Defining Psychological Factors of Cycling in Tehran City
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Page 1, title “Defining psychological factors of active transport in developing countries”: My suggestion is to change the title to “Defining psychological factors of active transport in Tehran, Iran” considering the content of the paper.
Page 1, Keywords: My suggestion is to include “Active transport” in the Keywords.
Page 1, Section 1. Introduction: My suggestion is to include the generally accepted definitions worldwide for some of the basic terms used in your work, for the benefit of the reader. Please also add the respective references. For example: Active Transport (please also note that you refer to this term as “active transport” in the title of the paper and as “Active Transportation” in the abstract (line 9)).
Page 2: “Section 1. Literature review” must be “Section 2. Literature review” since you already have Section 1 (“Introduction”). Please correct all the subsequent headings of Sections as well.
Page 2: “Section 1. Literature review”: My suggestion is to move the text in lines 56-65 from the “Literature review” to the Section of “Introduction”.
Page 2: “Section 1. Literature review”: Even though you have included 54 references, my suggestion is to substantially increase the number of references since bibliography on the topic of your research is very rich worldwide.
Page 2, “Section 1. Literature review”: Please substantially increase the text which is associated with the 5 references [7-11] for the benefit of the reader. The same comment also applies in the case of the 9 references [9, 12-19] and the 5 references [27-31].
Page 3, “Section 2. Methodology”: My suggestion is to include a Data Flow Chart (DFC) describing all your methodological steps, so that the reader can obtain a clear overview of your work from the early beginning of the manuscript.
Page 4, lines 140-141, “…The link to this questionnaire 140 was sent to 2,128 individuals through text messages and phone calls, on…”: I presume that you knew the personal socioeconomic characteristics of the participants. Please provide within your manuscript the criteria for the selection of the specific participants and also the justification concerning the reason(s) for which your sample is representative enough and not biased since you have preselected the sample.
Page 4, Figure 1: Please include the source of the geographical background (map).
Page 4, “Section 3. Analysis”: My suggestion is to substantially reduce the text in lines 162-174 (a. Individual characteristics (objective variables)) since most of the information is presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Demographics: gender, marital status, education, and car ownership: Please justify within your manuscript your decision about why “age” is not included in your survey. Please also provide within your manuscript a full justification for the inclusion of all the individual characteristics (objective variables). For example, why BMI is included? Please also provide the necessary references to support your justification.
Table 1. Demographics: gender, marital status, education, and car ownership: Please note that the heading of the specific Table is not accurate since you refer to parts only of the Table (e.g., employment status, income etc. are missing).
My suggestion is to include a new Section (Discussion) where you will investigate whether your findings comply or not (and if “yes” to what extent?) with the findings of similar case studies worldwide. Please also add the associated references to support your statements.
Section of Conclusions: You have presented your policy recommendations. However, my suggestion is to also address each one to the respective stakeholder in the area of the case study. To do so, you need to carry out a stakeholders’ analysis first and include this analysis in your manuscript.
Since your paper was submitted to the prestigious journal “Sustainability”, my suggestion is to justify within your manuscript the reason(s) why and how your findings support the three pillars of sustainability, namely economic, social and environmental.
Reference list at the end of the paper: Please carefully check your references for inconsistencies. For example: [33] R.katz must be “R. Katz” , [43] A. V. Moudon et al., please include the names of all the coauthors (instead of er.al.,).
Please carefully check your manuscript for English grammar and syntax errors.
Please carefully check your manuscript for typos. For example: page 3, line96, “c. Built/natural environment” instead of “c. built/natural environment” and “d. Work conditions” instead of “d. work conditions”. Another example: Table 3: The fonts used are different. Another example: Table 5, Built/Natura (l is in another line), (Unpleasan feeling t). Table 7: Cycling must start with a capital letter (please check the 1st column). Another example: 5. Conclusion instead of “5. conclusion”.
The header of your paper refers to the Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health, while your paper was submitted to Sustainability.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The author set to investigate the psychological factors affecting the use of active transport (in fact cycling) in developing countries. While a study like this focusing on psychological factors appears interesting and not commonly conduct, more needs to be done before the paper can achieve the objectives set forth by the author. Some important comments are listed below:
1. Given that the readers may not be familiar with some background information about Iran, especially on the use of bicycles, the author should provide more introductory information on this.
2. The title of the article stated that "developing countries," is the geographical scope of study, the author should provide more discussion on this, and to explain why the case in Iran could be representative.
