Consumer Social and Psychological Factors Influencing the Use of Genetically Modified Foods—A Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

compliments on the very extensive study covering all important aspects related to the acceptance of GMO food.

I have only a few minor comments and suggestions.

Please follow the Journal requirements regarding the citations in the manuscript text body. 

Line 121: Avoid starting sentences in the same style such as: Therefore, issues associated with consumer acceptability of GM products are gradually becoming a topic of global discussion, both in the industrial and academic sectors. Therefore, this review....

Line 420: In Polandia.. do you mean Poland?

Line 424:  US, Italians and Japanese consumers’ correct to  US, Italian and Japanese consumers’.

 

Labeling was elaborated on numerous times, I suggest discussing it in one paragraph, rather than scattered throughout the manuscript. 

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for the constructive and competent criticism. We again appreciate the time and kindness of the Reviewer in helping improve the manuscript.

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Although the topic chosen by the authors is very interesting and scientifically valuable alike, the paper needs further improvements in order to have the proper quality for publication. The following suggestions/ observations are made solely for this purpose:

-           The paper has a proper flow of ideas but gives the reader the feeling  that is not enough well connected to the present situation in the field of food consumption traits and behaviors in the post pandemic context. Authors should extend properly the table 3 (line 427) with more new relevant papers (published after 2019) that are depicting the changes in perceptions, consumption motives, expectations etc. of individuals about GM food products after the Pandemic.

Also, the table can be completed with another one that can show a synthesis of results from qualitative type research (focus groups and in-depth interviews) about attitudes and perceptions, and factors influencing consumption of GM food products. Although, authors are talking about some results of qualitative type researches - see line 235 – 242, I think this is not enough in the context in which their main topic of the paper is addressing to social and psychological factors that are influencing the use or consumption of GM food products. (despite the lack of statistical representativeness, qualitative research gives you the opportunity to grasp patterns of thinking around a specific subject - in this case to nominate potential factors that are affecting the consumption or adoption of GM products)

-           Authors are using some reference to PRISMA - Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol in the final reference list, but they do not use actually that reference into the text. Even if the type of review approached at the level of the paper is not a systematic one, following such a methodology or protocol (see - https://prisma-statement.org/), the paper should get more quality to the readers if can present an extensive situation of other meta-reviews, systematic reviews made in the last year on the subject of GM food products perceptions and consumer behavior.

-           In the final part referring to conclusions, authors can make a connection with attitudes and perceptions about GM products valuable from the field of policy makers and implied companies into the field of GM production and regulation. A few ideas in the form of a small synthesis of the opinions and perceptions of these decision-makers regarding the future of GM products or the ways in which they see viable dialogue with potential consumers could also contribute to increasing the quality of the paper.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for the constructive and competent criticism. We again appreciate the time and kindness of the Reviewer in helping improve the manuscript.

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Language and technical care:

The manuscript requires some minor attention in terms of overall language and technical aspects, with a few examples highlighted below:

-          Line 52 – in the reference Gurau & Ranchod, a space is required after the &;

-          Line 62 – We should not be Caps;

-          Line 63 – not rely, rather reliance;

-          Line 67 & 68 – this reviewer is uncertain if this sentence implies a decrease;

-          Line 76 – perhaps rather “subsequent food insecurity” rather than ‘starvation’;

-          Line 84 – perhaps rather “seen as a possible solution” rather than ‘required’;

-          Line 88 to 90 – sentence needs rephrasing;

-          Line 126 – remove ‘the’ + governments;

-          Line 140 – add the word ‘by’ between followed and sugar;

-          Line 171 – why is Table 1 as a number after Table 2;

-          Line 248 – remove additional space after ‘generations.’;

-          Line 380 – remove additional space after ‘2018).’;

-          Line 409 – in the reference Wunderlich & Gatto, a space is required after the &;

-          Line 436 – consider replacing the word ‘news’ with ‘information’;

-          Line 447 & 448 – insert line space;

-          Line 453 – remove ‘the’ + businesses;

-          Line 531 – consider adding the word ‘perceived’ high risk;

The manuscript is very well referenced using relevant, up-to-date references.

