Consumer Attitudes towards Fish and Seafood in Portugal: Opportunities for Footprint Reduction

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting research dealing with consumer attitudes towards fish and seafood.

However, although the issue represents a challenge under many perspectives, the manuscript presents some lacks. I have some minor concerns which I have to address you before I can suggest the submission of the manuscript to “Sustainability”.

-        Abstract: please add limits and future research (if any);

-        Line 42 and 43: what (1) and (2) refer to? ;

-        Carefully read the Journal section about “references” and modify them in the manuscript “In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105)”.

-        Line 199: Altiok et al.: please add the proper reference number;

-        Methodology section: why data were collected in February 2020 and the manuscript has been written only after more than 2 years? What has it happened in this long period? Are data still valid? Is it may be better to update them?

-        References: no reference of 2022. It is necessary to update them.

 

I don’t feel qualified to judge about the English language and style.

 

Please accept my most sincere appreciation for your contribution.

 

Good luck!

 

Author Response

Point 1: Abstract: please add limits and future research (if any);
Response 1: As the abstract was already longer than the ideal limit of 200 words, we have cut some sentences and introduced lines of future research that also show the limitations of our study to focus mostly on the consumers behaviors and not the whole constellation of relevant actors in the fish and seafood sector.

Point 2: Line 42 and 43: what (1) and (2) refer to? 
Response 2: This is a standard notation to indicate a list of items in a sentence. We replaced them by words to avoid misinterpretations.

Point 3:  Carefully read the Journal section about “references” and modify them in the manuscript “In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105)”.
Response 3: All references were corrected accordingly. Thanks for pointing this out.

Point 4:  Line 199: Altiok et al.: please add the proper reference number;
Response 4: We have made the corrections accordingly.

Point 5:  Methodology section: why data were collected in February 2020 and the manuscript has been written only after more than 2 years? What has it happened in this long period? Are data still valid? Is it may be better to update them?  
Response 5: The analysis described in this article was part of a wider project. Given the pandemic crisis after March 2020 and some professional changes of the authors, the analysis took several time to complete, as did the writing. Moreover, a first version of this paper was previously submitted to a different journal and withdrawn by the authors after a few months due to the reviewers’ request to substantially cut the paper (to max 4’000 words), which we deemed unacceptable as it would have shortened too much the paper and force us to leave out key info. Searching for a new journal where to submit the article (and improving it) thus further added to the delay. COVID pandemic has possibly caused changes in consumers’ attitudes in Portugal but as our goal is to describe the common habits/attitudes prior to COVID, and their relationship with the Footprint assessment (also dated pre-covid), we believe our results are still valid and relevant for scientists and practitioners working to understanding how food habits are linked with environmental impact in Portugal.

Point 6:  References: no reference of 2022. It is necessary to update them. 
Response 6: References # 17, 22, and 63 are from 2022.

Reviewer 2 Report

Introduction consists some repeating information, as example serve  description of Ecological Footprint tool. It is recommended to make it shorter and reorganise to avoid repetitions.  

Materials and methods: only information directly related to methods should be kept in this part. All discussions related methods should be removed and presented somewhere else. 

Conclusions too long and remind part of discussions. It is recommended to make them shorter and concise

 

Author Response

Point 1:   Introduction consists some repeating information, as example serve description of Ecological Footprint tool. It is recommended to make it shorter and reorganise to avoid repetitions.
Response 1: We have deleted some redundancies and some non-critical details from the text and reorganized some of the arguments to make it more concise.

Point 2:  Materials and methods: only information directly related to methods should be kept in this part. All discussions related methods should be removed and presented somewhere else. 
Response 2: This section only includes information related to the methods. In some cases, there are definitions of the terms used in the methods. For ease of reading and understanding the methods, we find it necessary to keep these definitions and clarifications in the methods section, and not move them to another section.

