PCLM-D-24-00304

Can neighbourhood interventions strengthen collective climate action?

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Klöckner,

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.

Overall, reviewers found the topic timely, and the study potentially valuable for advancing research on collective climate action. However, they also identified several important areas requiring substantial revision:

Framing and Structure: Reviewer 1 emphasized reframing the manuscript as an exploratory and reflective contribution. Reviewers 2 and 3 agreed that claims should be softened to match the study’s exploratory nature and small sample size. Methods and Intervention Description: All three reviewers noted the need for more detailed descriptions of the intervention design, selection processes, and recruitment methods. Reviewer 2 highlighted the lack of standalone methodological information, and Reviewer 3 suggested summarizing interventions in a table for clarity. Clarification of Link to Previous Study: Reviewers 2 and 3 requested clearer explanations of how this study builds on or differs from your previous publication, recommending a figure or timeline to help readers.

In addition, Reviewer 3 was very critical about subjective claims regarding intervention impacts without sufficient evidence, suggesting these statements be moved to the results section and properly supported. Reviewer 3 suggested that the manuscript be reframed as a pilot or intervention development paper rather than a full evaluation study.

Please ensure that your decision is justified on PLOS Climate’s publication criteria  and not, for example, on novelty or perceived impact.

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Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 13 2025 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.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• 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,

Fanli Jia

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

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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?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

Reviewer #3: No

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

Reviewer #1: I don't know

Reviewer #2: I don't know

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: No

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Thank you for this thought provoking manuscript! I enjoyed reading about your creative interventions and considerations of how to effectively measure changes in individual and collective action.

Overall, I think a restructuring of the manuscript will better highlight the strengths of this research and knowledge production.

I suggest introducing the manuscript as an explorative and provocative article that addresses a relatively new area of research and includes intriguing results that warrant publication to encourage further research on this important topic. This could immediately address the limitations of your small sample size and justify the credibility and validity of your findings. Thus, you may consider integrating some of the key messages in your conclusion in your introduction section to present the uniqueness of your paper. I also suggest doing another edit for proper English grammar and describing your interventions much earlier in the paper to help set the research context. The interventions are very interesting to read about and contribute to our collective knowledge and ideas on how to stimulate collective climate action.

Also, the framing of the manuscript in relation to transformative learning, experiential learning, and disruptive

interventions seems to get lost in the current structure of the manuscript. You also do not return to these concepts very clearly in your discussion. Consider integrating this more into your discussion through a deeper theoretical reflection on your intervention or significantly reduce or omit this section - although I think that would be a learning loss for your potential readers. The design of the interventions in and of themselves is very interesting.

In terms of your limitations, these are well written and address the concerns I had in my mind as a read your results and methods. However, I think a strength of this paper is the framing of the interventions and rigorous study of individual vs. collective action. For example, you may consider including any context or understandings you may have about the low response rate in the post-survey. Is there a way to address this potential challenge in future research? Perhaps a mixed methods study could address this limitation and add a rich narrative around individual and collective experiences?

Overall, I suggest revising the manuscript as more of a reflective and thought provoking piece with clear recommendations to inspire future research that could address the limitations of your research.

Reviewer #2: Summary

This research article explores whether neighbourhood interventions can strengthen collective climate action. The research utilises a range of intervention methods across seven European neighbourhoods, including contextualized climate action, experiential learning, and creative and disruptive communication techniques. The article conducts statistical analysis of survey data, taken before and after interventions, to show that interventions had a positive effect on perceived social norms around climate action, identification with the local neighbourhood (i.e., a sense of belonging and ownership), and decreased perceived barriers to action. The article also posits that interventions had small positive effects on collective intentions and efficacy, and behavioural changes, but no effect on individual factors.

This research article offers an interesting insight to a topical area of research. The introduction provides a nice introduction to ongoing debates in the field, and a good level of detail on different models that might be used. The hypotheses are presented logically and are used to provide thought-provoking observations on the dataset, as well as implications for wider research and climate action.

