The Ecological Footprint of Happiness: A Case Study of a Low-Income Community in the City of São Paulo, Brazil

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to cooperate with Sustinability (MDPI).

The manuscript entitled "The ecological footprint of happiness: A case study of a low-income community in the city of São Paulo, Brazil" has the aim to assess the ecological efficiency of social performance in the low-income community of Felicidade, in São Paulo, Brazil.

Congratulation to the author for all their efforts to carry out the research

1)     Abstract - Please inform when the research was done, as during a pandemic era, it is difficult to understand how for this community the main contributor to happiness was Health.

Please remove the period from the tittle.

2) Introduction – Properly done

3) Methods – Well explained

4) Results and Discussion – Conducted properly

5) Conclusions (Please remove the period from the end of “Conclusions”).

 

Please include limitations and future research. Please try to explain how Health was one of the main contributor to happiness in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

This document provides the replies to the comments and suggestions raised by reviewers regarding the above-mentioned paper. To facilitate the interpretation of our replies, we maintained the original reviewer’s text sent to us.

For this new version of the manuscript, all the comments and suggestions provided by reviewers were carefully taken into account, and we are grateful for their work. The updated manuscript contains fundamental changes in the main text to allow a better understanding of our study as required by reviewers. All changes in the updated manuscript are highlighted for easier identification. For any additional information demand, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Prof. Biagio F. Giannetti (on behalf of all authors)

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewed paper presents the results of human development index and footprint in Brasil' poor communities. The topic is interesting for decision makers. However more literaure review from web of Science is neededed and also formulation of hypothesis. Authors succesfully assessed the ecological footprint concepts and the Gross Domestic hppiness indicator. GNH is distinguishable from Gross Domestic Product by valuing collective happiness as the goal of governance, by emphasizing harmony with nature and traditional values as expressed in the 9 domains of happiness and 4 pillars of GNH. nInformation of furthere research dicrections and limitations of thi studies (the indicators limitations) should be underlined.

Author Response

This document provides the replies to the comments and suggestions raised by reviewers regarding the above-mentioned paper. To facilitate the interpretation of our replies, we maintained the original reviewer’s text sent to us.

For this new version of the manuscript, all the comments and suggestions provided by reviewers were carefully taken into account, and we are grateful for their work. The updated manuscript contains fundamental changes in the main text to allow a better understanding of our study as required by reviewers. All changes in the updated manuscript are highlighted for easier identification. For any additional information demand, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Prof. Biagio F. Giannetti (on behalf of all authors)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper deals with an interesting topic, however it presents some issues and lacks listed below.

 

The research question and the objectives are not clearly defined and reported.

Some background aspects related to the use of social and environmental indicators and about the choice of the two index is missed. Adequate references to the many well-being indicators arising from the specific literature on the subject, i.e. basic needs, income and happiness, psychological wellbeing, social capital respectively developed by Maslow, Easterlin, Kahneman, Putnam, (at least 70 years of scientific debate) must be included in paper that dealing with these topics.

 

In methods section the description of core areas for happiness are lacking as well as the socio-economics categories should be described too.

A description of main socio-economics characteristics of respondents it is required. There is a lack of comments and observations on the relationships taken within the categories of people interviewed and a more in-depth descriptive analysis of the respondents in the selected sample.

 

The approach to present results is not original and takes up what was proposed by the GFN in several of its reports, where the measurement of the EF is related to that of the HDI and countries are grouped within four quadrants. To better explain potential trade-off between life style, sustainability and happinees a more advanced statistical analyses are needed.

 

Comments on the body of the paper follow:

 

Line 14 – The level of GDH 0.81 is not justified in any other part of the paper. In line 131 0.86 it’s reported as average level of GDH.   

Line 84 – Please, define better the parameters and methods used to assess the 5 socio-economic groups.  

Line 89 – Specify timing and the period of survey development.  

Line 108 – Points and scale are not clear. Please, insert at least one item to clarify this aspect. I suggest to include the questionnaire as a supplementary material.

Line 137 – Figure 1. The graph seems to show an EF per household close to 70 gha. Could you please add an explanation about the method/calculation to convert these data to the “1,6 planet”?

Line 139 – Figure 2. The graph shown a level of GDH quite below the 0.86 average mentioned above (line 131). Check it.

Line 153 – Figure 3. Please move GDH threshold line from 0.7. to 0.66. 

Line 161 – Socioeconomic group. Please explain the 5 classes introduced and selected in line 84. I suggest to give some figure more on EF and GDH level per classes/socio-economic groups.

 

Line 199 – This claim is not supported by an adequate presentation of the data.

Author Response

This document provides the replies to the comments and suggestions raised by reviewers regarding the above-mentioned paper. To facilitate the interpretation of our replies, we maintained the original reviewer’s text sent to us.

For this new version of the manuscript, all the comments and suggestions provided by reviewers were carefully taken into account, and we are grateful for their work. The updated manuscript contains fundamental changes in the main text to allow a better understanding of our study as required by reviewers. All changes in the updated manuscript are highlighted for easier identification. For any additional information demand, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Prof. Biagio F. Giannetti (on behalf of all authors)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf