Young Adults’ Intentions toward the Prevention of Microplastic Pollution in Taiwan: Examining Personality and Information Processing in Fear-Appeal Communication
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
thank you for the opportunity to read the article. The effort was put into research and writing. I have some comments that you should address and make paper ready for publication.
The paper contains all the steps of the standard research paper. Methodologically it is appropriate, and writing is decent.
Certain points to address
The research model contains attitude and intentions which are also variables of the Theory of planned behavior, and intentions usually stem from attitudes. Then in your tested model, the figure is differently drawn. Did you do first hypothesized model, and then do one structural model in which the fit was not appropriate?
The feature of reactance proneness , is it actually personality trait or some facet of personality? To some extent it is not proper to suggest personality impact if only 1 facet of personality was conceptualized and examined.
As you use some elements of TPB and connect personality studies, it would be good to list some papers that have done so in other contexts. And also mention some main theories that you used. Especially because the literature you use is not rich enough, with only 43 papers cited, out of which many are rather old. I suggest these and many others
The enjoyment of knowledge sharing: impact of altruism on tacit knowledge-sharing behavior
Personality trait of conscientiousness impact on tacit knowledge sharing: the mediating effect of eagerness and subjective norm
Entrepreneurial Leadership Impact on Job security and Psychological Well-being during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A conceptual review
Figures require revision, and more attnetion to the referencing.
Author Response
Point 1: The research model contains attitude and intentions which are also variables of the Theory of planned behavior, and intentions usually stem from attitudes. Then in your tested model, the figure is differently drawn. Did you do first hypothesized model, and then do one structural model in which the fit was not appropriate?
Response 1: Thanks reviewer 1 for reminding us the differences existing between the figure for investigation (on page 5) and Figure 1 (on page 9). We have corrected the variables in the figure for investigation and made it consistent with Figure 1.
Point 2: The feature of reactance proneness , is it actually personality trait or some facet of personality? To some extent it is not proper to suggest personality impact if only 1 facet of personality was conceptualized and examined.
Response 2: We adopted the scale developed by Hong and Faedda (1996) to measure reactance proneness, which contains 9 items as in the following.
- I am content only when I am acting of my own free will.
- I find contradicting others stimulating.
- Regulations trigger a sense of resistance in me.
- I consider advice from others to be an intrusion.
- I become frustrated when I am unable to make free and independent decisions.
- I resist the attempts of others to influence me.
- I become angry when my freedom of choice is restricted.
- It makes me angry when another person is held up as a model for me to follow.
- When someone forces me to do something, I feel like doing the opposite.
To ensure that this scale has more than 1 dimension, the authors conducted one exploratory factor analysis on the 9 items and two factors were extracted from these items. The two factors were named as reacted perceptions and reacted behavioral intentions, respectively. The data are summarized in the following table. Furthermore, the concept of psychological reactance in the psychological reactance theory (Shen & Dillard, 2005) contains two dimensions—anger and negative cognition. Therefore, the two concepts—pscyhological reactance and reactance proneness—differ greatly from one another. Please look at the second paragraph on page 3 for the detailed revision.
Factor analysis of reactance proneness
|
|
Factor 1 |
Factor 2 |
|
Factor 1: Reacted behavioral intentions |
|
|
|
　PRN6 - I resist the attempts of others to influence me. |
.858 |
.072 |
|
　PRN3 - Regulations trigger a sense of resistance in me. |
.720 |
.183 |
|
　PRN7 - I become angry when my freedom of choice is restricted. |
.672 |
.177 |
|
　PRN4 - I consider advice from others to be an intrusion. |
.660 |
.318 |
|
PRN5 - I become frustrated when I am unable to make free and independent decisions. |
.570 |
.306 |
|
Factor 2: Reacted perceptions |
|
|
|
　PRN9 - When someone forces me to do something, I feel like doing the opposite. |
.183 |
.777 |
|
　PRN2 - I find contradicting others stimulating. |
.138 |
.750 |
|
　PRN8 - It makes me angry when another person is held up as a　model for me to follow. |
.255 |
.690 |
|
　PRN1 - I am content only when I am acting of my own free will. |
.209 |
.667 |
|
Eigenvalue |
3.75 |
1.22 |
|
Variation explained (%) |
41.71 |
13.60 |
|
Cronbach’s alpha |
.779 |
.740 |
Principal Component analysis
Rotation: Varimax Method
Point 3: As you use some elements of TPB and connect personality studies, it would be good to list some papers that have done so in other contexts.
Response 3: Revised as suggested by Reviewer 1. The authors have cited three articles that examined the effects of personality traits on the theory of planned behavior in this manuscript. Please look at the paragraph before Hypothesis 3a of page 5 and the last paragraph of page 13 for the details.
