Examining the Role of Local Products in Rural Development in the Light of Consumer Preferences—Results of a Consumer Survey from Hungary

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate Table 1

Small farms are not necessary  more involved in local value chain then big!

No reference to the higher prices for local food. 

Author Response

Dear Mr. or Ms. Reviewer,

Thank you so much for your work and appreciation of our article.

We made a new description on the participant producers of the short supply chains (lines 130-136).

We also made a reference and description on the (possible) higher prices of local product (lines 110-113).

For technical reasons, we were unable to use the "Track Changes” function in the Microsoft Word. The Zotero program, MDPI template, and the "Track Changes” function had some compatibility problems. We marked the changes with red colour. Besides the totally new  sentences and sections, marked words or part of a sentence means English improvements or better fitting words.

Improvements includes the suggestions of other reviewer.

Yours sincerely:

Konrád Kiss

and co-authors

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is very interesting and the findings are clearly presented. I wonder whether the spending presented per household member would make any difference in findings.

There are some tiny language/editorial mistakes:

1. Line 139: survey, ha found.
2. Line 280: fewer GDP value
3. Line 308: moreover - is it a right choice of word?
4. Line 326: One-third part
5. Line 349: were are

Author Response

Dear Mr. or Ms. Reviewer,

Thank you so much for your work and appreciation of our article.

Regarding to you question, we made a new description on in the 4. footnote (after the line 471):

„According to our results, the number of people living in single households was positively correlated with monthly expenditures on producers’ goods only in the case of an 8% significance level. Therefore the strength of this relation is weak (value of Cramers’ V association: 0,086).”

Thank you for your remark on English grammar and editorial mistakes. A native English proofreader revised an almost final version of the text.

For technical reasons, we were unable to use the "Track Changes” function in the Microsoft Word. The Zotero program, MDPI template, and the "Track Changes” function had some compatibility problems. We marked the changes with red colour. Besides the totally new  sentences and sections, marked words or part of a sentence means English improvements or better fitting words.

Improvements includes the suggestions of other reviewer.

Yours sincerely:

Konrád Kiss

and co-authors

Reviewer 3 Report

General Comment

The questions raised by the authors concerning the attitudes of consumers towards short food supply chains (SFSC) and the consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for local food products are relevant and topical. However, I have several major concerns mainly regarding conceptualization and, to a less extent, methodology. In general, I think that the paper, in its current form, does not have the accuracy or depth needed for publication.

In the conceptual approach the definitions adopted within the present research must be clarified. As the authors state in lines 78-79 “we can find several, sometimes contradictory definitions of the concept of local products, and there is no uniform and accepted definition”. That´s why the authors, for starters, should have defined the concept adopted in the present research. Along the text, the authors refer indistinctly to local producers’ goods (e.g. Table 3), small producer goods (line 465), local products, etc.

As a consequence of this lack of conceptualization, methodological inaccuracies are present in the research. In fact, the concept of local food was left to the respondents to define (line 321). Therefore, it is not possible for the authors to understand what the results are referring to (it could be Hungarian food, or northern Hungarian food or sustainable food, or food distributed through SFSC, or whatever is in the mind of participants). Furthermore, participants were asked how much premium they were “willing to pay for local products compared to a factory-made product of the same quality and type” (lines 355-356), suggesting that in the authors’ minds local and artisanal are synonymous.

The concept of SFCS used in this research is also not mentioned. Some definitions are presented but the authors never say what was the definition used in this research. Regarding the definition of SFCs other important literature could be cited. I recommend, in particular, Chiffoleau, Yuna; Millet-Amrani, Sarah e Canard, Arielle (2016) «From Short Food Supply Chains to Sustainable Agriculture in Urban Food Systems: Food Democracy as a Vector of Transition”, Agriculture, 6 (57), p.4 (em 18); doi:10.3390/agriculture6040057.

Additional Comments

1. The objectives of the study are formalized only in the Abstract. The objectives should be established and clarified in the Introduction section.
2. In lines 128-129 the authors state that “Alternative food systems and short food chains appear in both urban and rural areas, but in our opinion, their effectiveness in rural economy is questionable”. Is that the authors opinion or an interpretation of the literature review? In a scientific paper it is not usual to present personal opinions but, if the authors wish to do so, they should present valid arguments that sustain their opinion.
3. In line 199-200 the authors state that, according to consumer behaviour literature, there are several ways to assess consumers’ willingness to pay. The authors should briefly present the main methodologies or present some literature references where they can be found (may be in the Material and Methods section).
4. In The Material and Methods Sections the chosen methodology as well as the reasons for the choice should be presented. I presume it was Contingent Valuation, using an Open Ended Question but nothing is said about. Other methods could also be performed by online questionnaire.
5. Tables should have clear, descriptive  The same is true for columns and row titles. The goal of these titles is to simplify the table and allow an easy understanding of its content. Some examples of possible improvements are:
6. • Table 1 – the title should be more explicit; I think that the table shows results from other studies and that should be clear in the table title. In my opinion, this table is not needed. The referenced authors are also referenced in the text. It would be interesting to have a table like that to summarize exhaustive literature review; however, this is not the case because a lot of literature in the issue of consumers’ WTP for local was left out.
   • In table 2 it is not easy to understand what is the meaning of each percentage and the same happens in table 2 (continuation); In the second row of table 2 (continuation), I suppose that the showed price premium is an average, but that must be stated. The titles of tables, columns and rows should leave no doubt about the displayed information.
   • Table 2 and Table 2 (continuation) should be merged in a single table.
   • In table 3 it is not clear if the values represent the rates average.
   • In table 5 what is the unit of the monthly expenditure (euros?); what is the mean of the % showed in the column “Willingness to pay a premium for local goods” Shouldn’t the title of the column be” Average Price premium for local goods (%)” or is it “percentage of people willing to pay a price premium for local food”? The sentence in lines 445-446 does not clarify this doubt.
7. In table 3, the determinants could be displayed in order of importance to enable a better understanding of the results, as in table 4.
8. The sentence in lines 366-368 should precede line 392, to better contextualize readers.
9. In line 473, the authors say that they “found statistically significant spatial differences between respondents’ place of residence and preference for different shopping places (see Table 4)”. However, in table 4 nothing related to shopping places is presented.
10. From line 464 to line 522, some results regarding consumer’s preferences for SFSC are presented. A new subsection title should be inserted in line 464 and appendices D should be displayed as a table in the text.
11. It is not correct to put entire sentences between parenthesis (e.g. lines 10-151; 335-336; 350-351; 388).
12. The authors mix two referencing styles. Sometimes they use the APA style (Author, date), sometimes they use IEEE style (numbering) and sometimes they use both (e.g. L83; 167-168; 173; 174; 176; …).
13. English language must be improved.

Author Response

Dear Mr. or Ms. Reviewer,

First of all, let us thank you for your conscientious reviewer work. We agreed with your suggestions and remark and corrected the article according to our best.

For technical reasons, we were unable to use the "Track Changes”  function in the Microsoft Word. The Zotero program, MDPI template, and the "Track Changes” had some compatibility problems. We marked the changes with red colour. Besides the totally new  sentences and sections, marked words or part of a sentence means English improvements or better fitting words.

Thank you for the confirmation of the relevance of the research topic.

We extended „Conceptual approach” chapter of the paper, with more information on short food supply chains and local products (lines 82- 97 and 108-113). In this way, we endeavoured to clarify these complex terms. As a result, in our research, we consider products „local” if it is originated from a short (40 kilometer) physical distances from its place of origin, and mainly distributed through short supply chains. – This also refers to the smaller size of the producer.

We acknowledge that respondents defined the concept of local products in their own way. In contrast, based on our research findings, we conclude that the approach we use is realistic (see lines: 338-352 – in the Materials and Methods).

Responses on additional comments:

• We explained the objectives of the study also in the introduction. (lines 50-56.)
• Our remark on the appearance of alternative food systems based on the literature-experiences (lines 163-164; sorry for bad wording.)
• We made a short review on the examination methods of willingness to pay (lines 238-254).
• We made a describing part on our survey methodology, the online surveying (lines 320-328).
• We made the tables more understandable.
• Table 1: we made the title more explicit, as you advised. With your (preliminary) permission, we would like to left this table in the article. We referred it more time in the text, and the other reviewer had a positive remark on it.
• Table: 2 and its continuation: we merged it into one table. (We faced minor difficulties in the editing.)
• In the case of table 2, 3 and 5 we made more accurate classifications in the rows and columns.
• Thank you for warning us some wrong references in the text (previously: table 4 in your remark).
• We explained the information in Appendix D as the new Table 6. - Relations between the place of purchase and the place of residence of the respondents.
• With your (preliminary) permission, we used parenthesis to remark less important information.
• Many times we used the APA (Author, date) style of reference too. We used this form in the case when we had to name directly the given source, author, or research in the text. Otherwise, we should have presented those sources and results in a general way. The results of certain case-studies should not be generalised in our opinion. We hope that it is a right solution to this problem. We used this kind of formulation in the case of a previous, accepted publication.
• A native English proofreader revised an almost final version of the text.

We hope that our article became suitable for publication with these corrections.

Yours sincerely:

Konrád Kiss

and co-authors

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors revised the text as requested and answered my main questions. Some small improvements still could be made:

• The authors still mix two referencing styles. Although I understand the authors point of view, they should remove the year from the text. As an example in lines 285-286 “Apart from producers’ goods or local products, Lehota and Lencsés (2019) [66]” should be replaced by “Apart from producers’ goods or local products, Lehota and Lencsés [66]”;
• The sentences in lines 45-47 and 54-56 should be rephrased because it is not usual to place conclusions of the study in the Introduction section;
• In table 2 and table 3 the titles of the columns still not clear. I suppose that the first column is “<16 euros”, the second is “Higher than 16 and less than 31” and so on. As presented, the number of respondents would be cumulative (in fact, people who expend less than 63 euros, also expend less than 47 euros, less than 31 euros and less than 16). The last column should be ≥ 63 euros;
• English language still need to be improved.

Author Response

Dear Mr. or Ms. Reviewer,

Thank you so much for your patient work on our article.

Thank you for your kind advice on the references. We took out the "years" from the citations. Previous citations like (for example) Martinez et al. (2010) were replaced with the term "Martinez and his/her co-authors." (In all cases, in the case of more than 3 authors.)

As you suggested, we rephrased the sentences in the Introduction referred to the conclusions. (lines 46-48 and 52-56 in the new version.)
New formulations are
"- …we sought to assess the role of short food chains in rural development."
- We examined whether respondents living in small settlements (or “rural areas”) prefer local products more than residents from larger cities.

We improved the title of the columns in Tables 2 and 3. Thank you for your perception; values in the columns are not cumulative. We have written the lower limits of values.

Indeed, improvements in English were necessary. We made considerable improvements all over the text, correcting the identified grammar mistakes and strive to use better words in the content.

All of our changes were marked by the "Track changes function." (We were able to use this function because we have not used Zotero in a different file.) Red colour marks the changes regarding the first revision, „Track changes” relates to the second one.

We deleted a sentence from lines - lines 90 - 92 (lack of citation).

Yours sincerely,
Konrád Kiss and co-authors