Measuring Resident Participation in the Renewal of Older Residential Communities in China under Policy Change
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper's subject isn’t original, and the current literature highlight that resident voices should be considered in the regeneration of old residential communities. The participation, collaboration, and cooperation between decision-makers, designers, and residents are welcomed and well-known. In this context, there are no significant research contributions to the knowledge. The results obtained are well-known in the literature.
The paper is well-structured, and the research is well-conducted.
However, the authors should improve some issues:
Please use graphics to illustrate population growth, population density, and age pyramids evolution in subsection 2.2.
In research conducted through the internet, in a big country with a big population, how to explain a small sample of only 1225 volunteers. The valid questionnaires rate (about 70%) and the questionnaires successfully collected rate (about 75%) should be mentioned. Are the numbers of volunteers from each region (Table 1) proportional to the respective population?
Table A3 should be called in subsection 3.2 to improve the paper's understanding.
Minor improvements are needed:
Please sort the reference numbers in the text, e.g. reference 99 (line 236) is called before reference 61, 62, etc.; reference 80 (line 309) is called before reference 81, 82, etc.; references 82, 83 (line 330) are called before reference 78, 79, etc.; reference 96 (line 529) is called before reference 97; reference 101 (line 549) is called before reference 100.
References 61 and 63 are missing in the text.
Lines 211-213: Please review the population numbers. The commas in “144,349,7378” are in the wrong places, 14 billion (“14,117,787,724”) is more than the population of the world.
Line 249: Please correct “…effective [62,62].”
Lines 262-264: Please correct the reference. Gao and Wang et al. isn’t reference #65
Lines 271-274: Please correct the reference. Li and Qi et al.'s isn’t reference #8
Lines 317-322: Please correct the reference. Shen and Wang et al. isn’t reference #77
Line 409: Please replace “…and region of origin, with…” by “and region of location, with…”
Lines 437-438: Fornell and Larcker (1981) is missing from the references list
Line 439: Hair (1997) is missing from the references list
Lines 494-946: Please rewrite the sentence. What is “a beautiful environment”? The authors should use scientific language
Lines 515-516: Please rewrite the sentence. Figure 4 doesn’t show the building density.
Lines 523-525: Please rewrite the sentence. What are the “forces of evil”? The authors should use scientific language
Author Response
please kindly check the attached file
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper aimed to provide empirical evidence about the role of Resident Participation in the Renewal of Older Residential Communities in China under Policy Change. Based on a survey of 865 respondents and using structural equation modeling, the study shows that Neighborhood Relations (NR) had a positive impact on Participation Attitude(PA); both Participation Attitude(PA) and Awareness Participation (AP) 15 had a positive effect on Self-evaluation (SE), and Self-evaluation (SE) and Awareness Participation (AP) had a positive impact on Participation Guarantee (PG).
However, I have some significant concerns and found fatal weaknesses for this research
This version of the manuscript did not succeed in offering an introduction that clearly states the study's research domain and emphasizes the relevance and originality of this contribution to the extant scientific literature.
The work is too locked in a specific country vision (China). For instance, in the introduction section it is difficult to see the research problem, and how the example of China could provide a contribution for the existing literature. The reader should wait for line 49 in order to see a small paragraph(49-69) about the scientific literature, because all the introduction section is dedicated to the China study.
I recommend the Authors to better develop their research problem and after explain how the case of China could provide contribution for the scientific literature and why the case of China could be a good example to address the research problem.
Theoretical background.
Again, there is no theoretical background, because the authors choose to be embedded in a china specific vision. For instance, rather to develop the concepts used in the study the section 2 is dedicated to China
2.1. Older Community Development and Policy in China
2.2. The challenges of renewing China's old residential communities
Even in the section 2.3. Resident participation in literature research, we can expect that the authors develop the concept of resident participation, but all the references in this section is about studies on China.
Therefore a great effort should be made by the authors to provide a section on theoretical background, to develop the concepts used in this study without a China looked vision. However explanation about China (Section 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) are still welcome, but it should be shortened in favor of a theoretical discussion which is absent. The section should also include a literature review to present the research gap that you address. The hypotheses should further be developed in the theoretical part of the study. The hypotheses need to be derived from literature and I would suggest you to do so in section 2. At present, the hypotheses appear randomly in the methods section without any link to previous research. This is a fatal flaw that must be resolved. Therefore, again, section 2 needs to be fundamentally revised in favor of relevant content and the hypotheses should emerge based on previous research. You should provide a reasoning based on theory that logically links to the hypotheses. This should happen in a section "hypotheses development", for instance as a sub-chapter in section 2 and not in the method section. It would be great if you could establish a strong theoretical background by using a theory that frames your study.
