Investigation of a Consumer’s Purchase Intentions and Behaviors towards Environmentally Friendly Grocery Packaging
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors, congratulations on your work, which is both relevant as regards the current Generation-Z packaging-related environmental concerns post 2021, as well as in terms of the overall purchasing intention and behaviour from the perspective of environmentally friendly types of packaging.
The introduction and abstract are succinctly and comprehensively written and the hypotheses are clear and revisited by the results and discussions part almost in their entirety.
Towards ultimate publication, I would kindly suggest that the authors consider the following aspects:
- the introduction appears to be limited, in such a way that an extensive literature review seems to be missing on this topic.
- an important socio-demographic variable that was not undertaken in terms of analysis seems to be missing, namely the urban vs. rural dichotomy, if any. A parallel with the research investigating environmentally friendly packaging purchasing behaviour might be warranted in the literature review part, if relevant.
- The representativeness of the sample is rather ambiguous at the level of the US (there is no mention of their states of origin, for instance). In this respect, it might also be worth considering an analytical approach to the education level of the interviewees (there is a significant percentage of higher-education graduates, how is this relevant?)
some examples of potential considerations for targeted improvement:
- line 54, pg 2- ' with time American consumers will become' and the rest continues to be about companies, therefore, the statement seems to be a bit ambiguous and twofold; could you connect the information more clearly?
- most of the publications in the introduction/ potential literature review are up-to-date, but is there any research in this field as of late, 2022-2023, have there been any changing trends in this area of environmentally friendly packaging for food items in the post-pandemic world?
- please check the spelling and formatting of line 151.
Good luck with the rest of your work!
The English language is fine, some accidental formatting and editing matters could be observed (e.g. line 151), which, I assume, can easily be fixed upon editing work subsequent to reviewing, the authors being native English speakers in the majority, I assume.
Author Response
Responses to Reviewer 1
Authors would like to thank you for your constructive feedback and support. Please see detailed responses to your recommendations.
- Yes, we agree with your comment that we did not consider rural-urban dichotomy when asking demographic questions. Since this is a limitation we did list this in the limitation section where we emphasized the limitations in a terms of sampling methods we applied. In addition in the future research section we did provide recommendations that future studies consider that important dichotomy.
- To our best capability we tried to clarify sampling methods. Also, we gathered geographic data which showed most participants resided within major metropolitan areas. This has also been depicted within the appendix, which shows a heat map of the major areas which responses were gathered. We also described that we shared the Qualtrics links through our personal and professional networks which might cause higher participation of consumers with bachelor’s degree (due to the fact that we all work in higher education setting). We did report this as a limitation again. Thank you for pointing this out.
- Line 54 was revised.
- We are sure that the answer is yes, however, our research was conducted in the midst of the We clarified this is our paper. Consequently, the paper was written closer to the end of the pandemic. In the revision we did add couple of studies published in 2022, but we did mention in the future studies section that it is timely to assess how preference for eco-friendly packaging alternatives is evolving especially in post-pandemic consumption (615-616).
- Line 151 was revised.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have focused on a very topical and important research issue. The logic of the paper is clear, well described theoretical considerations, references to the previous studies are relevant and sound, the methodology is clear. Still, more information about the data collection process is needed: when and how the survey was conducted, how information about the survey was disseminated, did the respondents represent all the states of the US, what ethical guidelines were followed, what data analysis methods/software were employed, who and how gave the IRB approval, etc. Surprisingly that males dominate in the survey as normally women are more active research participants (in case of non-representative research sample as this might be the case). How the authors explain this?
To some extent, this statement (research results) is surprising: "Age (H6), income (H7), gender (H8), and education (H9) did not have a moderating influence between purchase intention and behavior; thus, these hypotheses were not supported." (p.13) Actually, the studies in European or Asian countries witness that there is a correlation between socio-demographic variables and ecologically (non)friendly behaviour also in terms of purchase. So suggestion is to find these studies and expand some comparison in the discussion part of the paper.
Good luck to the authors!
Author Response
Responses to Reviewer 2: Authors would like to thank you for your constructive feedback and support. Please see detailed responses to your recommendations.
- To our best capability we tried to clarify sampling methods. In that section we did add which software we used for analysis, when the survey was distributed and how. We also described that we shared the Qualtrics links through our personal and professional networks which might cause higher participation of male consumers with bachelor degree (due the fact that we all work in higher education setting). We did report this as limitation again. Thank you for pointing this out. On another note, IRB was granted by the University of North Texas.
- We did add some additional comparisons in the literature review section, as well as in the conclusion section.
- Thank you very much for the last comment you have made.
Reviewer 3 Report
I would like to start by congratulating the authors of this article for their work.
The main flaw lies in how the bibliographic references are made. The authors did not follow the journal's instructions.
More generally, I believe that the model presented could have been the subject of a more in-depth analysis using structural equations instead of simple analysis of correlations and regressions. The use of Smart-PLS can help you.
Authors could also make available or display the items they used in their work in an appendix. Because in the current state, it is difficult to understand what is the difference between the variable "purchase intention" and the "actual behavior".
Author Response
Responses to Reviewer 3: Authors would like to thank you for your constructive feedback and support. Please see detailed responses to your recommendations.
- Authors opted not to use SEM.
- We would like to display parts of work in appendix but we are not sure, Currently we do have figures and tables in our text. If you have any specific idea for the appendix format please let us know.
- We tried to better describe differences between purchase intention and purchase behavior in an improved manner in the following places: purchase intention section under hypothesis h4 please see examples and added text in the revised manuscript.
Reviewer 4 Report
The manuscript entitled "Investigation of a consumer’s purchase intentions and behaviors towards environmentally friendly grocery packaging" (sustainability-2404785) was aimed at extending the knowledge of consumer behavior regarding EFGP by applying the Theory of Planned Behavior to study the relationship between purchasing intention and purchasing behavior toward environmentally-friendly grocery packaging—the case of the US grocery industry.
To improve the quality of the manuscript, I propose the following:
(1) The structure of the introduction section feels rather disrupted. The objective of this research was presented at the end of subsection 1.3 (lines 163-178), followed by the research hypotheses. I suggest rethinking the position of these elements.
(2) Please provide the p-value of the bi-variate correlation values from Table 2.
(3) It would add more value to the paper if a comparison would be further developed based on the authors' research findings and other similar papers, but specific to other markets outside the US.
(4) Please correct minor typos throughout the manuscript (for example: line 151).
(5) The references list does not follow the template instructions. Additionally, the in-text referencing style does not match the journal's specifications. Therefore, I kindly ask the authors to format the references list according to the requirements of the Sustainability journal, which can also be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions#references.
The quality of English is good.
Author Response
Responses to Reviewer 4: Authors would like to thank you for your constructive feedback and support. Please see detailed responses to your recommendations.
1.Thank you for spotting this. In the revised version we moved objectives of this research earlier, and changed slightly the order of the subsections.
(2) We have provided the p-values for the bi-variate analysis within the table. Each value showed a p-value of less than .001.
(3) We revisited the last sections, and recommend for future studies stronger focus on cross cultural comparisons. We did now add in literature review section a cross cultural perspective, but that component was outside of the study scope although it is worth further exploration, which is now clearly stated.
(4) Manuscript was proofread after this revision.
(5) We did format all references in the text and et the end according to your journal instructions. Now they are in numerical order.