Point 4: And also mention some main theories that you used. Especially because the literature you use is not rich enough, with only 43 papers cited, out of which many are rather old. I suggest these and many others.
Response 4: Revised as suggested by Reviewer 1.
(a) Except the theory of planned behavior, this study used two theories—the EPPM and dual process models. This study has added a sentence to clearly indicate the two theories used in this study. Please look at the fourth paragraph on page 4 for the details. “This study adopted two theories—the EPPM and dual process models—as theoretical frameworks.” Furthermore, the explanations for the two theories have been provided in the fourth paragraph of page 2 and the first paragraph of page 4.
(b) The authors have updated the references and added 10 references in this manuscript.
These references have been added to this manuscript
(1) Bigsby & Albarracin, 2022
(2) Bigsby et al., 2021
(3) Hong & Faedda (1996)
(4) Kekalainen et al., 2022
(5) Obrenovic et al, 2020
(6) Obrenovic et al., 2021
(7) Shen & Dillard, 2005
(8) Sun et al., 2021
(9) Tannenbaum et al., 2015
(10) Wang et al., 2022
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper tries to fill the gap in the literature about the EPPM (the most recent fear-appeal communication model integrating several previous theories into one model), and examines whether personality traits interact with the two elements of fear appeals—perceived threat and perceived efficacy—to affect information processing, attitudes, and behavioral intentions regarding the mitigation of microplastic pollution in Taiwan. The authors contributed to the current literature with their clarification of the role of individual differences in the EPPM.
They focused on reactance proneness, which they studied on a sample of 362 college students of three Taiwan universities. Methodologically and content-wise, they brought thorough research and a mature interpretation. Their recherche of existing knowledge and interpretation of their own findings testify to an experienced scientific team. I appreciate the very precise formulation of hypotheses, very thorough methodological preparation (multiple pilot verification and preliminary research), very erudite use of statistical operations.
The conclusions of the study are therefore substantiated. The authors confirmed their hypotheses and managed to fulfill the task of completing the missing knowledge about EPPM (and identifying other necessary research directions).
Author Response
Point 1: The paper tries to fill the gap in the literature about the EPPM (the most recent fear-appeal communication model integrating several previous theories into one model), and examines whether personality traits interact with the two elements of fear appeals—perceived threat and perceived efficacy—to affect information processing, attitudes, and behavioral intentions regarding the mitigation of microplastic pollution in Taiwan. The authors contributed to the current literature with their clarification of the role of individual differences in the EPPM.
They focused on reactance proneness, which they studied on a sample of 362 college students of three Taiwan universities. Methodologically and content-wise, they brought thorough research and a mature interpretation. Their recherche of existing knowledge and interpretation of their own findings testify to an experienced scientific team. I appreciate the very precise formulation of hypotheses, very thorough methodological preparation (multiple pilot verification and preliminary research), very erudite use of statistical operations.
The conclusions of the study are therefore substantiated. The authors confirmed their hypotheses and managed to fulfill the task of completing the missing knowledge about EPPM (and identifying other necessary research directions).
Response 1: Many thanks for Reviewer 2’s positive comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper addresses an important issue in a novel way. Fear appeal theory is very relevant in climate change communication, so this piece of research provides us new evidence thought Witte's EPPM.
The most important shortcoming is what the authors themselves admit and has to do with the absence of measurement of subject's prior attitudes.
Author Response
Point 1: This paper addresses an important issue in a novel way. Fear appeal theory is very relevant in climate change communication, so this piece of research provides us new evidence thought Witte's EPPM.
The most important shortcoming is what the authors themselves admit and has to do with the absence of measurement of subject's prior attitudes.
Response 1: Thanks for Reviewer 3’s comments. The authors have added one more limitation to make this manuscript more comprehensive. Please look at the last paragraph of this manuscript for the detailed information.
“Furthermore, another limitation of this study is to rely on only one personality trait—reactance proneness—to understand the impact of individual differences on fear appeals. Future studies can be conducted by adopting two or more personality traits to better elucidate how personality traits interact or moderate the elements of fear appeals to affect individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. For example, empirical studies have shown that among the five-factor model, extraversion and neuroticism are two contrasting personality traits because extraverted individuals pay more attention to positive messages, while their neurotic counterparts focus more on negative messages (Kekalainen et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022). Similarly, conscientiousness and agreeableness are found to be the contrasting personality traits in that conscientious people are work-oriented whereas their agreeable counterparts are relationship-oriented (Obrenovic et al., 2020; Obrenovic et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2022). Therefore, by comparing two contrasting personality traits, scholars will be able to further understand the role of individual differences in the EPPM.”
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
