National Differences in Age and Future-Oriented Indicators Relate to Environmental Performance
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Attached please find the comments.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attached PDF for our revisions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
This paper builds on prior research by Hershfield et al. (2014) showing that a country's age predicts its environmental performance, with older countries exhibiting greater concern and more sustainable practices. The authors replicate this finding but go further to investigate whether additional national characteristics related to taking a long-term, future-oriented perspective might account for this link, beyond a country's age alone.
In particular, they examine how a country's tendency towards long-term orientation, intergenerational solidarity, and ability to overcome temporal discounting (prioritizing immediate rewards) relate to various environmental outcomes. Results indicate these factors do significantly predict outcomes like environmental performance, climate concern, and ecological threat, sometimes over and above effects of national age.
Overall, this paper makes an important contribution to the literature on national-level factors influencing environmental attitudes and policy. The authors build nicely on previous findings linking a country's age to sustainability outcomes, offering additional predictors tied to future-oriented national traits. Their analyses largely support the premise that considering cross-country variability in intertemporal perspective, beyond age alone, can further account for variability in environmental performance and concern.
The paper is also thorough in its measurement of constructs and testing of different predictive models across a range of indicators. The discussion situates the results well within broader rising conversations in environmental ethics and policy regarding responsibilities toward future generations and the effectiveness of intergenerational framing.
However, as with any ambitious cross-country investigation, there are also clear limitations that point to important next directions. Continued efforts are needed to address issues around robustness and causality through multi-level modeling, experimental studies, and longitudinal datasets. Testing specific temporal framing interventions requires translating these macro-level insights into psychological processes playing out within a given societal context. Integrating both cross-national patterns and individual-level mechanisms will offer the strongest foundation for leveraging future-oriented perspective taking to motivate environmental action across the globe.
While refinements remain, this research makes laudable strides toward elucidating the complex societal dynamics shaping environmental priorities and performance around the world. It highlights potentially potent tools policymakers could deploy in the service of sustainability. The authors chart a persuasive roadmap for this continued work to which they have made key initial contributions.
Here are some of my comments about this paper:
1. The introduction lacks a clear statement of the research questions and hypotheses being tested (lines 45-47). The hypotheses are scattered throughout the introduction and could be more clearly outlined.
2. The conceptual replication of Hershfield et al. (2014) in Table 2 does not include confidence intervals around the beta estimates. Confidence intervals would help determine if the effects are robust.
3. The exploratory analysis in Table 3 should be labeled as such since it is not pre-registered. Referring to it as "exploratory" would clarify that it is meant to guide hypothesis generation rather than draw strong statistical inferences.
4. In the main preregistered analysis in Table 4, no correction for multiple testing is applied across the 18 models. This substantially increases the chances of false positive findings. Some kind of multiple testing correction would be advisable.
5. The model in Table 4 testing the effect of national age on EPI Change finds a significant effect when age is the sole predictor, but the effect becomes non-significant once LTO is added to the model. This pattern suggests the age effect may not replicate and more research is needed to understand its impact.
6. The intercorrelations between LTO, ISI, and OTD reported in Table 1 raise the issue of multicollinearity. Future research with larger samples should examine the degree to which these constructs provide independent explanatory power.
7. The study is correlational, preventing causal claims about how enhancing future-oriented thinking would affect environmental performance at a national level (lines 397-401). Experimental or longitudinal data are needed to support causal arguments.
8. Geographic and cultural similarity between nations are noted as important controls, but analyses incorporating them had to be dropped due to limitations in computing resources (lines 407-411). Obtaining the necessary computing power should be a high priority.
9. The discussion notes that findings only pertain to the national level, but evidence exists linking future-oriented thinking to environmentalism at an individual level (lines 417-420). Explicitly testing a multilevel model mapping the connections across levels would strengthen the analysis.
10. The conclusion argues these findings support using future-oriented framing interventions to motivate environmental concern (lines 429-431), but the data themselves do not directly test intervention effects. Additional experimental research manipulating temporal framing within nations is critical.
Author Response
See the attached document for our revisions and responses to the reviewer's comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Environmental concerns inherently involve an intergenerational aspect, where todays decisions and sacrifices, often with uncertain future benefits, can have far-reaching effects on countless future generations. This is a very interesting study from this perspective. However, there are many aspects that need to be optimized and improved. Details as follows:
Abstract: This part needs to be improved, just a few words about the significance of the study is enough. The focus should be on summarizing and condensing the research findings and conclusions of this article. The findings of Hershfield and colleagues can be put into the text.