3. Psychological factors are the main subject of study in this paper, the author should provide more theoretical proof in the selection of factors in the model. From the list of factors in the Tables, some factors may seem to be repetitive, if not correlated, e.g., cycling time and distance, cost and family limit, ...etc, that requires the author to perform a more in-depth analysis of all the factors and the selection of those that went into the analysis.
4. Considering that the sample is what the analysis based on, the author should provide more discussion on the sample size, how the samples were selected, and the survey methods.
5. The list of references seems exhibit a certain degree of inconsistency, e.g., the inclusion of dates, the online references (with or without links), and some without full reference information, e.g., [54].
6. The conclusions is the part that requires much improvement. The current version does not provide linkages with the results obtained by the authors, and the focuses of the results presented seem not coherent with the overall objectives of the study. The author should also build upon the results and the limitation identified to propose future direction of the study.
9. The writing shows a fair amount of typo and grammatical error, with some requiring re-phrasing and re-structuring of sentences. The author is required to review carefully the writing and to make essential improvements before re-submitting for reviews.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
1. Abstract - Quantitative findings need to be included along with sample size and statistical approach i.e. SEM.
2. The authors can present the literature review in a table format where they can list out the past studies and their key characteristics and limitations, which can present a better picture to the readers about the research gaps and can also set the tone for the research motivation of conducting this study.
3. Is the sample size of 384 sufficient for this kind of analysis? The authors need to justify this in the methods section.
4. No study limitations are reported in the end. The authors need to provide the list of limitations observed in the study.
5. The discussion of findings need to be provided where the authors can compare their findings with the previous results from past literature in other countries.
6. The language needs to be proofread by a native English speaker for better clarity to the readers.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I would like to express my deepest thanks to the authors because they have carefully addressed my comments.
Author Response
Thank you for your kind words and appreciation. We are glad that we were able to address your comments to your satisfaction.
Reviewer 2 Report
Noticeable improvements can be found in the revised version. However, there are still some glaring mistakes needed to be amended. They are listed as follows:
1. The title change reflects better the scope of the paper. Suggest it narrow down to Tehran City, to better emphasize the transport within an urban area, and it may not be necessary to mention "Iran" as it is well known.
2. It's clearer now with the addition of the table shown in Appendix of the paper. However, it may be better to include it as part of the paper and draw references with discussion to the table.
3. In Table 1, as all values are available, there is no need to include "Not Available" at the bottom of the table. However, the data in the Table 1 shows some interesting characteristics that the authors may wish to further explore and discuss, e.g., high car ownership (2/3 owning vehicles), high education level (>80% with a diploma or above), and less work or school trips (other purposes being around 60%). These data should be compared to national statistics to check whether the sample is representative of the national, or urban, characteriestics.
4. The map of Tehran city shown in Figure 1 still fails to show the geographical characteristics of the city. The authors should use a clear geographical map, showing transportation characteristics essentially, instead of the satellite map used currently which does not shown any important details relating to the paper.
5. There are still a few places in writing that need to be improved. They are listed as follows:
5.1. In line 19 of Abstract, "The cycling of women" may not mean what the authors originally intended. Suggest it be changed to "Woman cyclists", and it should be changed for every occurrences of similar terms in the paper.
5.2. "Transport" or "Transportation" ? Though they mean the same, the same term should be used consistently in the paper.
5.3. Line 36, ". Reduces", should be ", reduces"
5.4. Line 143, "this vehicles" should be "bicycles" or "cycling"
In summary, a more thorough check of the writing is required.
Author Response
We appreciate your consideration of the document. Here are answers to your great comments.
1- The title change reflects better the scope of the paper. Suggest it narrow down to Tehran City, to better emphasize the transport within an urban area, and it may not be necessary to mention "Iran" as it is well known.
Answer: Thank you for your suggestion. We agree that narrowing the focus of the paper to transport within an urban area, specifically ''Tehran City'', would better emphasize the scope of the research. We considered your recommendation to remove "Iran" from the title as well, since it is well known (page1, title)
2- It's clearer now with the addition of the table shown in Appendix of the paper. However, it may be better to include it as part of the paper and draw references with discussion to the table. (page 4,5)
Answer: we have done your suggestion and moved it to the body of paper. Also, we have added references in the discussion section to the table. In summary, a more thorough check of the writing is required.
3- In Table 1, as all values are available, there is no need to include "Not Available" at the bottom of the table. However, the data in the Table 1 shows some interesting characteristics that the authors may wish to further explore and discuss, e.g., high car ownership (2/3 owning vehicles), high education level (>80% with a diploma or above), and less work or school trips (other purposes being around 60%). These data should be compared to national statistics to check whether the sample is representative of the national, or urban, characteriestics.
