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I want to emphasize that all the reviewers recognized the merit and importance of your work. Your research addresses a significant and relevant topic that contributes significantly to the field.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Jörg Oehlmann, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
The changes suggested by the two reviewers of the article were satisfactorily accepted by the authors.
The changes suggested by the two reviewers of the article were satisfactorily accepted by the authors.
The changes suggested by the two reviewers of the article were satisfactorily accepted by the authors.
The changes suggested by the two reviewers of the article were satisfactorily accepted by the authors.
I want to emphasize that all the reviewers recognized the merit and importance of your work. Your research addresses a significant and relevant topic that contributes significantly to the field.
However, the reviewers have highlighted a few areas that require clarification and improvement. Specifically, they noted that the methods employed in your study need further elucidation to ensure a comprehensive understanding by the readers. Additionally, the hypotheses presented in your work should have their underlying assumptions clearly outlined, providing readers with a more robust foundation for your research.
I understand that revising a manuscript can be a challenging task, but please consider that addressing these points will greatly enhance the overall quality and impact of your work.
I encourage you to carefully consider the reviewers' feedback while revising your manuscript. Once you have made the necessary revisions, please resubmit the revised version through our online submission system, along with a detailed response to the reviewers' comments. .
**PeerJ Staff Note:** Please ensure that all review, editorial, and staff comments are addressed in a response letter and any edits or clarifications mentioned in the letter are also inserted into the revised manuscript where appropriate.
The paper deals with an important issue and has interesting aspects. However, it needs major improvement before publication. The structure of the paper and of the discussion needs improvment:
1) The introduction could be structured into two parts: 1) introduction and 2) something like state of the art or conceputual part. In the latter part more background on the relevant studies could be provided.
2) The structure of the discussion is not clear, see Nr. 3 Validity of findings.
The hypotheses are in general useful, however it could be more explained why these hypotheses were assumed and what the assumptions regarding the hypotheses are.
The methods need to reflect more on the selection of the media narratives. For further points see the attached pdf.
The structure of the discussion is not clear regarding the distinction of perceived environmental risks and health risks. Further, the results could be discussed more in relation to other findings on media perception. For further points see the attached pdf.
For further points see the attached pdf.
The scope of the study proposal is indeed emergent and of broad public interest. Nevertheless, it is a topic that has been very rarely addressed in reputable scientific journals, which further emphasizes the need for studies like this. Therefore, right from the start, I would like to congratulate you on your pioneering spirit and initiative to discuss this subject in the light of the best science. Although the manuscript has many merits, such as the description of the theoretical framework, there is always room for improvement. Consequently, I present below some considerations based on what I could envision as points to be enhanced.
Introduction
The description of the theoretical scenario is highly elaborated and robust. However, enhancing its cohesion would be beneficial, which can be achieved by excluding certain indirect citations of manuscript findings that may be better suited for the Discussion section. For example, in lines 133-136, the citation of "Renn et al. (1991)" explaining risk perception as a product of social experience, dependent on people's knowledge, self-control, and experience, and "Niu et al. (2022)" highlighting the variability of the relationship between media consumption and perceived risk across countries, media types, and nature of risk. Additionally, I believe that having two separate subtopics solely dedicated to hypotheses might disrupt the flow of the text. While the level of detail is commendable, the text does tend to become excessively long and tiring. Therefore, I recommend incorporating the premises supporting the hypotheses into a cohesive and robust Introduction, rather than maintaining them as standalone subtopics. In summary, my suggestion is to remove the subtopics related to hypotheses and integrate the information into the Introduction in a more coherent manner.
Materials & Methods
I was expecting a more detailed description of the chosen study area. Information such as the population and environmental profile of the area would be highly relevant and would complement the experimental design and theoretical framework of your study. I suggest reconsidering this matter.
I believe the map could provide more detail by including the names of the counties and their distances from the capital of the country, Bucharest.
“We conducted an online survey with a convenience sample of Romanians from May to July 2022. 417 Romanians from rural and urban areas from 24 counties (out of the total 41 counties and the municipality of Bucharest) were interviewed” (lines 242-244): What is the total population of these 24 counties? And why were only 417 people selected? What criteria did you, as the authors, use to select the study participants? Such information is crucial in a manuscript with a proposal like yours.