 

Literature Review:

As the entire manuscript is a review of published work on consumers and their attitudes towards GMOs, with the result that the literature review is adequate and acceptable. However, the literature summary does not read easily, such as discussed in the methodology comments that follows.

 

Methodology and materials:

This reviewer believes that as this paper, as a Review Paper does not necessarily have a research methodology that was followed. As it was not a scoping review either, the aim may not have been to find similarity results from various published sources. This makes for difficult interpretation of what the contribution of the paper actually is. It would have been easier if a methodology was followed to summarise all published research involving consumer attitudes towards GMOs.

 

Results and Discussion:

See comments in the methodology section – the same applies.

 

Conclusion:

The reviewer does not believe that the way that the authors summarised what current results available of consumers attitudes to GMOs are extremely well presented in the conclusion section. The title states that influencing factors will be presented. This reviewer is uncertain if that is clearly presented in the conclusion. There are various references to statistical results, but they are not really used to strengthen the message that the paper sets out as an aim.

Overall recommendation:

The reviewer believes that, with some minor linguistic corrections, as well as a revisit of the way that the information obtained from researched included is presented, this paper is adequate to be published in Sustainability.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for the constructive and competent criticism. We again appreciate the time and kindness of the Reviewer in helping improve the manuscript.

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The review describes identifying how social and psychological factors influence attitudes toward genetically modified foods and consumers' perceptions of using these foods.

The introduction starts strongly by describing the importance of food to health and the current situation on issues with relying on GM foods but unfortunately the quality of the paper starts going downhill from the last paragraph of the introduction. The same 18-year-old citation (Chen & Chern, 2004) is used throughout that paragraph (lines 111-121) making the information severely outdated. It's recommended to use a citation no more than 5 years old to keep the information relevant and to use multiple citations for variety rather than relying on the same research. The introduction does not give details on how the review was done, and what steps were taken to ensure all relevant research articles were included in the review. This could have been done by explaining what keywords were used to find articles relating to this topic and what criteria were used to include or exclude a study from the review.

Section 2 provides a comprehensive overview of GM foods, however, many sentences lack citations and the section doesn't seem to contribute to the topic of the review on how social and psychological factors influence attitudes toward genetically modified foods. I would suggest moving some of the information into the Introduction section to give background on GM foods and removing the rest of this section entirely.

Section 3 introduces social factors for GM foods and the authors successfully use some recent research as examples. However, many sections lack citations entirely and the style of writing is more conversational rather than reviewing the previous work in this area.

Section 4 talks about psychological factors for GM foods. Many of the citations used here are outdated or entire paragraphs are lacking citations altogether. The authors refer to other studies multiple times but none of these studies are actually cited at the end of the sentence where they are being referred to. Similar to section 3 the style is very conversational. Tables 3 and 4 attempt to provide a review of previous studies but only provide the level of knowledge and information sources where the knowledge was acquired. Additionally, the information is given as an average rather than an exact number and there's no comparison.

The conclusion mentions several times the 'research' that was done. However, no research methods are discussed nor any results are provided. As the article is a review it seems misleading to refer to it as research. Also, the words research and study are used interchangeably. Please use review when referring to this article.

Other comments:

Line 35 in Abstract. The authors say "we identify". Use passive instead e.g., In this review, it was identified...

Table 2 appears before table 1 in the article. Make sure tables and figures are numbered and presented in the correct order.

Table 2. Typo on Swett pepper? Should this be Sweet pepper?

Line 351 there should be a space between '&' and the last name in the citation.

Line 355, 356, and 358 see comment above. 

Lines 392-393 should the sentence say "little" instead of "less"?

line 420 "Polandia"? Should this be Poland?

Line 423 rephrase the sentence to "About 28%...know very little about GM foods on average".

Line 424 remove "s" from words "Italians" and "rates"

Line 425 a bracket is missing from the citation.

Table 3 needs to be checked for correct English spelling and sentence structure. For example, the main findings under US consumer should read "43% have knowledge of GM foods sold in supermarkets" or "43% know that GM foods are sold in supermarkets". Check all other sections in the table as well.

