research and research methodologies. Of course, the specific ins and outs may not be known to everyone, which is why section 3.1 includes a brief introduction into Q.
In paragraph 4 we followed the structure that is usually used in Q-methodology studies, in which the first section of the findings (4.1) is devoted to the analysis of the number of factors. The analysis of the content of these factors, and their explanation, is included in the following sections.
In section 4.1, where we describe the number of factors, we mention that we have done an analysis based on 3, 4 and 5 factors and we describe and motivate why we continue the analysis with 4 factors.

Most of the information presented in the Conclusions section and further analysis section would be appropriate for a Discussion section. It would be advisable to capture and expand these in a Discussion section, providing critical review and implications of the study in a Discussion section that will improve the impact of the paper. Preventing adoption of long Conclusions section would also be a good practice and enhance the flow of the paper.
Authors: According to this opportune suggestion, we have split the final section into a Discussion and a Conclusion sections. Main arguments have been now arranged in subsections as part of the Discussion, trying to achieve a better readability. We have also improved the impact of our study in the Discussion section, by detailing our theoretical contribution to literature gaps as well as expanding  the managerial implications of our research. Finally, we have introduced a brief final Conclusions section with a summary of main ideas of the paper.

Review against extant, similar works would increase the impact of the Discussion (proposed section) and Conclusions section.
Authors: Following this recommendation, we have introduced both Discussion and Conclusions sections. For the Discussion, we have introduced recent authors and works, specially related to the theoretical contribution of the paper.

Authors are advised to adopt the appropriate referencing system for the Sustainability journal.
Authors: Thank you. The referencing format has been adapted to the journal’s standard.

Reviewer 4 Report

- Please avoid repetitive sentences such as "This “considerable amount of literature” (Ormazabal et al., 2018: 158) on the barriers and challenges for CE that companies experience, identifies a large number of potential barriers." A literature on barriers identified many barriers. Similarly, edit the abstract avoid the overuse of the word barriers.

- Fix (Korhonen et al,, 2018b).

- Check the refernec style. I think that MDPI requires a different one.

- 283-287: Where did you search that string? What is the number of articles you found? And, how did you select 15 articles? Please add this information.

- You say that "the studies did not explore the variety of perceptions of these barriers by different companies. It is this gap in the literature that the study reported in this paper focuses on." (51-52). What about  10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.03.031, 10.3390/su10072521, 10.1002/bse.2513, 10.1002/bse.2641?

- What to you mean with "legal regulations" (620)? I think that you should explain more in details what these barriers are (not only the first one).

- I read the manuscript with interest, hoping to read about some strategies to overcome the highlighted barriers. However, the study stops once the barriers are listed! What is the benefit of such research? You say that your contribution is "that these barriers are not experienced in a single generalizable way." Ok, then what? Please clarify how these barriers can be overome.

Author Response

Reviewer 4

 

- Please avoid repetitive sentences such as "This “considerable amount of literature” (Ormazabal et al., 2018: 158) on the barriers and challenges for CE that companies experience, identifies a large number of potential barriers." A literature on barriers identified many barriers. Similarly, edit the abstract avoid the overuse of the word barriers.
Authors: We have checked the manuscript for repetition of sentences and corrected this where necessary. The sentence on the ‘considerable amount of literature’ is a literal quote from the reference that is shown to indicate that the barriers to CE are well studied and documented in literature.
The word barriers is indeed used frequently. Therefore we understand your comment. However, replacing the word with a synonym would hurt the consistency of terminology throughout the manuscript. As ‘barriers’ is the topic of the study, it is hard to impossible to not use the word frequently.

- Fix (Korhonen et al,, 2018b).
Authors: Thank you. This is corrected. And in addition, the in-line referencing style is changed to the standard of the journal, thereby removing this ‘slip of the pen’.

- Check the refernec style. I think that MDPI requires a different one.
Authors: Indeed. This has been adapted.

- 283-287: Where did you search that string? What is the number of articles you found? And, how did you select 15 articles? Please add this information.
Authors: We have adapted the concours section and included added the search engine (Google Scholar) and the number of hits. We’ve also revealed the selection process more clearly. Based on the comments of other reviewers and your literature suggestions below, we have added some recent studies that discussed the barriers to CE, which changed the number of articles we have used for our framework of barriers.

- You say that "the studies did not explore the variety of perceptions of these barriers by different companies. It is this gap in the literature that the study reported in this paper focuses on." (51-52). What about  10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.03.031 10.3390/su10072521 (Interesting!), 10.1002/bse.2513, 10.1002/bse.2641?
Authors: Thank you for your suggested sources. We have studied them and referenced them where suitable. Nevertheless, we feel that the conclusion that the current literature on barriers to CE does not investigate different patterns of perception, which provides the main motivation for our study,  still holds. García-Quevedo et al. (2020) most explicitly recognizes and concludes that the perception of the barriers is subjective and therefore differs per company, but they do not systematically explore patterns in this subjective perception, as our study does.

- What to you mean with "legal regulations" (620)? I think that you should explain more in details what these barriers are (not only the first one).
Authors: We were referring to regulatory barriers. The formulation has been improved.

- I read the manuscript with interest, hoping to read about some strategies to overcome the highlighted barriers. However, the study stops once the barriers are listed! What is the benefit of such research? You say that your contribution is "that these barriers are not experienced in a single generalizable way." Ok, then what? Please clarify how these barriers can be overome.
Authors: Thank you for remarking this key aspect. For a better understating and readability, we have rearranged the Discussion section, by enlarging both theoretical and managerial implications. Regarding the latter ones, identified barriers help to address more specific industrial policies related to CE. These policies should address specific issues pointed by our research, mainly regarding financial assessment of CE investments, alignment of the value chain and promoting circular offerings in markets. This would address the identified barriers and go beyond current state of policies, more focused on rising awareness on environmental benefits. All this is explained in the revised Discussion section.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have fully addressed and responded to the reviewer comments. The manuscript can now be accepted for publication.

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you very much, dear Authors, for considering all of my suggestions. 

I am happy to refer this paper for publication in the present form. I just want to point out that when you want to avoid a term (barriers, for example), there are many ways apart from synonyms. The sentence " Studies on these barriers identified a substantial number of potential barriers, however, these studies did not explore the variety of perceptions of these barriers by different companies," for example, has the word barrier three times. What about:

Recent studies have identified a substantial number of potential barriers towards xyz, however, these studies did not explore the variety of perceptions of these barriers by different companies."

Reviewers spend substantial amount of their time to suggest improvements to the Authors, so please consider our suggestions as a way to improve your manuscript. 

All the best.