The Effect of Public Traffic Accessibility on the Low-Carbon Awareness of Residents in Guangzhou: The Perspective of Travel Behavior

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very interesting study. Overall, 1) the research framework of this article is well-designed; 2) the questions and objectives of the study are clear; 3) the literature review section is more organized; 4) the research methodology is well-designed; 5) the data used in the study are from the frontline surveys, which is highly persuasive; and 6) the conclusions of the study are summarized in a clear manner.

Therefore, I suggest that this article could be published after a minor revision.

1)The final paragraph of the introduction highlights the logic of the research question's elicitation, as appropriate. The current writing style is slightly disorganized.

2)In the Literature Review section, low carbon awareness and low carbon behavior are reviewed separately, in the Influencing Factors part, is it important to review these two aspects separately as well? The title of subsection 2.3 may need to be adjusted.

3)The discussion section could be expanded and deepened as appropriate. It is recommended to further explore the reference value of the study's findings for transportation planning and related policy design in Guangzhou.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General

Most research on pro-environmental behaviours considers attitudes as antecedents of behaviours, and not the other way round as done in the present paper. This is quite interesting and thought-provoking but should be better argued in the introduction, otherwise the theoretical model presented in Figure 2 comes out as a surprise. Moreover, since the data come from a cross-sectional survey, causality can only be assumed, and not tested.

There is barely anthing in the introduction regarding the main mediator (community satisfaction). The authors should argue why it is relevant to study this variable, otherwise it may look like they are using it merely because it was present in the survey.

Overall, it is hard to understand what is the main ('take-home') message of the paper. Travel behaviour appears to 'cause' low-carbon awareness - how is that interesting when one wants to design public policies (for instance) ?

More minor comments:

1. Introduction:

- 'low-carbon awareness' needs to be (briefly) defined early on in the paper, and more details can be provided in the 2.1 section (as done now).

- line 51: I find the expression 'foreign scholars' a bit odd. The article is meant to an international audience, isn't ?

- line 62: I am not sure to understand how taking public transportation can improve individuals' health (compared to cycling, for instance)

- lines 69-70: the gap pro-environmental intentions and behaviours has been quite extensively studied. The authors should cite one or two additional references.

2. Literature review

- 'community satisfaction' appears to be a central concept in the analysis (according to the abstract) but there is nothing about it in the literature review section.

- lines 119-120: some words appear to be missing in the first sentence, which is quite difficult to understand

3. Materiels and Methodology

- Table 1: what does 'Hukous status' mean ?

4. Results and Analysis

- Table 6: standard deviations should be provided

- lines 483-484: it seems to be what is called a moderated mediation. There are dedicated statistical packages to test for it.

5. Discussion

- lines 520-521: I do not understand this sentence

- line 569: it should be 'mediates' instead of 'moderates'

 

- line 614: "Data is contained within the article." what does that mean ?

A few sentences (see above) are quite hard to understand but beside that the overall level of English appears to be good (but please note that English is not my first language)

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The research purpose and content are well-stated and appear to be important. However, there are a few unclear points in the analysis process.

First, the authors attempted to conduct a regression analysis, but did not provide any indicators of the overall reliability of the model. Additionally, no indicators were provided to show that the model is safe from multicollinearity (Variance Inflation Factor), which can occur in regression analysis.

Second, the authors present direct and indirect effects, which appear to be the results of a structural equation model. If this is the case, a diagram of the model, a general explanation and the overall reliability of the model are needed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This is a very interesting paper providing insights into the factors influencing low-carbon awareness. A couple of points could be relevant to address in the final version of the paper:

- In Section 3.1 it would be relevant to explain whether alternative model specifications were examined but discarded

- In Section 3.4 it would be useful to outline how the variables were specified and whether alternative variables / questions were considered

- In Section 4 it may be relevant to provide information about multicollinearity in the modelling as several of the independent variables may be strongly correlated

- In Section 5 (discussion) it could be relevant to address the issue of transferability of the approach / results to other geographical areas

- In Section (conclusion) perhaps bring a couple of points on areas to be covered by future research

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The issues I commented on have been corrected well. I think it's possible to publish.