In Control or Being Controlled? Investigating the Control of Space Heating in Smart Homes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper conducts research on smart home technology (SHT), and the relevant research work is sufficient. The literature citation has strong logic, and on-site interviews have been conducted on residents' feelings, with sufficient workload. It has significant engineering significance for further research and development of smart home technology, meeting the requirements of publication.

Fluent English writing, clear logic, and clear expression

Author Response

Comments to Reviewer 1

This paper conducts research on smart home technology (SHT), and the relevant research work is sufficient. The literature citation has strong logic, and on-site interviews have been conducted on residents' feelings, with sufficient workload. It has significant engineering significance for further research and development of smart home technology, meeting the requirements of publication.

Fluent English writing, clear logic, and clear expression

Thank you very much for these kind words

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors tackle the contemporary topic of smart home technologies providing interesting results. However, certain issues need to be addressed:

1)      In the end of the Introduction, the scientific contribution of this paper should be stated more clearly.

2)      In Section 2, it would be interesting if the authors briefly analyzed how such technologies might handle and adapt to an emergency. The authors are encouraged to expand the literature analysis with recent related research, e.g. such as indicatively:

https://doi.org/10.3390/s22239457

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcan.2021.06.005

3)      Section 3 has no references. The authors should explain the methodology with adequate references.

4)      In Section 3, it would be useful to have a Figure or a Table that showcases the differences between the three smart home setups.

5)      The interview with Andrew is not suitable for publication. Please do not include it in your revised manuscript.

6)      It would be more efficient if the authors made a Table with the results of the interviews, so that a future reader can understand them easier/faster.

7)      It would be interesting if the authors could quantify part of the results and include them in the conclusions as well.

8)      The use of English (grammar, syntax, etc.) needs to be improved throughout the document. For example, in the first paragraph of the Introduction, “from fossils fuels” should be “from fossil fuels”.

Taking the aforementioned comments into account, a major revision of the manuscript is proposed. This sort of research (including interviews, etc.) is rarely published in this Journal, meaning that the authors need to make plenty of adjustments/modifications in order to be accepted.

As mentioned in the final comment, the quality of English should be improved. 

Author Response

Comments to reviewer 2

The authors tackle the contemporary topic of smart home technologies providing interesting results. However, certain issues need to be addressed:

• In the end of the Introduction, the scientific contribution of this paper should be stated more clearly.

We agree and have added this.

• In Section 2, it would be interesting if the authors briefly analyzed how such technologies might handle and adapt to an emergency. The authors are encouraged to expand the literature analysis with recent related research, e.g. such as indicatively: https://doi.org/10.3390/s22239457 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcan.2021.06.005

We have investigated this suggestion of adding the issue of emergency, however, found that this is too far from our empirical material. We have, however, added a few more recent references to this section as suggested. 

3)      Section 3 has no references. The authors should explain the methodology with adequate references.

We have added reference to relevant literature explaining the methods we use.

• In Section 3, it would be useful to have a Figure or a Table that showcases the differences between the three smart home setups.

We agree and have moved the explanation into a table.

• The interview with Andrew is not suitable for publication. Please do not include it in your revised manuscript.

We do not agree with the reviewer that the interview with Andrew should not be included. On the contrary we find that it is highly relevant to include also occupants who do not use the SHT they have in their homes. If SHT should assist in a transition of the energy system, all types of occupants need to be included. We also notice that other reviewers have not mentioned this.

• It would be more efficient if the authors made a Table with the results of the interviews, so that a future reader can understand them easier/faster.

In the analysis we follow common ways of handling and analyzing qualitative material and we do not find that summarizing results of interviews in a table would be adequate following our methods. 

• It would be interesting if the authors could quantify part of the results and include them in the conclusions as well.

We agree this could be relevant, however, we do not have data which are suitable for this.

• The use of English (grammar, syntax, etc.) needs to be improved throughout the document. For example, in the first paragraph of the Introduction, “from fossils fuels” should be “from fossil fuels”.

Thank you for pointing this out, the paper has now been checked.

Taking the aforementioned comments into account, a major revision of the manuscript is proposed. This sort of research (including interviews, etc.) is rarely published in this Journal, meaning that the authors need to make plenty of adjustments/modifications in order to be accepted.