Point 3:  Conclusions too long and remind part of discussions. It is recommended to make them shorter and concise.
Response 3: We have deleted some of the conclusions (including table 1) and moved them to the discussion, so that it is better interlinked. In this way we believe that the conclusions are now more concise and they appropriately summarize the main results of the paper and their implications.

Reviewer 3 Report

The current study is on a topic of relevance in terms of current environmental and health related concerns of contemporary consumers and policies to reduce environmental footprint. The study attempts to calculate EFA and explore the perspectives of consumers on fish and seafood consumption. However, the paper needs some improvements to process it further. Below I have some comments for the Authors to address:

L 85 Needs clarification.  „In Portugal, a partnership of local government authorities, one university, and two Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) developed a project that used EFAs to inform local sustainable development policies…” What is meant by „to inform local sustainable policies”.

L 87 „the results of the first six municipalities (Almada, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Guimarães, Lagoa and Vila Nova de Gaia) were documented in [18]” What lessons can be learned?

A more extensive elaboration on this issue is needed as you refer to unpublish results and two publications without any details  „Similar EFAs have now been calculated for twelve more Portuguese municipalities (unpublished results). Continuing on this work (see [19], [20]), this paper conducts an EFA for a specific commodity type in Portugal— fish and seafood”.

L 154 What I miss is a more structured way of presenting your approach to calculating the EFA. The information you provide redirects the readers to several publications and concepts without giving sufficient details on the preferred mode of calculating EFA. I would suggest to visualise the steps you taken to calculate the EFA.  It is salso confusing because it is hard to trace how you used the data from 2020 Edition when calculating the EFA? „Although the Ecological Footprint of seafood consumption in Portugal has previously been calculated by[19], [20], this study recalculates the value, using updated data from the 2020 Edition of the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts (NFA) (Global Footprint Network and York University, 2020) and version 10 of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) MRIO model [41], [42].

What software did you use for calculations? Please provide details.

The section presenting the results on EFA is confusing as it is ony very brief summarzied and hard to relate to the methodology you quoted.

Be consistent in using the terminology in  L 204 you mention  „only seafood products” - how you operationalize „only seafood”?

L 199 Altiok et al. (2021) – what is so specific about the methodology you quoted? Please explain more in depth.

The sample was biased towards female and better educated consumers. What are the consequences for the interpretation of the results?  

As consumers mainly buy fish and seafood in supermarkets reflect on the role of retailers in shiting consumption patterns.

What are the limitations of your study?

Author Response

Point 1:  The current study is on a topic of relevance in terms of current environmental and health related concerns of contemporary consumers and policies to reduce environmental footprint. The study attempts to calculate EFA and explore the perspectives of consumers on fish and seafood consumption. However, the paper needs some improvements to process it further. Below I have some comments for the Authors to address:

 

L 85 Needs clarification.  „In Portugal, a partnership of local government authorities, one university, and two Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) developed a project that used EFAs to inform local sustainable development policies…” What is meant by „to inform local sustainable policies”.
Response 1: We thank the reviewer for its careful review and useful suggestions. In light of this comment and those of the other two reviewers, we have shortened the text (including cutting these sentences) and reorganized some of our arguments in the Introduction to make it more concise and readable, and avoid redundancies.

Point 2:  L 87 „the results of the first six municipalities (Almada, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Guimarães, Lagoa and Vila Nova de Gaia) were documented in [18]” What lessons can be learned?
Response 2: We have deleted this sentence and reorganized some of the arguments in the Introduction to make it more concise and readable.

Point 3:  A more extensive elaboration on this issue is needed as you refer to unpublish results and two publications without any details  „Similar EFAs have now been calculated for twelve more Portuguese municipalities (unpublished results). Continuing on this work (see [19], [20]), this paper conducts an EFA for a specific commodity type in Portugal— fish and seafood”.
Response 3: we have deleted this sentence and reorganized some of the arguments in the Introduction to make it more concise and readable.