“The snowball sampling was a method that was widely applied in the pandemic context (Cohen & Arieli, 2011) when people were not very willing to be surveyed face-to-face, requiring minimal human resources. However, representation is not guaranteed, and it is vulnerable to sampling biases (e.g., risk of self-selection) (Amicarelli et al., 2022)” (lines 266-269): Given what you have mentioned, why did you choose this technique? How does it apply to the purpose of this study? Did you use any selective criteria to eliminate or minimize these biases? This level of detail is missing in the text. At first glance, it doesn't seem to make much sense to choose a method that is known to have flaws and biases.
Results
“The factors that influence the awareness of MPs are the age (p=.000) and the media narrative "Microplastics in the sea threaten fish stocks" (p=.001) (Table 3), and their influence is as follows.” (lines 321-323): What were the other variables included in the initial model whose effects were not significant? While the variables with significant effects deserve more prominence and focus in the discussion, I believe that a description of the other variables (even if brief) would provide a broader understanding of your experimental design. Perhaps, including a more comprehensive table with all the variables from the initial model and their levels of significance as "Supplementary Material" could be considered. The same comment applies to the other models used to test the remaining hypotheses.
Discussion
Overall, I found your discussion arguments to be quite superficial. Your findings were intriguing with valuable insights, and I believe they deserved a more robust discussion. What does the scientific and technical literature offer in terms of arguments supporting (or refuting) your findings? I also missed seeing a connection between your results and the outcomes of similar studies. How do your findings align (or not) with existing scientific knowledge? What novelty do they bring? Another point I noticed missing: considering your Introduction, you aimed to assess people's risk perception. Where are the references on risk perception? How did accessing people's perception contribute to the outcome of your study? Why did you choose to assess perception rather than local ecological knowledge (which are distinct concepts), for instance? These inquiries apply to both this section and the Introduction.
Conclusions
What are the main theoretical and practical contributions of your study? I missed that focus, especially regarding the theoretical contributions. I suggest revisiting your results and analyzing them with greater attention and precision: undoubtedly, they have much more to convey than what you reported here. What are the key limitations of the study? This question is vital because it will serve as a reference for future similar studies building upon your research.
The article brings an interesting approach to the role of the media in people's risk perception of microplastics.
However, the text needs some adjustments, in the sense of having a greater theoretical contribution and changes in its structure.
For example:
Introduction, line 69: Perhaps the authors need to relativize the discourse, as there are several types of media, channels, etc. The role of the media is informative and very important for society, although we know that there is alarmist and sensationalist media, but the authors cannot place all media as villains, as implied in this paragraph. I suggest you rewrite the paragraph.
Line 130: It is necessary to relativize the discourse once again. Not only does the media influence people's perception of risk, attitudes and behavior. These are complex issues and influenced by several factors. Rewrite the paragraph taking this into account.
Line 131: It is contradictory, because in the sequence you cite several works. According to my knowledge, there are many works on risk perception, and with different approaches. Review the paragraph!
Hypothesis development
Idem. I think that the authors should separate the literature and graft it onto the introduction, in order to leave only the hypothesis and the prediction, thus making the text clearer and more objective.
It is necessary to improve several points of the methodology. It is not clear how the participants were selected, criteria for inclusion in the sample, for example.
Line 269: The snowball needs a stimulus to search for the first interviewees, until closing the possibility of including new people. These aspects are not clear in the explanation.
Line 274: I suggest that authors separate data collection and data analysis.
Line 282: At no time does the text refer to the inclusion of these variables as a research question. To review!
Line 324: They bring age as a factor that influences the perception of risk regarding PM, but it was not a research question, nor did the authors base the idea in the introduction.
Line 367: Once again the socioeconomic variables.
Line 400: The discussion is superficial and generic. For example, there is no discussion about age influencing risk perception in relation to PM. Adjust!
Line 430:I have the same impression when I read this discussion thread. What outcome is it associated with? What is actually being discussed?
Line 484: The same impression as before. The importance or not of the media on the perception of risk and PM is not clear, in the introduction text the authors place the media as the "villain" of misinformation, here in this excerpt from the discussion, people having a greater perception of risk is good for generating pro-environmental attitudes. We don't know where they want to go with the text.
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