PCLM-D-23-00012

Time to talk about values, time to say no: What drives public participation in decision-making on abstract versus concrete energy projects?

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Perlaviciute,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by May 21 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Kim-Pong Tam

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

a. State the initials, alongside each funding source, of each author to receive each grant.

b. State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

I am very glad that I was able to secure two experts in the related research areas to review your manuscript. Both reviewers reported that your manuscript was interesting and had great potential to make significant contributions to the scientific literature, but they also raised some issues that would need to be clarified or addressed with a revision. I read the manuscript independently, and came up with a similar assessment. I think some revision is necessary before the manuscript can be considered for publication in the journal.

Specifically, other than the comments by the two reviewers, please make sure you also adequately address the following issues:

1. Please provide more details regarding your measures. It is a good practice to report all the study materials you used in a supplementary document.

2. Also, it is important to clarify or provide support evidence of the validity of your measures (particularly the participation willingness measures).

3. Since your research touched on people’s appraisal of concrete vs. abstract objects (i.e., projects), I am curious to what extent you find the construal level theory in social psychology relevant.

4. Please also clarify where we can draw the line between abstract projects and concrete projects. In my view, abstract projects (e.g., national renewable energy targets) and concrete projects (e.g., a local wind park) as you conceptualized seem to also differ from each other in terms of time orientation (long-term or remote future vs. near-term or near future) and geographical specificity (geographically unspecified vs. local-specific). Are time orientation and geographical specificity confounders of abstractness? Or are they two of the essential components of abstractness?

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This is a very interesting and important topic, looking at the relationship of underlying values to attitudes towards public participation. The paper could make a meaningful contribution to a better understanding of the role of participation in the sustainable energy transition.

My major concern regarding this manuscript relates to Study 1 and what is used as a measure of “willingness to participate.” Unless I am reading this incorrectly, it appears that the measure used in Study 1 is about general agreement that the public should participate in the decision. That is a very different construct than personal willingness to participate, which raises doubts regarding the validity of conclusions presented regarding this study. For example, project acceptance may weaken support for participation among those high in biospheric values because they view broad participation of the public as a threat to renewables projects.

It appears that Study 2 uses a different measure regarding participation, which is closer to individual willingness to participate. However, I still quibble with whether this shows the willingness to actually participate versus a desire to have opportunities to participate. Regardless, the authors need to address this difference and its implications for the conclusions drawn.

I am also concerned about the use of correlation statistics in the paper. Although some of the correlations between the values and participation variables are statistically significant, they are actually relatively small correlations. I was always taught that meaningful correlations should be above ~.40. The authors may want to reconsider how these correlations are treated in the text or justify the consideration of correlations as small as .10 as meaningful. Paragraph 1 on page 10, for example, makes a case that project support is negatively correlated with participation variables, but these correlations are all smaller than .15.

Finally, the authors should review and reference Bidwell and Schweizer (2021), which also relates public viewpoints on public participation (specifically goals) to values (including altruism and egoism). That article is relevant to much of this manuscript. For example, that article may provide insights regarding attitudes towards instrumental participation (discussed in this manuscript).

Specific comments:

• In the abstract and early in the manuscript, values are defined as “things people find important in their lives.” In the methods, however, values are defined as “guiding principles,” which is the more standard definition of values from a social psychology perspective. I suggest using this definition of values as “guiding principles” in the introduction and abstract, as it’s a more accurate representation of what was measured.

• In presenting the working definition of “public participation,” the authors may want to mention that the term is somewhat problematic, as some literature has a much broader definition of the term (e.g., work by Jason Chilvers).

• In the introduction to values (page 2-3), the authors may want to acknowledge that altruism, biospherism, egoism, and hedonism are four among a broader suite of values that may be related to energy transitions. While Steg and collaborators have focused research on these four values, others (e.g., Bidwell, 2013) have found conservation/traditional values to relate to energy topics.

• In paragraph 1 on page 4, the authors may want to mention the dynamic of “green on green” conflicts discussed by Warren et al (2005).

• In this same paragraph, the authors should acknowledge that the difference in general attitudes towards renewable energy/technologies and attitudes towards specific projects has long been a focus of the social acceptance literature. Bell et al. (2005) is a good source regarding this dynamic.

Reviewer #2: The paper proposes a hypothesis that values related to willingness to participate differ by stage of the decision-making from the abstract level to the concrete level. Importantly, this study conducted surveys in a real-life setting. The reviewer admits the efforts to conduct and collect data.

Although the structure is clear and data analysis is almost appropriate overall, I would suggest some brush-up.

1. The case in Study 2

The reviewer is curious about the participatory activities organized by the Municipality: e. g. what did they do? How many residents participated in the activities? Who participated -- only those of opposition? Describing these things might help in understanding the results: particularly why no differences between phases 1 and 2 were found.

2. Questionnaire items for values

It would be helpful to introduce the concrete items of measuring values in the Material of Study 1. The authors could present them in the appendix.

3. comparison of acceptability in General discussion

Acceptability was considerably decreased while the other scales seemed to be changed not so much. Referring to these results might help to make the general discussion sound on page 16.

Minor things:

The numbering of the tables is incorrect. There are two “Table 2”: the following Table numbers must be modified.

Some citations were not found in the References, e. g. Liu et al., 2022; Fiorino, 1990. Please check them.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Time to talk about values, time to say no: What drives public participation in decision-making on abstract versus concrete energy projects?

PCLM-D-23-00012R1

Dear dr. Perlaviciute,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Time to talk about values, time to say no: What drives public participation in decision-making on abstract versus concrete energy projects?' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Kim-Pong Tam

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for the opportunity to review this revised manuscript. I appreciate the efforts of the authors to carefully consider and respond to the comments made by the reviewers and journal editor, and the end result is a stronger manuscript.

Although the authors have addressed the differences in the "Willingness to Participate" scale from Study 1 and Study 2, I am still uneasy about the use of the word "willingness" to describe this latent variable for Study 1. I recognize the desire to keep the name of the scale and the concept consistent from one study to the other, the phrase "willingness that the public participates" is stilted. This is not a show stopper for me, but I recommend that the authors use a different phrase, such as "support for public participation" or "public participation preferences."

Reviewer #2: It is well-revised. Ａ concrete description of the case was added, of which the municipality conducted participatory programs, but only a small number of groups actually participated in it. The discussion section provides perceptive insight into public participation and acceptability. The reviewer acknowledges that this paper contributes to both theoretical and practical implications.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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