Answer: Thanks for bringing attention to the table 1. Except for gender data, which is also mentioned in the text in page7, line 200,201, we could not get acceptable data about other variables in Tehran for comparison.
We have omitted the “Not available”.
4- The map of Tehran city shown in Figure 1 still fails to show the geographical characteristics of the city. The authors should use a clear geographical map, showing transportation characteristics essentially, instead of the satellite map used currently which does not shown any important details relating to the paper.
Answer: Thanks for your attention. we have changed the map with more appropriate map that shows the road network of the city and its narrowness of roads in the studied area which seems to be good for mode of travel change.(page6)
5- There are still a few places in writing that need to be improved. They are listed as follows:
5-1 In line 19 of Abstract, "The cycling of women" may not mean what the authors originally intended. Suggest it be changed to "Woman cyclists", and it should be changed for every occurrences of similar terms in the paper.
Answer: we have corrected mentioned term in the paper. (line 18,54)
5-2 "Transport" or "Transportation" ? Though they mean the same, the same term should be used consistently in the paper.
Answer: we have used the word "transportation" consistently in the paper
5.3. Line 36, ". Reduces", should be ", reduces"
Answer: we have corrected it. (line 35)
5.4. Line 143, "this vehicles" should be "bicycles" or "cycling"
Answer: we have corrected the term in line 143.
In summary, a more thorough check of the writing is required.
Answer: we have checked the paper for any writing errors.
Again thank you for spending your time reviewing the paper.
Reviewer 3 Report
1. Pedestrians also come under "active transport" but this paper focuses only on cyclists. Can the authors justify the title and use of the term "active transport" in the context of present study? Or did the authors consider pedestrians as well? It needs more clarity.
2. Page 5, line 177 - What is 15-18? If it is the clock time, please mention pm or am as well.
3. In Table 4, Cronbach's alpha for many factors is less than 0.7 whereas alpha more than 0.7 is considered good reliability. What do the authors comment on that?
4. Page 9, line 272-273: The sentence is too long and not clear. Break it down for better clarity.
5. Table 2 and 3 can be combined. In addition, the authors can add a column on "Description of variables" where they can infer what the variables meant which will be provide more clarity to the readers.
6. In the conclusions section, limitations and policy implications can be categorized as two subsections.
Author Response
Thank you for taking the time to review our work and provide valuable feedback. We appreciate your insightful suggestions and believe they will greatly contribute to the improvement of our study. We are grateful for the opportunity to address your comments and make necessary revisions to our work.
1- Pedestrians also come under "active transport" but this paper focuses only on cyclists. Can the authors justify the title and use of the term "active transport" in the context of present study? Or did the authors consider pedestrians as well? It needs more clarity.
Answer: Thank you for your feedback. We apologize for the confusion caused by the use of the term "active transport". The title and focus of our study were limited to the examination of active transport by cyclists. We recognize that pedestrians also fall under the category of active transport, however, due to the scope and objectives of our study, we chose to specifically focus on cyclists. We have revised the title and language in the paper to reflect this focus and provide clarity for our readers. Thank you again for bringing this issue to our attention. (page1,title)
2- Page 5, line 177 - What is 15-18? If it is the clock time, please mention pm or am as well.
Answer: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have corrected the issue and have specified the time as PM or AM as per your suggestion. (page7,line178)
3- In Table 4, Cronbach's alpha for many factors is less than 0.7 whereas alpha more than 0.7 is considered good reliability. What do the authors comment on that?
Answer: Thank you for pointing this out. We have concluded that a range of 0.5 to 0.7 is considered acceptable for exploratory research if the sample size is small or the number of items in the scale is low. However, the factors are near the 0.7 (0.61or 0.68) (page10, line 248-250)
4- Page 9, line 272-273: The sentence is too long and not clear. Break it down for better clarity.
Answer: Thank you for your attention. we have break the sentence to different parts to provide better understanding for the reader(page11, line 281-283)
5- Table 2 and 3 can be combined. In addition, the authors can add a column on "Description of variables" where they can infer what the variables meant which will be provide more clarity to the readers. (page8,table3)
Answer: Thank you for your suggestion. We have combined Table 2 and 3, and added a column on "Description of Variables" to provide more clarity to the readers. We appreciate your input and strive to improve the clarity of our work.
6- In the conclusions section, limitations and policy implications can be categorized as two subsections.
Answer: Thank you for your suggestion. We have taken your advice and reorganized the "Conclusions" section into two sub-sections: "Limitations" and "Policy Implications". This will provide a clearer and more structured presentation of the information. (page15)