Line 438 Start the sentence with "Meanwhile" or "In the meantime"

Table 4 add definition of "n.a." at the end of the table.

Line 452 says "the author suggested" by it's being referred to a study with 2 authors. Therefore it should read the authors suggested.

Line 483 "Studies show" what studies? There are no citations.

 

The topic is very interesting and topical but unfortunately, I can't recommend this article for publication in its current form. There are several grammatical errors, citations are missing or outdated and there's no clear outline of how the review has been done. I hope this revision doesn't dishearten the authors This could be a brilliant article with revisions and clarifying the review.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for the constructive and competent criticism. We again appreciate the time and kindness of the Reviewer in helping improve the manuscript.

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

The present form may be accepted.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for the time and kindness of the Reviewer in helping improve the manuscript.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The following observations are meant to contribute to the authors” effort to obtain the proper scientific quality of the paper, required by the level of the publishing journal:

I have acknowledge an improvement of the paper in some aspects but still I have to stress the following:

1. Still, the introduction does not provide significant details for the readers of the article regarding the methodology used to carry out the specialized literature review and what are the stages (and relevant criteria) necessary for the inclusion of relevant articles in the review.

2. Section II does not contribute to the edification of the readers in relation to the basic topic of the article - the influence of social and psychological factors on the use of GM foods. This section should be introduced in the introduction and should be rewritten from the perspective of highlighting some clear conclusions stated by the authors to summarize the issue of genetically modified food - such as - what is the situation of the production of GM foods today and what diversity of such products exists, everything written in a more compact volume.

3. Section III tries to clarify the methodology used to carry out the review. Although a series of criteria are mentioned, that were used by the authors to filter the articles considered relevant for the review, the following elements can be observed that do not ensure sufficient consistency of this "methodology" section of the review:

 - From the very beginning, the authors do not define in a formal and clear way what kind of method of carrying out the scientific review methodology they are referring to in the article: the PRISMA guidelines or another unitary review method recognized by the literature

- Without defining a coherent framework of guidance for the review methodology, the article remains in the area of presenting some results contained in various articles in the form of a traditional review but "Traditional literature reviews often lack thoroughness and rigor and are conducted ad hoc, rather than following a specific methodology". See as sources for documentation: 

-        Snyder, H. (2019). Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines. Journal of business research, 104, 333-339.

-        Paré, G., & Kitsiou, S. (2017). Methods for literature reviews. In Handbook of eHealth Evaluation: An Evidence-based Approach [Internet]. University of Victoria. – especially the table no 9.1  - Typology of Literature Reviews (adapted from Paré et al., 2015), weblink: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK481583/

- The databases used to select the articles are not specified clearly and coherently, but only indicated "approximately" -..." several keywords were chosen to search peer-reviewed articles in authoritative and reputable databases including Scopus, PubMed, and Web of Science"....

- Authors should specify very clearly the number of articles initially selected according to the first selection criterion, broken down by each database used, then the number of articles remaining after applying each new filter used

- As the above information is not specified, the motivation of the authors to search using keywords in the title of the articles as the primary selection criterion is not very clear. Usually, in systematic reviews, the use as a selection criterion of several combined keywords (in the present case according to the authors - 3 different sets (...""consumer social factors" OR "consumer psychological factors" OR " consumer behavior" AND "genetically modified foods"....) is not considered appropriate because the probability that some articles have approximately 6 keywords in the title simultaneously is very small, or not at all. The authors should have performed the search according to topic and not the title, in this way the use of these keywords can be justified.

- The authors should have also used the year of publication of the articles as a filtering criterion to increase their relevance from the perspective of novelty. It can be seen in tables no. 3 and 4 an analysis carried out on several articles that are all in the 2012-2014 range, with one exception in table 4, from 2018.

4. In the case of figure no. 2, the usefulness of this figure is not clear. What is the connection between the title of the figure and its content? The graphic representation of some words in the figure is not explained. What do the terms represent - "Unnatural and artificial", "negative properties", "Intervention in nature", and what is their connection with the keywords defined by the authors as criteria for selecting the articles taken into consideration. Why are the same terms graphically represented differently in the figure? If the authors intended to use a dedicated software that generates figures like "clouds of points" or word-clouds, they must specify this in the source of the figure and the appearance of the figure must clearly indicate this. In this way the relevance of the figure to the readers is clear.

