Circular Economy in Mexico’s Electronic and Cell Phone Industry: Recent Evidence of Consumer Behavior

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Your presentation is clear and relevant for Mexico.

From my point of view, you can include if you want some facts such as:

• EE waste is the fastest growing category of waste in the World.
• Annual sale of mobile phones is measured in billions.
• If Mexico is part of Climate Neutrality agreements or aspires to become, it would be beneficially to mention it, because this policy can add to that.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1, please find the attachment with the point by point responses.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I have read your manuscript and found the consumer behaviour role of high interest for the readers. Circular economy and smart phones are highly discussed in literature and I was missing more references here. Of course not all manuscripts are related to Mexico but somehow all consumer use the same phone. What makes the situation in Mexico and the Mexican consumer so special? I am convinced, that there can be some parallels found. However, your case study and the interviews are of interest to readers throughout the world as we all face the same problem of using a smart phone too shortly.

I start with my comment beginning with chapter 1.

Line 28 : Circular Economy is not a model, it is a strategy.

Line 44 to 48: Starting with: "To prove this..." This belongs to the description of the case study and is obsolete here. As this is repeated later anyway it can be deleted.

Chapter 2:

The literature review for CE in general is a bit poor and can be extended. Please keep in mind that the EU pushes their Green Deal very hard at the moment and that Circular Economy plays a big role here. See also the EU document: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_420

In addition, there are also Smart phone suppliers that are already performing a CE like shift- or fairphone. However, even providing a CE product they still have the problem of having enough consumers. This fits to the paragraph where fixit is mentioned (line 152).

Figure 1: Please add "in Mexico" in the title, as the EU figure would not look like this.

Your literature study focussed strongly on Mexico. What makes the Mexican consumer different from other Latin American countries? Please describe or search for more references.

Table 1: What is the date doing in the title (June 24th 2020)? It is included in the table anyway and can be deleted. I must admit, that one day google scholar search is a bit to less to serve in a high quality journal . In addition, the search should be also performed in scopus or other search engines. The table itself is too extensive and the description for each article can be deleted as the keywords are given. Please search for other review articles as most of them are only referring to the keywords. 

Chapter 3:

This chapter (line 195 ff) starts with a big gap here. There is no junction with the previous chapter and a stand alone chapter. Please adjust.

It would be nice to add the questionnaire as supplementary information.

Line 199: I don't understand where the 50 questions come from and why they are reduced to 33 and on what basis? Table 2 shows only 19 questions. This is inconsistent.

Line 205: Is the "intelligent" system Census Pro not a software?

The survey as such and the description is good and of interest for the readers. But it still needs to be integrated into the literature review and the following discussion.

In chapter 5 you mention the "international experience" in line 373. Please give reference.

In addition repair and recycling is already existent. But still CE is not properly working. What needs to be done?

Chapter 6, Line 459 : What do you mean with no alliances between universities and manufacturers? In Mexico? Worldwide? Why should manufacturers do this? They have enough customers already.

I recommend to revise the manuscript with major changes to be suitable for publication.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2, please find the attachment with the point by point responses.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article titled, "Circular Economy in Mexico’s Electronic and Cell Phone Industry: Recent Evidence of Consumer Behavior" indicates that there is a growing demand to move towards a more circular production and consumption cycle to reduce the negative effects of linear models. The article can be published with the following revisions:

A qualitative and quantitative e-waste generation at the current level without the circularity is essential to understand the problem

circularity available at the current level

Proper validity of the questionnaire listed in Table 2 is required

A short description of the economic impact is beneficial for making such a decision.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3, please find the attachment with the point by point responses.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have read the changes in the manuscript and the paper has substantially improved. Good work.

Author Response

We appreciate your comment.