Sustainable Consumption and Residents’ Happiness: An Empirical Analysis Based on the 2021 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS2021)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have enjoyed reading this paper. The authors have drawn upon a substantial primary data set to undertake some valuable quantitative analysis. The language is very good, and offers clarity and precision on the whole, with some specified requests for further precision and detail. Please consult the attached paper for more detailed embedded comments. I have advised:

 - Some acknowledgement of the limits of the measures of sustainable consumption adopted here

- Some correction of grammatic error

- Some call for further support from the literature in places, to situate or authorise the claims made

- Some limited call for terms to be more sharply defined, or sometimes defined where they currently are not

- Some avoidance of generalisation, where the literature suggests a more nuanced picture

- Some further reflection on what the data findings 'mean' in terms of the implications for sustainable consumption and happiness, within the conclusion. There is some scope to augment this

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English is of a very good standard

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We hope this message finds you in good spirits.

Thank you for your thorough review and valuable suggestions. Your insights have been incredibly helpful in improving our manuscript. We have carefully revised the paper according to your comments and have prepared a point-by-point response, which is attached for your reference.

Your constructive critique has helped us refine our manuscript and give us a deeper understanding of the subject matter. We sincerely appreciate your guidance and hope the revised manuscript meets your expectations.

Thank you again for your valuable contribution to our research.

We wish you all the best in your work and personal life.

Warm regards,

JingGuang Guo and ChengLai Yang

September 19, 2024

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The current manuscript,  Sustainable Consumption and Residents' Happiness: An Em-2 pirical Analysis Based on the 2021 Chinese Comprehensive So-3 cial Survey (CGSS), is written and presented with some details in the research steps and results. Some points are required to improve or clarify:

 

1. What are the main contributions of the research carried out? Your paper does not make it clear to me or to potential readers of the review what your unique contribution to the literature is. You need to motivate more clearly and rewrite wherever possible using simple economic intuitions.

2.Please provide more details about the data. For example, based on the results in Tables 1 and 2, if the coefficients of variation are calculated, we find very high values ​​of this indicator for several variables, which indicate extreme values, the lack of representativeness of the descriptive statistical indicators, the lack of homogeneity and possibly normality. Do the estimation methods used take into account these descriptive statistical characteristics of the variables?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We hope this message finds you in good spirits.

Thank you for your thorough review and valuable suggestions. Your insights have been incredibly helpful in improving our manuscript. We have carefully revised the paper according to your comments and have prepared a point-by-point response, which is attached for your reference.

Your constructive critique has helped us refine our manuscript and give us a deeper understanding of the subject matter. We sincerely appreciate your guidance and hope the revised manuscript meets your expectations.

Thank you again for your valuable contribution to our research.

We wish you all the best in your work and personal life.

Warm regards,

JinGuang Guo and ChengLai Yang

September 19, 2024

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors, 

 

It was a pleasure to review your manuscript. While timely, I believe there are areas which need improvement before considering your work for publication.

 

Your introduction lends itself to more of a literature review. The introduction should engage the reader and highlight what is current going on to entice research on the phenomenon. Thus, providing justification for the research. I would consider reworking this and moving some parts (e.g., lines 47-91) to the review of literature. 

 

There are statements throughout that need to be cited. Please ensure all facts are cited in the manuscript.

 

The research would benefit from the addition of hypotheses since you are testing relationships between variables. Thus, adding additional sections in the literature review to define the variable, support for the proposed relationships, and relations to this study is needed.

 

The methods lack reliability and validity measures, thus, a major limitation to the analysis. Please conduct the appropriate analysis and report reliability and validity measures.

 

You completed analysis on various groups, but this was not communicated until the methods and results. Please make sure you are communicating your full research purpose in the introduction (and throughout) and adding support. 

 

It would be helpful for the reader to see a visual representation of your model.

 

The conclusions are superficial at this point. What is the “so what” of these supported relationships? How does previous literature support or disagree with your findings? How can industry really use your findings? 

 

The manuscript does not contain implications (academic, theoretical, industry) as well as limitations and future research opportunities. This must be addressed. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript required editing as there were many typos and errors throughout. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We hope this message finds you in good spirits.

Thank you for your thorough review and valuable suggestions. Your insights have been incredibly helpful in improving our manuscript. We have carefully revised the paper according to your comments and have prepared a point-by-point response, which is attached for your reference.