5. In the case of tables 3 and 4, what is the criterion used by the authors to analyze only the selected articles? Were there no relevant articles newer than 2018 in the number of 43 articles actually used for review (as stated)?

 

From te perspective of the suggestions that I have made in the first round of the reviewing, I have seen the efforts of the authors to comply with some of them  but still I have to point out some important issues such as:

1. The authors did not integrate the initial suggestions regarding the completion of the presented information with articles based on qualitative research that in the context of the chosen topic (attitudes, perceptions) would have been extremely relevant for useful conclusions for such a review from the perspective of the readers

2. - Next, although some brief explanations were introduced regarding the "methodology" used for the review, it is not clear what kind of methodology the authors can rely on. The authors could have kept the references related to the PRISMA methodological framework that they had initially, but to carry out all the steps specific to this framework with a clear explanation of:

        - 1. The exact base(s) used as a starting point for the review

        - 2. The number of articles resulting from the sequential application of each selection criterion (the appropriate justification of the use of each selection criterion -)

        - 3. Creation of a comprehensive table that included all the articles remaining after applying the filters used, with the information grouped by relevant sections (table headers) according to the research topic - you can use the current table headers used in tables 3 and 4,

Such an approach gives more clarity for the methodological part and prove for any reader interested the scientific soundness of the authors effort.

 

3. Regarding the suggestions for the concluding part of the article, the authors did not fully consider these suggestions either. It would have been relevant to juxtapose the opinion of specialists and decision-makers in the field of regulating the production and consumption of GMOs with the relevant information resulting from the review regarding the opinions, attitudes, perceptions of GMO consumers, at least for suggesting future research directions, directions that otherwise are missing in the presented conclusions

 

I do sincerely hope that all the above observations will be understood from the point of view of the normal effort that any author should make to refine the work done in order to have the maximum scientific value that is required by the level of the journal in which the paper is intended to be published.

I wish authors all the best in their work!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
We greatly appreciate your suggestions for our manuscript. As a result, the quality of the manuscript is improved.
Please see the attachment.

With best regards.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for resubmitting the revised paper.

There are still a few points that need to be addressed:

Line 60 says "we are", rephrase this to passive form.

Line 130 space is needed in the citation between "& and Ho"

Under Methodology, add a figure that shows the number of papers found, how many were discarded and why, and the total number of papers left. See Kim et al., 2019 (Systematic literature review of best practice in food waste reduction programs) as an example.

Line 299 "several nations" can you provide examples of which nations are being referred to?

Line 422 remove additional "." at the end of the sentence.

Line 452 add author's names before citation, e.g., Cui & Shoemaker [22] found...

Line 513 attempted instead of "attempts"

Additionally, check the citation style and make sure it's consistent throughout the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for catching the glaring grammatical errors. We appreciate your valuable suggestion to our methodology. We believe that the quality of our manuscript is improved.
Please see the attachment 

With best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors made some efforts to improve the quality of the article, and to come closer to a ”systematic review” type approach.

Still I have a couple of recommendations to have:

-           In the final part of the introduction authors should add a phrase containing the type of the review and a very short overview of the results like:......”the reviewed literature credit the idea that from the point of view of social and psychological factors influencing GM foods we ca talk about.......”

-           I their cover letter to my second round of review, authors stated that....” we have attempted to compare the perspectives of experts and decision-makers in the area of regulating the production and consumption of GMOs with pertinent information derived from a review of the opinions, attitudes, and perceptions of GMO consumers in the findings of our research”....

Despite the fact that I have read very careful the entire section of Conclusions, I didn’t see any paragraph that explains clearly the perception of decision makers regarding GM foods compared with the perception already highlighted. Therefore I still insist on the idea that readers may find very useful a comment from apart of the authors in this final section that shows the convergence or the divergence of opinions between what consumers are thinking and what decision makers are thinking on this subject.

 

Success, Thank you