To Mitigate or Adapt? Explaining Why Citizens Responding to Climate Change Favour the Former

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I congratulate the authors for the high quality research they have conducted and the well-written manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1.

We are grateful for the positive evaluation of our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article presents an interesting local (Malmoe, Sweden) case study of perceptions that affect which actions people take related to their perception of climate-change related risks. The title of the article suggests that measures to mitigate climate change are undertaken more often than adaptation measures, which is interesting and challenging. One of the helpful insights from the paper is the role of risk perception and risk tolerance of people who were surveyed in affecting measures they undertook. A challenge the paper raises is that belief in local impacts of climate change appears to be a necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for decision making. Because many if not most of the climate change impacts that are expected to manifest lie in the future decades and even centuries, these findings are important (and provocative).

The authors should consider:

• revising the discussion section where adaptation and mitigation measures seem to presented as either/or. There is a significant literature exploring the co-benefits of adaptation and mitigation
• the discussion puts forth guidelines for communication about adaptation and mitigation which appear almost identical. This gives the reader the impression of either wishing for more explanation and depth, or wondering if there is any difference between the way public authorities (or science? or media??? also not clear who does the communication and how) communicate about mitigation and adaptation. More questions are raised than answered--in the next iteration of the draft the authors could provide more specific insights.
• The final sentences in the conclusion could actually be brought  up into the discussion section and unpack it more.
• Provide more depth in the discussion, and use the conclusion to link back to the big picture so that the readers do not end on a too-general-to use closing note.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The publication needs to address why the analysis methods deployed were chosen? What are the benefits (multivariable analysis) and limitations.

Also, decide on the representativeness of the statistical sampling, local, regional, global?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The title still suggests that, in public (or private or mixed) responses to climate change adaptation and mitigation are mutually exclusive ("to mitigate OR adapt"). In reality and in policy this is not the case. Its not clear in this second review if there is something fundamental (how the authors framed the research question) and / or methodological that continues to make this issue problematic for the paper. At a local level, authorities have limited public budgets and do need to make specific decisions in specific timeframes to respond to an array of climate change impacts (or other demands at a municipal level). A general conclusion issuing from the paper framing and methods design seems to be "people require first-hand experience with some kind of weather disruption" in order to show preference for a given type of (public) response. But the conclusions are so broad as not to be very helpful or applicable to other spatial areas. Mitigation encompasses hundreds of approaches (if not more, many of which have implications for climate change disruption, exposure, and vulnerability), while adaptation encompasses possibly uncountable numbers of approaches. To add to the literature on either mitigation or adaptation or both, the paper would ideally provide more specifics and depth of insight. It can be a contribution from the perspective of a local case study, but would be more valuable if it could be made more insightful as described above.

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf