Participatory Policy Packaging for Transport Backcasting: A Pathway for Reducing CO₂ Emissions from Transport in Malta

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper describes interviews and a citizen workshop conducted by the authors. Both are aimed at identifying policy interventions to reduce emissions from transport in Malta.

1.    Please rewrite the abstract focussing more a specific conclusions and contributions of the paper as opposed to wage descriptions of methodologies. If you focus mainly on the methodology, then I would assume that the paper is about advancing such a methodology. However, this does not seem to be the case.
2.    What is the reason behind the lines 96 to 103?  “The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why 96 it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current 97 state of the research field should be carefully reviewed and key publications cited. Please 98 highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists outside your particular 101 field of research. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by 102 a numeral or numerals in square brackets—e.g., [1] or [2,3], or [4–6]. See the end of the 103 document for further details on references”
3.    While the authors have included a literature review in this paper, the paper completely lacks a review of past literature which identifies gaps in the research and explains how this paper is addressing these gaps.
4.    Please list 3-5 specific research questions. Justify why these are a gap in the literature and explain how you have addressed these.
5.    You use workshop participants and interviews as the base of your research. I have found how many interviews you had, 14 and 21. However, I do lack such details for the workshop. Also, were all workshop participants there at the same time, or were they split into groups?
6.    I do appreciate that you may not have a high enough number of participants to use any meaningful quantitative statistics to underline the findings of your study. However, you should be able to use qualitative methodologies. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files as an attachment.

 

Reviewer’s Comments	Author’s response
1.    Please rewrite the abstract focussing more a specific conclusions and contributions of the paper as opposed to wage descriptions of methodologies. If you focus mainly on the methodology, then I would assume that the paper is about advancing such a methodology. However, this does not seem to be the case.	Agreed, the abstract was rewritten
2.    What is the reason behind the lines 96 to 103?  “The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why 96 it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current 97 state of the research field should be carefully reviewed and key publications cited. Please 98 highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists outside your particular 101 field of research. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by 102 a numeral or numerals in square brackets—e.g., [1] or [2,3], or [4–6]. See the end of the 103 document for further details on references	This paragraph was removed
3.    While the authors have included a literature review in this paper, the paper completely lacks a review of past literature which identifies gaps in the research and explains how this paper is addressing these gaps	The literature review revisited to identify gaps in research which are addressed by this paper
4.    Please list 3-5 specific research questions. Justify why these are a gap in the literature and explain how you have addressed these.	Listed three objectives in the introduction that address the gaps in research
5.    You use workshop participants and interviews as the base of your research. I have found how many interviews you had, 14 and 21. However, I do lack such details for the workshop. Also, were all workshop participants there at the same time, or were they split into groups?	Included the number of participants for the workshop
6.    I do appreciate that you may not have a high enough number of participants to use any meaningful quantitative statistics to underline the findings of your study. However, you should be able to use qualitative methodologies.	Qualitative methodologies have been used to analyze both the data from the interview and the workshop

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to read your manuscript. It contains a lot of interesting information, but what needs to be improved?

1. This appears to be part of some larger study that has been done, as the abstract and introduction state different objectives.

2. The theoretical justification is weak because other issues are not considered. instruments of participatory governance. Authors must join the global body of knowledge. Inspiration can be found here: Vitálišová, K., Dvořák, J. (2023). Differences and Similarities in Local Participative Governance in Slovakia and Lithuania. In: Rouet, G., Côme, T. (eds) Participatory and Digital Democracy at the Local Level. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20943-7_8

3. It is not clear who is the author of the paintings and tables.

4. It is not clear why the case of Malta was chosen, what the selection criteria were, and what alternatives were considered.

5. It is not clear how the respondents were selected, what the selection criteria were, or how many were planned to be interviewed.

6. Table 4.1 should be moved to appendices.

7. Conclusions are weak

All the best

 

Author Response

Participatory Policy Packing for Transport Backcasting: A Pathway for Reducing CO₂ Emissions from Transport in Malta

 

 

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files.