Point 4:  L 154 What I miss is a more structured way of presenting your approach to calculating the EFA. The information you provide redirects the readers to several publications and concepts without giving sufficient details on the preferred mode of calculating EFA. I would suggest to visualise the steps you taken to calculate the EFA.  It is salso confusing because it is hard to trace how you used the data from 2020 Edition when calculating the EFA? „Although the Ecological Footprint of seafood consumption in Portugal has previously been calculated by[19], [20], this study recalculates the value, using updated data from the 2020 Edition of the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts (NFA) (Global Footprint Network and York University, 2020) and version 10 of the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) MRIO model [41], [42].
Response 4: The methodology section has been revised and improved, and a methodological flowchart has been added to clearly describe how the input data is used (and at which stage) during the calculation procedure. Although readers are still redirected to detailed methodological papers for further details on each specific step of the calculation, we believe the implemented revision should be adequate to address this reviewer’s comment while not expanding too much the methodology section of the paper.   

Point 5:  What software did you use for calculations? Please provide details.
Response 5: Ecological Footprint calculations are performed by the authors using both Excel and Matlab, following the methodology described in the cited papers.

Point 6:  The section presenting the results on EFA is confusing as it is ony very brief summarzied and hard to relate to the methodology you quoted.
Response 6: As mentioned above, we have tried to balance being concise with providing enough detail and, for this reason, we have opted for a revision of the text (with minor additions) coupled with the inclusion of a methodological flowchart. We hope the approach taken to address this comments is deemed adequate by the reviewer.

Point 7:  Be consistent in using the terminology in  L 204 you mention  „only seafood products” - how you operationalize „only seafood”?
Response 7: We have harmonized the terminology to refer always to “fish and seafood” throughout the text (e.g. L.203, 205, 208, 277, 279, 282, 421, 497, 532, 536, 547, 581)

Point 8:  L 199 Altiok et al. (2021) – what is so specific about the methodology you quoted? Please explain more in depth.
Response 8: We have added a sentence to explain (L.219-220 of the track changes version).

Point 9:  The sample was biased towards female and better educated consumers. What are the consequences for the interpretation of the results?
Response 9: The study showed no significant relationships between level of education and any of the consumer habits and preferences. Gender also did not play a significant role in explaining any of the consumer behaviors, except for perception on the level of information survey respondents had on artisanal small-scale fisheries. Because of this, we do not believe that gender or educational biases had any consequences on the interpretation of the results.

Point 10:  As consumers mainly buy fish and seafood in supermarkets reflect on the role of retailers in shiting consumption patterns.
Response 10: We do reflect on the role of supermarkets in the discussion, stating the potential of outreach campaigns to shift consumer behaviors (e.g. sustainability information on seafood labels and packaging in supermarkets) and we enforce the view that the involvement of retailers but also of other relevant stakeholders from the fish and seafood system is fundamental to promote these changes (see lines 533-545 of the track changes version).

Point 11:  What are the limitations of your study?
Response 11: Text has been added at the end of the discussion section (see lines 554-560 of the track changes version) to summarize the limitations of our study.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors corrected article according to the reviewers comments. However , methodological part still too long and information related to method description in general term is remaining. It is suggested to consider to introduce readers to method in the introduction part. 

Author Response

We thank reviewer #2 for these additional comments. To address them, we have amended the article by:

• adding a mention of the survey methodology in the introduction section (see line 114-115), in which the Ecological Footprint methodology was already introduced.
• shortening the methodology section (related to the Ecological Footprint), removing general text and moving information about the data year of the two datasets used (NFBA and GTAP) to a footnote.

As the reviewer can see, the method section of the revised manuscript now starts from line 120 (before was 119) and ends in line 191 (before was 203).

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, the paper has been improved and can be recommended for further processing. I would suggest to improve the graphs and add the tables with data as supplementary.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #3, thanks for these additional comments. All figures have been re-done and substituted in the text file to improve their quality and resolution. 

An Excel file with the complete set of survey results has now been included in the submission as Supplementary Material.