The Effects of Job Demands and Job Resources on Miners’ Unsafe Behavior—The Mediating and Moderating Role of a Sense of Calling

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The need and significance of this research is in toto missing. Gap should be theoretically identified and presented via a formal research question(s).

 

Theoretical underpinnings are missing in Literature Review.

 

Hypotheses are proposed by citing 2/3/4 references. Authors should conduct a proper review and cite the literature in standard way.

 

Provide the original reliabilities of all scales.

 

What was the population of study? How sample was selected? How sample represents the population? Sampling process etc. should be provided in detail. 

 

Complete descriptives of sample are not provided.

 

Why control/qualitative variables are not reported in correlation analysis?

 

How mediation can be tested using cross sectional data?

 

No implications.

 

No limitations and future directions. 

 

Read this sample article to learn how to report such research: https://www.ijmess.com/showabstract.php?volume=volume-III-2014&issue=issue-I-03-2014&ab=ab-3

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting manuscript. However, to be published in "Sustainability", it needs further improvement.

(1): Abstract: Information regarding the research background and conclusion should be added.

(2) Introduction: Specific objectives of the research should be added.

(3) The manuscript lacks the literature review section, which needs to be added.

(4) Materials and Methods: 

- How many coal mining companies are there in northeastern China? Why 6 companies were selected?

- "this study conducted a pre-study before the formal distribution of the questionnaire" (page 3, 4): What were the results of this pre-study? Was the questionnaire revised based on the pre-study results?

- What sampling methods were used in this study?

(5) Results: More data from the questionnaire should be provided.

(6) Discussion: It seems that this manuscript does not have a real discussion section. The discussion looks like an extension section of the results as there is little comparison with other studies. I think this section needs to be rewritten.

(7) The questionnaire should be presented in the appendix of the manuscript.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper focused on a thought-provoking topic, that is, how job demands and job resources affect miners’ unsafe behavior from the perspective of sense of calling. The results showed that: job demands had a positive effect on unsafe behavior; sense of calling weakened the relationship between job demands and unsafe behavior; job resources had a negative effect on unsafe behavior, and sense of calling partially mediated the relationship between job demands and unsafe behavior. Below I outline my concerns with the paper and, where possible, provide some suggestions about how you might address the issues.

 

1.     Introduction: I think you’d better position your research more specifically in the literature and clarify the meaning of your work in the section of introduction. You need to explicate the inherent relationship between JD-R model and unsafe behavior and how this relationship enriches our knowledge of JD-R and/or of antecedents to unsafe behavior. Moreover, you regarded the introduction of the sense of calling into the JDR-model research as theoretical contributions, but why is this attempt important? Why focus on sense of calling? How does it extend our understanding of JD-R model beyond what we already know from prior studies?

 

2.     Theoretical basis:

a.     I think you’d better elaborate more on the conceptualization of sense of calling and its distinction from other relevant concepts, such as career commitment. Particularly, there are two major approaches to conceptualizing the sense of calling – to view it as an orientation toward work or as a process one experiences at work. Which kind of sense of calling your argument based on?

b.     You also need to more convincingly justify key constructs in the paper. For example, H4 aims to test the mediating role of sense of calling between job resources and unsafe behavior. However, there isn’t clear explanation about the relationship between job resources and sense of calling. You need to articulate the rationale in a more specific way than the general statements you have in the paper.

 

3.      Study design: Your participants are all from northeastern China, I think it’s better to conduct the research on a larger scale.

 

4.      Results: You'd better make sure of the logic of the study. For example, 4.3.2.”Miners with lower job demands had lower unsafe behavior, and miners with higher job demands also had significantly improved unsafe behavior after having a high level of sense of calling compared to before.” Based on the study design, information about sense of calling and unsafe behavior were collected at the same time point T2, so I think it’s kind of unreasonable to draw a causal relationship.

 

5.      Discussion:

a.     You could tie your findings to the literature more closely. For example, “various elements such as physiological, psychological, and environmental, ensuring the integrity of the model”, what do these specifically mean?

b.     I think you could highlight the moderating effect of sense of calling of miners with higher demands on their unsafe behavior and explicit possible reasons. Because Miners with higher job demands had significantly improved unsafe behavior than miners with lower job demands.

 

6.      Grammar issues: 4.3.1 “part of the job resources of the sense of calling”, does this mean that the latter is part of the former?

 

I hope these comments help. Good luck!

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript looks fine after editing.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Many thanks for your hard work and effort to revise the manuscript according to the reviewers' recommendation. I am happy with this revised version.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Thanks to the author for the comprehensive and detailed responses and revisions, which improved the quality and readability of the manuscript. However, there are still some issues that need to be further modified.

1． Some demographic variables in this study were collected as categorical variables, which cannot be conducted Pearson correlation analysis, and should be treated as dummy variables when model tests are performed for control.

 

2. What are the criteria of multi-stage stratified random sampling method? According to the proportion of the number of people in each stage or the standard deviation of each stage?

 

3. Discussion section could be more specific.

Author Response

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