 

 

Reviewer’s Comments	Author’s response
1. This appears to be part of some larger study that has been done, as the abstract and introduction state different objectives.	Revisited the introduction and abstract to better place the study in context
2. The theoretical justification is weak because other issues are not considered. instruments of participatory governance. Authors must join the global body of knowledge. Inspiration can be found here: Vitálišová, K., Dvořák, J. (2023). Differences and Similarities in Local Participative Governance in Slovakia and Lithuania. In: Rouet, G., Côme, T. (eds) Participatory and Digital Democracy at the Local Level. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20943-7_8	Literature review revisited to identify gaps in research which are addressed by this paper
3. It is not clear who is the author of the paintings and tables.	Included authors of pictures and tables
4. It is not clear why the case of Malta was chosen, what the selection criteria were, and what alternatives were considered.	Added justification in the Introduction and Methodology to justify the case study
5. It is not clear how the respondents were selected, what the selection criteria were, or how many were planned to be interviewed.	Included further data on how the respondents were selected
6. Table 4.1 should be moved to appendices.	This will be changed later
7. Conclusions are weak	Revised conclusions

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents a backcasting approach to transition Malta's transport sector towards low-carbon operations. They first vision three sustainable transport scenarios, then identify policy measures based on a review of academic articles, policy papers and experiences. Second, the policy measures were grouped into packages and a survey methodology coupled with semi-structured interviews were performed to establish the policy pathways. Thirdly, these pathways were refined based on citizens’ opinion.

The involvement of various stakeholders is meaningful, and the results can inform the transport sector in Malta for policy revision. There are some aspects that require attention to strengthen the paper:

1.     The novel contributions of this paper are not sufficiently distinguished from existing literature. There are already some publications involve both stakeholder and technical assessments. A more in-depth review is necessary.

2.     The inclusion of quantitative data or methods, such as weighting factors, life cycle assessments, or multi-criteria decision analysis, would consolidate the policy measures proposed.

3.     How can the Malta's findings be adapted for other regions? Detailing the transferability of your approach.

4.     Line 96-104: Please remove this paragraph.

5.     Line 105: It is unclear whether the theoretical framework is original or adapted from another source. Please clarify.

6.     Figure 2. Alternative future narratives: Please address the potential trade-off between IT infrastructure's role in reducing carbon emissions and its impact on reducing opportunities for physical activities, such as walking to the market (and its health benefits).

7.     Table 4-1: There is a repetition of the tax increase on fossil fuels in both Policy package 1 - High Tech Mobility and Policy package 3 - Green Active Travel.

Author Response

Participatory Policy Packing for Transport Backcasting: A Pathway for Reducing CO₂ Emissions from Transport in Malta

 

 

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files as attached.

 

 

 

Reviewer’s Comments	Author’s response
1.     The novel contributions of this paper are not sufficiently distinguished from existing literature. There are already some publications involve both stakeholder and technical assessments. A more in-depth review is necessary.	The novelty in this research is the application of theory of social practices with a backcasting method
2.     The inclusion of quantitative data or methods, such as weighting factors, life cycle assessments, or multi-criteria decision analysis, would consolidate the policy measures proposed.	Added a section in the discussion on assessment of policy measures
3.     How can the Malta's findings be adapted for other regions? Detailing the transferability of your approach.	Added a section in the discussion on transferability of the results
4.     Line 96-104: Please remove this paragraph.	The paragraph was removed
5.     Line 105: It is unclear whether the theoretical framework is original or adapted from another source. Please clarify.	Literature review revisited
6.     Figure 2. Alternative future narratives: Please address the potential trade-off between IT infrastructure's role in reducing carbon emissions and its impact on reducing opportunities for physical activities, such as walking to the market (and its health benefits).	The purpose of the study is to design policy pathways rather than assess their impact. This this could be done in future studies.
7.     Table 4-1: There is a repetition of the tax increase on fossil fuels in both Policy package 1 - High Tech Mobility and Policy package 3 - Green Active Travel.	There is some over-lap between the policies which were included for the different visions.  Some policies may work for different visions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper has been improved sufficiently.

It would have been much easier if you would have copied what you have changed into your response or at least stated where I can find this in the paper.


for example, your response was: "Included the number of participants for the workshop" but where did you add it?

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It can be accepted in the current form.