Your constructive critique has helped us refine our manuscript and give us a deeper understanding of the subject matter. We sincerely appreciate your guidance and hope the revised manuscript meets your expectations.

Thank you again for your valuable contribution to our research.

We wish you all the best in your work and personal life.

Warm regards,

JinGuang Guo and ChengLai Yang

September 19, 2024

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

congratulations on your research. After reading the work with interest we can formulate the following recommendations:

- - although the present paper realizes an analysis of the proposed context as a result of a bibliographical selection, we consider that some additions to the selected references are useful for a more complex and complementary approach with similar studies that have been conducted not only in the geographical area investigated (China) but also to other countries. This could identify trends or aspects that may strengthen the subsequent conclusions by adding similarities or differences to the mentioned results already presented.

- As far as methodology is concerned, we consider that there are missing elements related to the analysis construction, such as: the definition of research hypotheses/research questions and their correlation with the final results presented and their implications in relation with potential policies in the field.

- some details of the study that generated the data are missing - clearer definition of the sample, how it was constructed ....etc.

- the conclusions do not mention the limitations of the present undertaken analysis nor the potential directions for expanding the research 

- we recommend to complete the bibliography with more models recent bibliography (within a time horizon of maximum 5 years)

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We hope this message finds you in good spirits.

Thank you for your thorough review and valuable suggestions. Your insights have been incredibly helpful in improving our manuscript. We have carefully revised the paper according to your comments and have prepared a point-by-point response, which is attached for your reference.

Your constructive critique has helped us refine our manuscript and give us a deeper understanding of the subject matter. We sincerely appreciate your guidance and hope the revised manuscript meets your expectations.

Thank you again for your valuable contribution to our research.

We wish you all the best in your work and personal life.

Warm regards,

JinGuang Guo and ChengLai Yang

September 19, 2024

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Accept in present form

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you for your high-quality comments and valuable, constructive suggestions on our manuscript. We deeply admire your professionalism, insightful feedback, and exemplary academic style. Your review comments have played a crucial role in improving our manuscript. You have become a co-creator of our manuscript in many ways, as your input has significantly enhanced its quality.

Thank you again for your valuable contribution to our research.

We wish you all the best in your work and personal life.

Warm regards,

Jinguang Guo and Chenglai Yang

September 30, 2024

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would like to commend the authors for their efforts in addressing my previous comments in my first review. I believe the manuscript has improved, but I still have some hesitations especially with the overall organization and structure of the paper. 

First, thank you for adding hypotheses. However, the structure is a bit odd to me. It is recommended to create subheadings in the review of literature in which introduces/defines the variable, provides existing research to support the hypothesize relationship, and the rationale for this study and the hypothesis. The section should end with the authors hypothesis. This should be repeated for all hypotheses. 

I also recommended a visual representation of the model with the hypotheses and with the results. I still believe this will be helpful for the readers. 

Finally, the conclusions are improved but are not supported by the results or existing literature. In addition, it may be beneficial to add subheadings to address theoretical implications, practical implications, limitation, and future research.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English has improved.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you for your high-quality comments and valuable, constructive suggestions on our manuscript. We deeply admire your professionalism, insightful feedback, and exemplary academic style. Your review comments have played a crucial role in improving our manuscript. You have become a co-creator of our manuscript in many ways, as your input has significantly enhanced its quality.

We thoroughly analyzed and initiated a comprehensive revision process upon receiving your valuable feedback. We have now completed these revisions in line with your detailed suggestions. We sincerely hope the improvements made in this revised version will meet your expectations and satisfy you.

For detailed revision content, please refer to the attached document.

Thank you again for your valuable contribution to our research.

We wish you all the best in your work and personal life.

Warm regards,

Jinguang Guo and Chenglai Yang

September 30, 2024

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Distinguished authors,

thank you for your efforts in responding to our suggestions and recommendations.

We wish you much success in your research and all the best!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We sincerely thank you for your high-quality comments and valuable, constructive suggestions on our manuscript. We deeply admire your professionalism, insightful feedback, and exemplary academic style. Your review comments have played a crucial role in improving our manuscript. You have become a co-creator of our manuscript in many ways, as your input has significantly enhanced its quality.

Thank you again for your valuable contribution to our research.

We wish you all the best in your work and personal life.

Warm regards,

Jinguang Guo and Chenglai Yang

September 30, 2024

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you to the authors for their additional edits to their manuscript. The manuscript is improved and organized well. Thank you again!