Materials and Methods: What is the basis for doing sensitivity analyses? “The collated dataset encompasses information from 204 countries pertinent to our research objectives. Specifically, 61 countries provided scores for the temporal discounting predictor (Overcome Temporal Discounting), 101 countries for the Long-Term Orientation index, and 118 countries for the Intergenerational Solidarity.” Is this because the sample of dataset is not complete?
Results: The correlation betweenGDP and Greenhouse Gas Emissions reached 0.951. Is this a reasonable result? The figure in the paper is not very clear, it is impossible to judge whether it is reasonable. However, the authors need to consider the standardization among indicators.
Discussion: This part is well written, but the whole article lacks the conclusion.
Author Response
See the attached document for our revisions and responses to the reviewer's comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
National Differences in Age and Future-Oriented Indicators 2 Relate to Environmental Performance
sustainability-2786759
Reviewer 11 Dec. 2023
Dear Authors,
Your manuscript is important to the highly popularized concept of a sustainable world. You are trying to show, among other things, the influence of generations, as well as the Gott principle, that is ok, but I have a few remarks to make about your work:
Remark 1: structure of your works: Why is not a concussion in your paper?
Remark 2: keywords: please add: Gott’s principle
Remark 3: Why the Gott’s princples are so important for us (according to Hershfield et al [11]). Please add the arguments in your introduction
Remark 4: structure again: Why your introduction has subsections? I don’t understand your concept. For me the Introduction should not have subsections. We should add a new section for example: Theoretical framework or Theoretical background. In the new section the lines from 54 to 201 should be added.
Remark 5: references: pleases odd yourself reverences, no so much, see references: 78-81.
"Business Models for Sustainable Consumption in the Circular Economy"
The good section in your paper is results Congranulations
Best wishes
Reviewer
Author Response
See the attached document for our revisions and responses to the reviewer's comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
All the questions have been answered satisfactorily. I think the manuscript can be published in its present form.
Author Response
Please see the attached document for our revisions.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
I think the paper was developed in the right manner. but One area where the manuscript could be improved is being more explicit about the incremental contribution over the original Hershfield et al. (2014) paper in the Introduction. While the authors note that they are expanding on the previous work, the specific advancements are scattered throughout the Introduction and could be more clearly highlighted upfront.
For example, the Introduction would benefit from directly stating early on how the current paper builds on Hershfield et al. by:
1) Replicating the findings in a larger sample of countries and with additional environmental outcomes (p. 4, lines 39-40).
2) Examining additional predictors related to national intertemporal perspective - LTO, ISI, and OTD - which theoretically could account for effects above and beyond just country age (p. 4, lines 79-84).
3) Controlling for the same set of covariates (GDP and governance indicators) but integrating the new future-oriented predictors into the models alongside age to assess their potential explanatory power (p. 5, lines 186-191).
Laying this framework out explicitly in the opening paragraphs would help define the value-added of the current investigation and research questions vis-à-vis what was previously done by Hershfield and colleagues on this topic. It would strengthen the conceptual framing and highlight the incremental advances put forth by the authors' study.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
I think the paper was developed in the right manner. but One area where the manuscript could be improved is being more explicit about the incremental contribution over the original Hershfield et al. (2014) paper in the Introduction. While the authors note that they are expanding on the previous work, the specific advancements are scattered throughout the Introduction and could be more clearly highlighted upfront.
For example, the Introduction would benefit from directly stating early on how the current paper builds on Hershfield et al. by:
1) Replicating the findings in a larger sample of countries and with additional environmental outcomes (p. 4, lines 39-40).
2) Examining additional predictors related to national intertemporal perspective - LTO, ISI, and OTD - which theoretically could account for effects above and beyond just country age (p. 4, lines 79-84).
3) Controlling for the same set of covariates (GDP and governance indicators) but integrating the new future-oriented predictors into the models alongside age to assess their potential explanatory power (p. 5, lines 186-191).
Laying this framework out explicitly in the opening paragraphs would help define the value-added of the current investigation and research questions vis-à-vis what was previously done by Hershfield and colleagues on this topic. It would strengthen the conceptual framing and highlight the incremental advances put forth by the authors' study.
Author Response
Please see the attached document for our revisions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The manuscript has been revised and improved. The theoretical basis is written in detail, and the logic is carefully examined before considering publication.
Author Response
Please see the attached document for our revisions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