Suggestion on section 2:
In the first sub-section (probably more than one sub-section): Describe the fundamentals of theories used, and provide literature review on topics relevant to your research question.
In the last sub-section: Derive hypotheses and argue why the stated hypotheses should hold
IMPORTANT: Define all technical terms and Use literature - section 2 is an entirely literature-based section
You can add a new sub section to provide details about China in section 2 or at the beginning of the section 3
Methods
Thi section is not very well developed. Greater effort shoud be made to present a very well developed methodology section. For instance, if we remove parts about the hypotheses, we have one page of methodology section. The models are not presented, the way the authors analyses the data etc.., how do the main concepts Participation Guarantee(PG);Awareness Participation (AP);Neighborhood Relations (NR);Self-evaluation (SE);Participation Attitude(PA) are captured and coded in the questionnaire or in the analysis.
Without a consistent methodology section it is difficult to understand the results section and evaluate the validity of the results.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper deals with the theme of residents partecipation in the renewal process of older residential communities in China.
Particularly, the paper aims at investigating the factors which influence residents partecipation in the renewal process, assuming the hypothesis that the partecipation guarantee is positively influenced by Neighborhood Relations (NR), Participation Attitude (PA), Awareness Participation (AP) and Self-evaluation.
However, this part of the research leads to rather obvious and self-referential results. More interesting is the section of the survey conducted on residents' concerns and perceptions about their quartier, if we consider that the investigation of current issues of more significant concern to residents should be the base of every urban transformation.
Moreover, the engagement of residents in urban planning activities also depends on the ability of institutional actors to ask the right questions; as well as the ability of designers to translate citizens' wishes into possible project scenarios.
The theme of public participation, associated with urban planning, is a topic much investigated by the scientific literature under various aspects: from the political and social one, to the purely planning one, linked to the multi-criteria evaluations of alternative scenarios.
It is always a complex activity, of which a real awareness seems to be lacking in the paper. The study model therefore appears to be an abstract model disconnected from the realities represented.
The paper lacks a discussion and a conclusion that highlights what were the real objectives to be achieved and how the model can be usefully used for other operational and research contexts.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscrip still needs improvements
The abstract should be revised in coherence with the revision the authors made in the manuscript (China is the study case)
The research Method section still need major improvements. I recommand to the authors to include a subsection Research Design in order to precise the goal of the study and the methodological approaches they use to achieve these goals.
The subsection questionnaire should be a part of the subsection Data-collection
The should explain better the conceptual framework (fig 6) with regard to the SEM they use
The subsection data analysis needs more details. Please look at the different subsections in the Results section and explain, how you analyze the data collected to find these results
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper has been completely rewritten and can be accepted after minor revision.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks for taking your time to review this manuscript. We really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Your suggestions have enabled us to improve our work. Based on the instructions provided in your letter, we uploaded the file of the revised manuscript. Please find our itemized responses in below and our revisions in the re-submitted files.
Point 1: The paper has been completely rewritten and can be accepted after minor revision.
Response 1: We are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. Thank you for your recognition of our research. We have further rewritten the Abstract. Adjust the conceptual framework diagram to section 2.3. To facilitate the reader's better understanding of our conceptual framework. Section 3.2 has been changed to Research Design. Describes how we designed this study. We have merged 3.2. Questionnaire Design and 3.3. Data collection into a single section. New subsection 3.3 for Data collection. Structural equation models are usually tested arithmetically using AMOS and SPSS. In AMOS, we use Maximum Likelihood for Discrepancy. We add its introduction and formulae in section 3.4.
About other improvements, we have rearranged the order of the pictures and tables. Several references have been added and rearranged.
We are very grateful for your professional and detailed review. Your advice is essential to us.
We would like also to thank you for allowing us to resubmit a revised copy of the manuscript.
We hope that the revised manuscript is accepted for publication in this Journal.
Sincerely yours,
All the authors of the manuscript
