Benefit Information’s Impact on Ornamental Plant Value

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

L 27: Keywords please correct Lavendula angustifolia to Lavandula angustifolia Mill.

It is not clear from the manuscript that the authors, only used one plant the lavender in the study or other plants too. If yes, in my opinion the title should be changed.

In the Discussion section, authors should discuss their findings and compare them with previous studies.

Recommend to add a conclusion section, to summarize the results of the experiment.

Author Response

1. Thank you for the correction, the keyword Lavendula angustifolia Mill. was updated as suggested.
2. Yes, only one type of plant was used in the study. We did not change the title to include lavender but we did add “lavender plant(s)” in the abstract, methods and results to reflect this point.
3. The Discussion was updated to incorporate more discussion with previous studies. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of studies addressing plant benefit information and how that impacts behavior. There are plant benefit studies scientifically confirming the benefits (see reviews by Hall & Knuth [11-13]) and garden motivation studies [5, 7-9], but only Behe et al. [3] discusses the relationship between plant benefit information and consumer behavior. Regardless, we incorporated more into the Discussion to highlight the connection to the existing literature.
4. A Conclusion was added.

Reviewer 2 Report

It's a good study.

Let me make a few suggestions.

1. Increased horticultural activity due to COVID-19? - There is no such result in this study. So delete COVID-19 in context.

2. It was divided into generations such as millennials and baby boomers. How old are they? I don't know what year he was born. Insert parentheses to indicate the year of birth of those people.

3. Benefit information is related to traditional knowledge (TK, TEK). Add consideration to this.

4. Materials and methods - explain the questionnaire in a simple table.

5. Title: Does it need to be questionable? - Factors Affecting Ornamental Plan's Benefit Information and Payable Value Study - Your Choice..

Please revise the above and submit it as a good paper

Author Response

1. The impact of Covid-19 on plant purchasing behavior and sales was discussed in the introduction for a couple of reasons. First, it resulted in a substantial boost in plant sales and consumer interest in plants [2,3]. Secondly, it increased consumers’ awareness of potential health issues and resulted in mental health stresses which may have increased their interest in products that can improve physical and mental health [7-9]. However, we recognize the reviewer’s point that emphasizing the Covid-19 literature may be misleading or misplaced relative to the rest of the text. We rewrote the information to fit the context better.
2. The following dates were added to the generation information: Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), Baby Boomers (born before 1965), and Gen Z (born after 1996).
3. Yes, you are correct in your statement that information plays a vital role in the purchase decisions of retail lawn and garden consumers. Consumers have readily adopted personal computers and Internet technology as a way of seeking information and/or making purchases online. Given the sharp rise in the use of smartphones and mobile media use, we explored (in a previous study) the differences among online shoppers, specifically those who had searched online for gardening information with those who were online for other purposes. We found differences between those who had searched online for non-gardening information compared with those who had searched online for gardening information. Women were more likely to search online for both gardening and non-gardening information, but men were more likely to make online gardening purchases. Education level, ethnicity, and geographic location of residence had varying impacts on the likelihood of online search and purchase. Having searched online for non-gardening information increased the likelihood of an online purchase by 16%, whereas the likelihood of purchase increased to 19% for online gardening-related searches. Previous literature has addressed the role of information in making plant purchases and is contained in the literature cited in this paper. This study addressed specifically the role that plant benefit information plays.
4. Table 1 was added which includes the relevant survey questions and answer options used in the analysis.
5. Title was updated to “Benefit Information’s Impact on Ornamental Plant Value”.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

In this paper the authors study the problem of Benefit Information Impact Ornamental Plant Value. Plant benefit information at the POS is one technique to inform consumers about the human, environmental and other benefits of plants, but whether that information influences purchasing behavior is unknown. This article discusses such benefits of plants as aesthetic, cognitive, economic, educational, emotional, environmental, physical and social.

The topic is quite interesting, but I have some comments to add. The introduction should place the proposed approach on the background of the existing and known solution presented in literature. Also the importance of the research field should be stressed. 

