Planning and Perceptions: Exploring Municipal Officials’ Views on Residents’ Climate Preparedness

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper examines Swedish municipal officials’ views of citizens’ climate crisis preparedness and the motives and barriers they perceive that citizens have about developing this preparedness. An interview study is conducted with 23 officials in five municipalities.

Overall, the paper is an executive analysis, but the findings are valuable and have implications for both China and Europe.

Finally, it is suggested that drawing an overall explanatory framework will help readers to intuitively grasp the core findings of the research.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English of this article is academic English, which is easy to understand and does not need much polishing.

Author Response

Thank you for the comments.

• In our revision, we have made explicit connections to our framework (risk governance) in the discussion and the conclusion sections.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This reviewer thanks the authors for their study exploring municipal officials’ views on residents’ climate preparedness.

The paper is well organised, engagingly written, and has substantive input to the efforts to move society to a sustainable climate action perspective. The reviewer enjoyed reading the paper and learned a lot.

This reviewer thinks that the separate section describing the theoretical approach is a very useful way to bring clarity to the paper. This section is numbered ‘2’ (line 97) as is the Materials and Methods section (and so on) – heading renumbering is needed.

The term ‘explorative’ to describe the methodological framework for the paper needs expansion – the term has specific meaning for Environmental Sociologists, but the general term needs further explanation for other readers. Perhaps the formal framework of a Case Study is helpful. At least the authors might pull out a methodology justification from the references noted in lines 163/4.

 

In Thematic Analysis, the process of code evolution and iteration as the body of knowledge is explored is important. The methods section (arguably) might be assisted by describing that process undertaken by the authors and noting in a table the finalised set of codes used for the analysis – or at least identifying that TA/NVivo codes are noted in the following tables of the paper.

Author Response

Thank you for these comments.

• We have changed the numbering of the Material and method section so that it is now correct.
• We have included information (in section 1 and 3) that this is a case study (“explorative case study”) and provided more information about the research design of the study (including the extent to which it is possible to draw more general conclusions from it).
• In section 3, we have included information about the coding process, which codes that were constructed (14 codes and 21 sub-codes), and which codes/sub-codes that were used in the analysis.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.      In the "Introduction" section, authors need to present the contributions provided by the research better.

2.      In the Materials and Methods Section, the authors need to present more details about the sample so that the reader can be more confident regarding the accuracy of the information. For example, they work at a managerial or operational level, dealing directly with citizens. Furthermore, the authors must present more information about the data collection process, especially regarding the questionnaire. Note that the authors state that "the interviews were semistructured." What questions were answered by everyone?

3.      Lines 178 to 183 – The authors cite three categories but present four. What do the numbers "(n=1)" and "(n=2)" mean?

4.      Line 337 – I couldn't find Appendix Table 1, Table 2, and Figure 1.

5.      The Conclusion section must be positioned after the Discussion section.

6.      In lines 503 and 504, the authors state, "This study is explorative, and it is not possible to draw general conclusions from it, for easily transfer its result to other contexts." And what about the context of the cities where the respondents work?

7.      In lines 94 to 96, the authors state, "we explore meaning-making rationality and discuss the effects it may have on risk governance in practice." The effects on risk governance in practice need to be better discussed in the Discussion section

8.      In the Conclusion section, the authors should better highlight the main contributions of the research and recommendations for future works.

Author Response

 Thank you for the comments.

1. We have tried to make our contribution clearer by including information about the contribution of the paper in the abstract, the introduction (section 1), discussion and conclusion sections (sections 4-5).
2. In the method section (section 3), we have included more information about the data collection, why two municipalities were selected from one of the four categories (rural municipalities). The supplementary material also includes the interview guide (all its topics were discussed in the interviews).
3. We have rewritten this information (N referred to the number of municipalities, but we have now explained it in words).
4. We have deleted this sentence; it was outdated information (we decided in a late stage to include the tables in the main text but forgot to delete this information).
5. We changed the positions of Conclusion and Discussion sections; the Discussion section is now the fourth section discussing the results, and the Conclusion section is the fifth section discussing what can be learned from this case study.
6. We have rewritten this sentence, now discussing in terms of lessons to be learned from the case studied. We have chosen not to give detailed information about the context of the studied municipalities, because our aim is not to say what results are transferable but what important issues of wider relevance the studied case brings up.
7. The Discussion and Conclusion sections now contain about 400 words more, where we have better linked these sections to the framework (risk governance).
8. We have revised and made explicit the contribution of the paper, both in the Conclusion section and in other parts (see #1 above).

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

All mentioned issues have been addressed. My decision is Approved

With kind regards,