Research on the Spatial and Temporal Differences in Public Response to Release-Type Communication to Stop Food Waste
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review of paper – Research on the spatial and temporal differences in public response to release type communication to stop food waste
Summary:
- There is a considerable failure by the authors to review relevant literature that has discussed attitudes and behaviours towards public facing food waste campaign material. Also literature that has discussed consumer food waste attitudes and behaviours in China.
- The methodology does not account for the limitations of attributing knowledge of consumer food waste behaviours on data linked to attitudes and intensions
- The findings are well presented and well described. There are some genially interesting points around the spatial variance in the change in emotive language towards food waste.
- In the findings more detail could be given on the nature of the data recorded, such as if different wording around stopping or reducing or preventing food waste is being used – such as different strategies.
- The discussion lacks citations of relevant studies on public perceptions of food waste campaigns.
- Some of the points made in the discussion do not bring any novel contributions to the literature
Some of the points made in the discussion do not make sense, or the writing is not in a form eloquent enough to properly discuss the intricacies of data and its wider relevance
Abstract
- Not clear why there is a need to research release-type communication - Yes it is a common way to guide the public to reduce food waste – but what is the potential of this research pursuit?
- More details of the implications could be given
1. Introduction
- Why is reducing food waste an important part of China’s food security?
- Lack of academic references in lines 27 to 36 – Cite papers that have discussed food waste in China.
- Great explanation of Release type information and its potential, as well as its shaping factors.
- Line 53 – What do you mean by psychological conflict? Further explanation required.
- Line 58 to 2 – What are you considering here as a change that can ‘stop food waste’? Is this a food waste reduction or food waste prevention?
- Line 61 to 74 – There is a considerable lack of discussion here if attitude related literature to food waste reduction and prevention. The literature reference does not specific relate to wastage or food behaviours – Section needs to be updated to take into account the mass of literature that has consider food waste attitudes and behaviours.
- Line 75 to 76 – What is dynamic response and trend? I don’t think this makes sense
- Lines 76 to 83 – Again why are papers that address food waste not being referenced here? See for example:
- Hao, Na, Yi Zhang, Huashu Wang, and H. Holly Wang. 2022. "Which Consumer Perceptions Should Be Used in Food Waste Reduction Campaigns: Food Security, Food Safety or Environmental Concerns?" Sustainability 14, no. 4: 2010. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14042010
- Kim, J. et al (2020) Consumer perspectives on household food waste reduction campaigns. Journal of Cleaner Production. 243
- Line 86 – The paper starts to discussed Empirical mode decomposition – why is this relevant to the paper – signposting is needed
- Line 95 – what do you mean by ‘law of the evolution?’
- Line 100 – “therefore, there are also differences in attitudes towards things” – rather stating the obvious? What about attitudes towards food waste? – Cite papers that have discussed this
- Line 106 – What is the attitude reaction mode of public attention? Can you explain this further? Reference?
2. Research Design and Data processing
- Line 122 to 123 – The paper must acknowledge the considerable limitations of using data on attitudes and intensions as a prediction of the real life food waste behaviours. These have been documented in great detail, see:
- Aschemann-Witzel, J., De Hooge, I., Amani, P., Bech-Larsen, T., & Oostindjer, M. (2015). Consumer-related food waste: Causes and potential for action. Sustainability, 7(6), 6457-6477.
- Lazell, J. (2016). Consumer food waste behaviour in universities: Sharing as a means of prevention. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 15(5), 430-439.
- Schanes, K., Dobernig, K., & Gözet, B. (2018). Food waste matters-A systematic review of household food waste practices and their policy implications. Journal of cleaner production, 182, 978-991.
- Line 145 to 146 – Why this time interval?
- Line 153 – What is Jieba?
3. Result analysis
- Line 163 to 164 – So when did the stop food waste communication first appear?
- Line 1s73 – 173 – “it is considered a relatively special period” – This is not specific – what is meant by this – no appropriate description – Vague!
- Figure 1 – statistics are hard to see in the figure – not clear
- The findings are well presented and well described. There are some genially interesting points around the spatial variance in the change in emotive language towards food waste.
- More could have been made of the wording within the data – for example what was the most common phrase? Were their differences in the terms used around food waste between areas?
- Were there differences in the types of actions discussed? I.e different ways that participants are tackling or stopping food waste?
4. Discussion
- Line 329 to 330 – Again not really sure that is meant here by a ‘relatively special period’ This need to be clarified
- Line 339 – Can more information be given from the content of the data on why communication to stop food waste gradually decreases over time?
- There is a need to cite literature that specifically discusses food waste and public perceptions in this section – this is currently missing
- Line 351 to353 – Sentence beginning “Individuals behaviours of reducing food waste……” Reference for this statement? This is something that you could not have drawn from your data given you considered online reflections
- Lines 349 to 360 – The points drawn here do not contribute anything new to the current literature
- Line 378 to 379 – Why/ how do measures to stop food waste restrict the public’s pursuit of food? Further explanation needed.
- Line 381 to 383 – I don’t think this is explained in clear enough English to make sense – what is the point being made here regarding the sufficiency of local food
- Line 383 to 400 – There are many wider references to perceptions of food waste behaviours and general consumer food waste behaviours that should be cited here.
- Lines 408 to 410 – There are references on the attitude behaviour gap that directly address food waste that would be more relevant to mention here
- Line 412 – What do you mean here by punishment environment? Why is this relevant?
- The discussion makes some relevant and valuable points in its later paragraphs however again this must engage with more up to date and relevant literature on food waste behaviours and attitudes.
6. Conclusions and suggestions
- Relevant implications or suggestions are made, such as how the government should take stimulus steps to mitigate a recession period.
- Line 502 – what is meant here by social conservation?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
The paper aims to explore the characteristics of public response to release-type communication to stop food waste from the perspective of temporal and spatial differences. To do this, the authors introduced an empirical mode decomposition method. In my opinion, the idea is interesting and the topic is relevant, but I am not sure if it fits with the scope of the journal. With that being said, I think the article is a high quality submission and I only have a few comments which I will list below.
1) I would suggest clearly defining what "public support intention" and "implementation intention" are in the methodology section.
2) I would suggest clearly explaining the scale of the intensity of emotional words in the methodology section.
3) On line 33, I would suggest adding a reference.
4) On line 44, I would suggest adding a reference.
5) On line 136, I would suggest adding the long name of "CNNIC".
6) On line 413, I would suggest adding a reference.
I hope that my comments can help the authors to improve their article.
Sincerely,
Reviewer.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
