Measuring the Level of Responsible Consumption Influenced by the Digital Environment: A Case Study of University of Barcelona and Bielefeld University Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors describe a tool for a comparative assessment of responsible consumption within material and information environments. The conducted study is quite interesting and well conducted, but it is not clear the novelty of the adopted techniques and the usefulness w.r.t. other proposals. For a possible publication, the authors have to address such two issues.

Author Response

Dear reviewer!

Our team of authors would like to thank you for the detailed review of our paper and for pointing out its shortcomings. We have used your comments to improve our results. In particular, your comment was related to the fact that in the study the novelty of the adopted techniques and the usefulness w.r.t. other proposals is not clear. The scientific novelty of our study lies in the proposed methodology, which aims to conduct a comparative analysis of responsible consumption in the physical and digital environments, while using valid but different indicators to assess consumer behavior in each of the environments. As for the practical implementation of the study, our methodology allows universities to investigate how their students adhere to responsible consumption, to what extent the topic of responsible consumption is expressed in informational accounts of universities and, in accordance with this, develop measures to influence both of these parameters. The article also presents the results of testing the proposed methodology on two European universities, which made it possible to prove the connection between responsible consumption in the physical and digital environments. We supplemented the Discussion and Conclusion sections in accordance with your recommendations, and also updated the Abstract, emphasizing in it the scientific novelty and practical significance of the study. Once again, thanks a lot for your help.

Reviewer 2 Report

The research is interesting although the focus on so specific respondents is questionable. But it can be acceptable as pilot application of proposed methodology. In this context, results should be taken very carefully and it should be explicitly mentioned in the discussion or conclusion. Although, i think the literature survey section is unnecessarily long and several common areas esp. related to policy green or digi objectives is useless. I would recommend to shorten this part and focus only on research studies and methodologically similar papers. Together, sometimes, english styling of formulations are not very clear, esp. using terms which are not explained sufficiently, e.g. objective environment - i was not able to understand if it is physical or what environment, as it is opositum to digital one. It would be good to explain it better.

Regarding sample selection - it was quite random and not in line with sample preparation approaches, therefore there is quite inconsistency in levels of education (the majority of respondents were from bachelor level). It should be considered if results should be discussed from this aspect, e.g. if lower level of education/younger students have the same information and attitude and responsibility as higher, which was not very significantly incorporated within the sample and if these bachelors could have some specific behavior or attitude to responsible consumption.

Although, generally the methodology and research results are interesting and could be reusable within other researches and it can be of interest within researchers auditorium.

Author Response

Dear reviewer!

Our team of authors would like to thank you very much for such a detailed review of our paper, and for so valuable comments that we could use to improve our work.

Firstly, let us thank you more for pointing out the inaccuracies in the wording. Of course, in our study, we used the opposition of the physical and digital environment, these terms reflect the essence of our study the best. Thanks to your comment, we have hacked the discrepancies in the terms used in the article and unified them throughout the text. We understand the physical environment as an expression of the physical world that surrounds a person, with which he comes into contact empirically through his senses.

In the digital environment, contact with reality occurs through its informational representation. We have also included these explanations in the text of the paper.

Secondly, we are extremely grateful for your comment on the not entirely correct approach to the formation of a literature review. We tried to take into account your remark and shortened the literature review by removing most of the information that was not directly related to the specifics of our study and focusing only on the data that we need for further use in the methodology and results sections.

One of your comments was related to the sampling of the study, in particular, the prevalence of undergraduate students among the students surveyed. We tried to describe in detail in the paper the rationale for this approach to sampling, in particular, by indicating the Ratio of students in Bachelor and Master degreed in the questionnaire and on national level of countries hosting universities under study.

We also tried to emphasize in the Results and Discussion sections that our study represents a methodology rather than a specific result, and namely the methodology, which aims to conduct a comparative analysis of responsible consumption in the physical and digital environments, while using valid but different indicators to assess consumer behavior in each of the environments was the main goal of your study.

Once again, we would like to thank you in every possible way for such a detailed analysis of our paper and for so valuable comments.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed the requested reviews.