Analyzing Attitudes to Promote Sustainability: The Adaptation of the Environmental Concern Scale (ECs) to the Italian Context

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper examines the psychometric properties of the Environmental 12 Concern Scale (ECs) within the Italian context through three independent studies. I enjoyed reading this paper which is publishable after some minor revisions.

 

Below, I shall articulate my concerns:

 

·        Lines 51-53:

 

“people concerned about self have selfish environmental attitudes and are concerned about the effects that air pollution might have on their health”

 

Is this an example of a "selfish environmental concern"? If yes, I suggest the authors state it as it was.

 

·        Lines 99-104:

 

Even though the authors have described the characteristics of the scale in the “measure” section, It'd be nice if they explained the features of the scale here as well.

·        Methods (all the studies):

I would like the authors to explain how they have reached participants in more detail. Was it through an online invitation? Or was the convenience sample formed through snowball sampling? It would be a nice addition to the methodology description.

·        Lines 193-195

I'd suggest that authors explain here the reason for including satisfaction with life and climate worry for concurrent validity.

·        Lines 275:

As this is not adequately anticipated in the introduction, I suggest that the authors explain the rationale of choosing gender for exploring the scale's invariance.

·        Lines 293-294:

Please add a reference here to support this assumption (about CFI delta).

·        Lines 330-338:

This part reads more like a literature review than a discussion. I suggest authors integrate this part in the previous literature reported about this scale, which could also help to better justify their work and provide further evidence given the mixed findings from the existing literature.

·        Could the authors add a section describing the practical utility of adopting such a scale, both in future research and, for instance, within organisations (e.g. to analyse the interaction between environmental sustainability-oriented behaviours of employees and sustainability values of organisations)?

Please double-check the language.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you for your revisions which helps us to improve our article.

Below are our answers:

1. Lines 51-53: We have tried to clarify further.
2. Lines 99-104: We have also added the description of the scale in the indicated part (see section 1.1).
3. Methods (all studies): We expanded the description of the procedures (see section 2.2). In the other paragraphs on procedures, we specified that the same procedures as in study 1 were followed.
4. Lines 193-195: We inserted more details on life satisfaction in the article. We modified study 2 to use life satisfaction as predictive validity.
5. Lines 275: We expanded the introductory section of study 3 (see paragraph 4).
6. Lines 293-294: We added the theoretical reference to delta CFI (see section 4.3).
7. Lines 330-338 We moved previous studies on scaling into the introduction.
8. We added a section with practical implications (see paragraph 7).

All changes are indicated in red.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you so much for submitting an excellent sound article that I hope will contribute to developing such an exciting field as the Psychology of Sustainable Development and Sustainability in the Italian context. The readiness is evident, and the ideas are exposed clearly. I want to share just a few comments that I hope the authors will find suitable to enhance the manuscript:

·         In the Introduction section, the environmental attitudes are presented, in addition to the found relationships in previous research with variables like environmental behaviour or life satisfaction. Nevertheless, perhaps it would be helpful to mention explicitly the climate change related to a biosphere concern. From my point of view, it would be beneficial to understand better the correlations shown in Table 5.

·         The 1.1 section details different available instruments for measuring environmental concerns. Reading the manuscript, I understand that the measurement developed by Schultz is adapted to the Italian language due to the distinctive factors composing the scale. However, in the 1.2 section is mentioned the Environmental Concern Scale (ECs), but this abbreviation did not appear previously. In this section (1.2) would be helpful to describe slightly the structure of the manuscript (e.g. “To achieve this aim, three studies…”).

·         In Table 1, does DS mean Standard Deviation?

·         In L218 it appears both CCWS and CCAS. Is it the same scale?

·         In L359 there is a space within the url

Thank you so much,

 

Best regards

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

thank you for your revisions which helps us to improve our article.

Below are our answers:

1. We have strengthened the part on life satisfaction in the introduction.
2. In section 1.1 we have included the description of ECs.
3. We expanded paragraph 1.2 by inserting the description of the manuscript structure.
4. We have inserted the meaning of M and SD at the end of Table 1.
5. We corrected the error in CCWS and CCAS (see section 3.2).
6. We deleted the space inside the URL.

All changes are indicated in red.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx