Using Crowdsourced Big Data to Unravel Urban Green Space Utilization during COVID-19 in Guangzhou, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript presents an assessment of the impact of the pandemic on UGSs use in Guangzhou, China. The analysis of visiting residents behaviours in social media through big data mining technology is aimed at understanding the changes of use of UGSs during Covid lockdowns.
While some aspects of the research are outside my field of expertise, I still enjoy reading it because the manuscript discusses an interesting topic, which is suitable for the journal, and present interesting conclusions. I therefore recommend publication.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
We would like to thank you for your careful and thorough reading of this manuscript. Thank you so much for your approval and recommended publishing this manuscript. Still, we have made minor changes to this manuscript. It’s my pleasure to have you confirm my revised manuscript. Thank you again for your comments.
Additional clarifications
In addition to the above comments, all spelling and grammatical errors have been corrected. Besides, we checked the language of the manuscript again to ensure it was written correctly.
Once again, we thank you for the time you put in reviewing our paper and look forward to meeting your expectations. Since your inputs have been precious, in the eventuality of a publication, we would like to acknowledge your contribution explicitly.
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to read your paper. This is an interesting paper, yet I feel there are a few things that need to be clarified before I recommend publication:
- there could more explanation of the sites in particular.... maybe population density around them... residential density... I suggest these as you discuss the results by each UGS and not all in aggregate
- Any data on whether people visited the UGSs alone or with others? Kids?
- I bring up kids as getting them out of the homes into open spaces would also be important for caregivers... was school shifted to online formats as well?
- are these just open spaces or are they tourist attractions? The Lake you talk about seems more like a tourist attraction and the use of those would need to be curtailed during the pandemic. But the use of general UGS (urban parks or outdoor open spaces where interaction is less) would naturally increase.
- I know this data was not collected but the heavy bias towards younger users needs to be highlighted in this study. Usually, older people are the usual visitors to UGSs, as are moms (caregivers). And you do not have this subsection in your study.
- Any data on the length of visit? I thought you said you would analyze that but I did not see any mention of that.
- The location data... does that identify active recreation or passive recreation in your study time period?
More comments on the attached pdf.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This is an interesting contribution on the usage of UGS during COVID-19. The use of a web crawler and publicly available database allowed for a large sample size. The most interesting findings are 1) the changes in temporal usage patterns from weekends to weekdays, and this appears to be mainly due to modified work schedules and arrangements (working from home rather than the typical office routine); and 2) the priority on spaciousness and low crowd density, regardless of the positive feelings engendered by heavily populated UGS. This could have implications for future park design.
In general the paper is well written, though further improvement is needed, for example lines 56-57 - this sentence is redundant (information on the UGS utilization is essential to assess its impact on UGS utilization).
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The study aimed at assessing how the Covid-19 pandemic affected the visiting of urban green spaces (UGSs) in terms of time, frequency and emotions on the example of 13 UGSs located in Guangzhou in China. The Authors formulated 4 hypotheses assuming that the number of UGS users were correlated with the changes in the Covid 19 cases, the outbreak of Covid-19 changed the preferences and timing of UGS users as well as affected their emotions. Generally the study confirmed the research hypotheses. The Authors explained the observed changes with timing and preferences by the seeking for less crowded places and by the religious attributes when choosing UGSs.
The article is written in a way that is easy to understand and read. I believe that some minor changes should be made, which are outlined below:
Line 56: correct the sentence, please because as it is it is not clear. “Its impact” refers to what?
Lines 90-95 sound like conclusions, therefore they should be put at the end of the manuscript
In figure 1 there are photos with the descriptions but exclusively in Chinese, could you add them in English, please
In the section 2.3. Statistical analysis there is an equation, but the symbols used are not explained.
Line 179: what the abbreviation MBEWC stands for?
Line 182: the emotion (E-V), what E and V stand for?
Line 187: what are Ansj and CHI, explain please?
Line 233: Rephrase the sentence in order to eliminate the repetitive word correlation
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for diligently addressing all my concerns. I have no further reservations.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer
Thank you very much for your comment, it makes this article more accurate and completeness.I have re-proofed the words in manuscript and submit it. Looking forward to your confirmation.
Yours,
Shuhao Liu