We are grateful for several useful suggestions from this reviewer; however, we also understand that the reviewer is not familiar with studies based on qualitative methods. We would like to highlight that there are plenty of papers published in Sustainability, using similar methods and which are presenting them as we do here.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article describes issues related to automatic heating control in an intelligent building. The question of whether this type of control gives the user control over the system's operations or whether the system controls the user has also been considered. In the paper, the authors correctly presented the issues related to the research results to date and proposed their approach to the analyzed topic. The presented issues are current and are subject to continuous development, especially with increase efforts to reduce energy consumption. Based on the correctly presented analysis of the results of the surveys conducted, complete conclusions were drawn. The work is well organized with an introduction, the theoretical part, the application part and the conclusions. After the theoretical part, the work presents the results of the research and correctly summarizes their analysis. Every part is correctly presented. The research results correlate with the rest of the article.

Recommendations for improving the manuscript:

1. The purpose of the work presented at the beginning of the article should be clarified (which is the work of the authors).

2. What benefits and to whom the results presented in the article can bring in the future.

Author Response

Comments to reviewer 3

The article describes issues related to automatic heating control in an intelligent building. The question of whether this type of control gives the user control over the system's operations or whether the system controls the user has also been considered. In the paper, the authors correctly presented the issues related to the research results to date and proposed their approach to the analyzed topic. The presented issues are current and are subject to continuous development, especially with increase efforts to reduce energy consumption. Based on the correctly presented analysis of the results of the surveys conducted complete conclusions were drawn. The work is well organized with an introduction, the theoretical part, the application part and the conclusions. After the theoretical part, the work presents the results of the research and correctly summarizes their analysis. Every part is correctly presented. The research results correlate with the rest of the article.

Recommendations for improving the manuscript:

1. The purpose of the work presented at the beginning of the article should be clarified (which is the work of the authors).
2. What benefits and to whom the results presented in the article can bring in the future.

We agree and have clarified both intention and contribution of the paper.  

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed almost none of the comments and have an extremely negative attitude towards them and towards the overall decision. Therefore, the comments and the decision remain the same:

1)      In the end of the Introduction, the scientific contribution of this paper should be stated more clearly.

2)      In Section 2, it would be interesting if the authors briefly analyzed how such technologies might handle and adapt to an emergency. The authors are encouraged to expand the literature analysis with recent related research, e.g. such as indicatively:

https://doi.org/10.3390/s22239457

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-012-0129-8

3)      Section 3 has no references. The authors should explain the methodology with adequate references.

4)      In Section 3, it would be useful to have a Figure or a Table that showcases the differences between the three smart home setups.

5)      The interview with Andrew is not suitable for publication. Please do not include it in your revised manuscript.

6)      It would be more efficient if the authors made a Table with the results of the interviews, so that a future reader can understand them easier/faster.

7)      It would be interesting if the authors could quantify part of the results and include them in the conclusions as well.

8)      The use of English (grammar, syntax, etc.) needs to be improved throughout the document.

Taking the aforementioned comments into account, a major revision of the manuscript is proposed. This sort of research (including interviews, etc.) is rarely published in this Journal, meaning that the authors need to make plenty of adjustments/modifications in order to be accepted.

As stated in the comment above, English should be improved.

Author Response

Response to reviewer 2

We are unsure why the reviewer claims that we did not address the comments and make changes to the manuscript. We found several of the recommendations helpful and implemented the suggestions. The manuscript was uploaded with track changes, so it should be possible to see that we improved the manuscript on the basis of the suggested amendments.

1) we agreed and have stated the contribution more clearly in the revised version.

2) we did not agree that this was relevant and supported by our data, as argued in the first response.

3) we find that our methodology in section 3 is described sufficiently according to our research tradition, but agreed that there should be a reference which was added in the revised version.

4) we agreed that this was a good suggestion and added a table in the revised version.

5) we do not agree that the interview should not be included, but have not deleted the word indicated with ****

6) As we stated in the first response, we follow common ways of handling and analyzing qualitative material and we do not find that summarizing results of interviews in a table would be adequate following our methods. 

7) We agree that quantifying the results could be interesting, but this is not something we can do based on the qualitative data used for this analysis.

8) Thank you for pointing this out, we have proofread the manuscript and edited mistakes in the revised version.