The approach, proposed in this article to assess the impact of information about the benefits on the value of ornamental

plants, is quite interesting, but not very effective in practice. This is a beautiful theoretical model. The authors of the article need to show the applicability of the proposed approach using specific examples. For this, it is necessary, for example, to take plants that bear fruit and benefit the owner and evaluate the value of each of the types of such plants. Also it is possible to take indoor leafy plants and point out that they can improve the air quality in the room, for example. Then it will be clear to readers how the criteria that are given in the article are evaluated. Also, the article does not indicate what mathematical methods were used to evaluate the survey data. What is the reliability of the results obtained?

The discussion section is very similar to the introduction. The authors of the article should discuss the results obtained, and not give so many references to the literature as in the introduction. For clarity, the authors should present the results of the study in the form of diagrams or graphs.

There are no conclusions in the article, that is, it is difficult to make a general idea of what data the authors of the article received in their study.

I believe that the present study has a significant scientific and applied contribution, which is strongly emphasized in the basic reporting volume.

 

Author Response

1. Thank you for the suggested improvements. We reworked the introduction to emphasize its relationship to the existing literature and the importance of the results. Unfortunately, the literature does not present a known solution. Rather, the methodology is used to address other credence attributes in ornamental plant displays and how that impacts behavior (see Rihn et al. [19] which is discussed in paragraph 6 of the Introduction). Methodology justification is also included in the methods section (lines 162 – 164). To date, very few studies address how plant benefit information impacts consumer behavior in the retail setting. Behe et al. [3] is the only study connecting these two elements, but they do not address the economic value (willingness-to-pay) that is addressed by the current study. This is one gap in the literature we are seeking to fill. Behe et al. [3] is discussed in paragraph 4 of the Introduction.
2. a) The reviewer mentions an interesting point about discussing specific plant examples related to the benefit messages. Many of the cited studies emphasize specific examples, which is why we cited these sources and did not discuss specifics. Our challenge in providing these examples is that the benefits are universal across plants, regardless of species. For instance, the aesthetic benefit was “many plants create an artistic dimension to the home and garden, pleasing to the eye” is about plants in general and humans’ responses to being near plants, not a specific plant type or species and were based on scientific studies (see reviews by Hall & Knuth [11-13]). We want to emphasize engagement with plants in general and the associated benefits could result in changes in value for plants among customers. This was to reflect the current state of the literature and not overestimate the background literature’s findings.
3. b) In terms of the mathematical methods, the data were evaluated using pairwise t-tests (Table 4), Spearman correlations (Table 5), and Tobit models (Table 6). The statistics were clarified in the table titles and in the methods section of the manuscript. We respectively decline the reviewer’s suggestion to convert the results to figures of diagrams or graphs. The main reason is that diagrams or graphs would not adequately communicate the results, including figures would add unnecessary length, and, historically in the literature, this type of data is presented in tables for improved understanding. For example, the means in Tables 2 and 3 could be presented as graphs but Tables 2 and 3 are still needed to define the demographic characteristics and benefit statements. Tables 4 and 5 both need to be in matrix form to show the relationship across the benefits, and Table 6 includes information on model fit that would be inappropriate for figures. We appreciate the comment to make it more visual, and we will integrate graphics for future presentations and Extension documents, but in this particular manuscript it does not fit what is presented.

The reliability of the results is evident from the model fit statistics presented on Page 9 in Table 6 and from the mathematical framework presented in the Methods (Line 232 – 256). The Chi-Square value is significant. Additionally, because the correlations between the variables are low, there is not a threat of collinearity between the variables within the Tobit model. By request of the reviewer, the authors would be willing to show alternative models considered that were less fit to the data (i.e., larger log likelihood values).

3. The Discussion was updated to incorporate more discussion with previous studies. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of studies addressing plant benefit information and how that impacts behavior, which is one of the reasons the authors are researching into this area. There are plant benefit studies scientifically confirming the benefits (see reviews by Hall & Knuth [11-13]) and garden motivation studies [5, 7-9], but only Behe et al. [3] discusses the relationship between plant benefit information and consumer behavior. Regardless, we incorporated more into the Discussion to highlight the connection to the existing literature.
4. A Conclusion was added.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

The comments suggested in the previous round have been well-reflected. Thank you for your time and effort in the revision! However, what is unclear is the Answer Options in Table 1. You should specify the size of the output, do not specify 101+ or 500+. Please check it.

Author Response

Thank you for the comment. We updated Table 1 to reflect the minimal and maximum amounts available to participants.