Does It Matter Who Exhibits More Green Purchase Behavior of Cosmetic Products in Asian Culture? A Multi-Group Analysis Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Quoquab and colleagues examined moderating effect of gender on the value belief norm and the relationship with green purchasing of cosmetic products. There are several concerns that need to be addressed by the authors.

1. Was the study approved by the institutional ethics board? This is not stated in the manuscript.
2. A major concerns is that the questionnaire was not provided (nor the link). Therefore, it is very difficult to interpret the authors findings.
3. Along these lines, it is very difficult to follow how the authors arrived at their conclusions on their hypotheses based on research design and questions asked in the questionnaire. There is not controlling for internal bias, since most respondents were female.
4. There is not validation of the questionnaire. Do answers in the questionnaire have an predictive value for the purchasing or not purchasing of green cosmetic products?
5. The abbreviations in the figures should be defined and there should be more of a description of what is being conveyed in the figures.
6. There no reference to the data/study being relevant for green purchasing of cosmetic products in the title or abstract. Please change accordingly.
7. Moderate English proofreading are necessary because a great many of the words are not spaced properly and sentences appear as one long word.   

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well structured and methodologically sound. I suggest its publication but please before that, try to incorporate the following comments that I believe can further improve the paper.

1) I am a little concerned about the selected sample and more precisely about the variations of the age, income, and race between male and female consumers (marital status seems more balanced). These variations may have caused a selection bias which could undermine your very nice work as some mediation could be wrongly attributed to the gender factor whilst originally caused by other factors. At the time being, I wouldn’t suggest making any major changes. Instead, I would propose to explain why this variability exists (maybe it follows the country’s standards) by providing a brief description of the demographics in the 4.4 section. If there is not a clear explanation for this heterogeneity, please add a comment in your conclusions.  

2) I think that adding the term “cosmetics” in the title would be more representative of a paper that does not concern green behavior in general but is more focused on the cosmetics segment.

3) I would like to see a table with the items and variables so as to facilitate reading. You can put it in the appendix if you like.

4) Please, proofread for typos and other minor language errors (In line 75 “effect” should be probably substituted by “effects”, In line 101 “are” should be replaced by “is”, change “are” with “is” in line 223 etc.).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors has done a nice job of addressing my previous concerns, I have no other concerns.