Incorporating Consumers’ Low-Carbon and Freshness Preferences in Dual-Channel Agri-Foods Supply Chains: An Analysis of Decision-Making Behavior

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors

Despite the writing being relatively easy to follow and being well written in the theoretical part, the manuscript needs a more careful edition, as it has small flaws that are recurrent. Some examples are given below, which should be followed carefully throughout the manuscript.

Examples are:

Line 35: Instead of everything together with no space “… increased[1].” it should read “…increased [1].”

L 78: Instead of everything together with no space “… preservation.Dye…” must come “… “… preservation. Dye…”.

Ls 83, 89, 102, 111, 117, …, 185, …, 209, …, 416, 422, and many others which should be carefully checked and corrected accordingly.

Another flaw detected is in the approach to literature in the main body of the text. Following are the examples:

L 51: Instead of “… Tseng [4]…” should come “… Tseng et al. [4]…” as there are several authors.

L 54: Instead of “… Ye [5]…” should come “… Ye and Liu [5]…” since there are two authors.

 

Other references that are not correct:

Ls 59, 62, …, 157 and many others that should be checked carefully and corrected accordingly.

 

In section 2 another sub-heading titled something like “Literature gap and how to address the problem” should be added. In this subsection should be the entire paragraph between lines 121-134.

 

The introduction is quite short and lacks the objectives that should come in the last paragraph. I suggest that lines 137-140 should be relocated to the final paragraph of the introduction, as these sentences succinctly describe the purpose of the work proposed throughout the manuscript.

On line 195, the term “Yonghui Superstores” should be replaced by just “large stores”.

Ls 443-4: Please rewrite.

Please check the final section for references for consistency. Some examples that need to be amended or completed:

"1. WU Da-qing, & LIU Yan-li.” should come “1. Wu, Da-qing, & Liu, Yan-li.”

“10. Blackburn” Missing the initial letter of the first name.

Despite the writing being relatively easy to follow and being well written in the theoretical part, the manuscript needs a more careful edition, as it has small flaws that are recurrent. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

1.      Firstly, I suggest reorganizing the abstract to provide a clearer structure and improve readability. I recommend including the following elements in the specified order: background of the research, objectives, methodology, results, and conclusion. This reorganization will help readers better understand the flow of your research.

2.      The introduction section is very weak. Could be strengthened by including relevant recent studies and highlighting the motivation behind the study, few research objectives could be provided. The authors also could highlight the unique contributions of this study. Organizations of the sections need to be included in the introduction section.

3.      The authors could provide research framework in a visually appealing and distinctive manner with the help of a figure.

4.      I think a discussion section could be provided which should also move around the framework along with the alignment of addressing the research questions proposed in the introduction section. This way the discussion will be more comprehensive, robust, and interesting for the reader. Apart from that, it will offer more significant information to the reader.(See https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031904)

5.      The authors need to consider the possibility to considerably expand their future research suggestions. At the moments, they are barely developed(See https://doi.org/10.3390/su141811698)

minor English editing required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

Interesting study regarding the consumers' purchase decisions about agro-foods, incorporating aspects of freshness, price and carbon footprint. Relevant because it addresses a current topic, especially regarding the environmental and economic dimension of sustainability with repercussions for the agri-food industry. The use of game theory as a modeling method allows the analysis of various scenarios and variables. I emphasize that I am not able to technically evaluate the modeling because I am not in this area. Even so, it seems to me that the mathematical model is clearly described, being carefully formulated, with a description of the equations and variables, representing the problem. Some suggestions in the Introduction: authors should explore concepts such as the food production chain, dimensions of sustainability and e-commerce.   Study limitations: Authors must address method limitations, model restrictions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript is interesting and a good candidate for publication. The study aims to investigate the impact of low- carbon and freshness preferences on supply chain decisions within agricultural supply chains.  However, some important issues must be addressed before considering for publication.

1. The introduction lacks important content: brief presentation of existing research; identification of the research gap, objectives and research questions;

2. Lit review. It incorporates some of the elements of the introduction (must be moved there) and is superficial and does not provides a sufficient framework and fails the link between the objectives and the methodology. Are you testing what and for what reason?

3. Method. Lacks important information. Why the method followed is the most adequate. Where the data comes from? Why the indicated measures are the most appropriate? Why the statistical analysis is the most adequate?

4. Discussion. Does not exist. The main weakness of the study

5. The conclusions are just a recapitulation. Missing the link to the theory.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Could be accepted in current form.

Reviewer 4 Report

Congratulations on the revision.