However, the manuscript would benefit from acknowledging any findings as observations only, rather than robust statistical findings. Although the authors do acknowledge the limitations of the small sample size to this study several times, other language and presentation of data in the manuscript is misleading as to the gravity of the research findings. This article has rightly identified an interesting area of future research but faces significant constraints insofar as independent research findings. This is not a recommendation that these findings should not be published for reflection and the interest of colleagues. However, that the intent and outputs of manuscript must be reframed to more accurately reflect what this contribution is.

Another challenge of this research article is the degree to which is relies on piece of work previously published in this journal last year. The data analysed in this paper originates from this previous dataset, and as such, a significant amount of methodology information is not included, and the reader is instead referred to the previous paper. Instances where the manuscript should independently contain this information have been outlined in the attached detailed comments, as well as areas that are simply unclear without having read the previous manuscript. This is a decision for the Editor about whether the paper must act as a stand-alone piece of work; it currently does not.

Separately, there are some concerns around the methodology and presentation of the data used specifically for this research. These comments may be resolved through simple clarifications but must be revised before the paper can be considered for publication.

Detailed review comments are split into major and minor reflections, with numbered sections and specific page locations referred to where possible for clarity (no line numbers provided for reference).

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Major comments

1. Small sample size

A) The manuscript would benefit from clarity around the active sample size. It appears that although the total sample size was 46, only 13 of these attended interventions, and therefore the remaining 33 participants are a control group. If there is an expected effect on participants who did not attend interventions, this should be clearly explained and justified.

2. Reliance on previously published work

A) There is a decision for the Editor on whether this is in contradiction with journal policy around replication studies. Currently, this paper does not function as a stand-alone piece of work. Perhaps it would be useful to consider what information would be necessary to include if the previous work were published by different authors. A few examples follow of areas where further clarification would aid the reader’s understanding.

o Page 5 - Greater detail on the selection of neighbourhoods for investigation, particularly given the small sample size – including limitations of this selection process.

o Page 5 - Evidence that ‘people usually spend sufficient time within the area and with neighbours, as well as that people often identify with the place they live’.

o Page 5 – Further justification on the addition of ‘social capital’ to the methodology, especially as the hypotheses (Page 8) show no expected effect

o Generally, more information on the survey, and interventions methodology would be beneficial – perhaps as supporting material

B) There are several methodological details that must be clarified, independently, for the paper to make an individual contribution to the research field:

o Page 6 – How were these variables defined as ‘key’?

o Page 12 – ‘Since the sample is very small, we do not assess reliability measures for the 13 resulting scales in this study and rather refer to the corresponding assessments in our previous paper.’ Reliability measures should be independently conducted for this dataset with findings explicitly addressed and incorporated into the overall claims. Without this, it is unclear if the research meets the journal requirement ‘Sample sizes must be large enough to produce robust results, where applicable’.

3. Justification of statistical methodology and analysis

A) Greater detail on limitations of the dataset

o Page 8 – The data appear to have been collected over quite different time frames e.g., over a matter of weeks vs. months. The manuscript should expand on the reasons for and limitations of this.

o Page 9 – Greater explanation of the limitations of the second intervention being cancelled in Austria and known/expected implications for the dataset is needed.

B) Clarification around language to describe methodology

o Page 6 – In the discussion of the key variables and hypotheses, the language around ‘should be’ (rather than expected to be or might be) raises concerns around the self-selection of data and therefore reliability of findings. The authors should review the implications of this for their findings, and, if simply an error in language, amend the manuscript accordingly.

o Page 12 – Similar comments apply to the phrase, ‘we replicated the sections of the survey that measured the target variables what we were interested in’. The manuscript should provide more detail on how this process constitutes a robust methodology.

C) Justification of statistical tests used

o Page 13 – Were the data treated in any way to address unevenness of e.g., nationality? If not, what are the implications of these differences, e.g., higher education and social status of participants for findings?

o Page 14 - The manuscript is missing necessary detail on the justification of the statistical methods selected and conducted before the presentation of findings, and would benefit from justifying the suitability of the statistical tests conducted in the first instance.

4. Implied strength of results

o Page 19 – ‘Thus, it appears that overall, our neighbourhood interventions were successful, and with a larger sample we would have been able to demonstrate this with traditional significance testing also for more of the tested hypotheses’. This phrase is misleading as to the strength of the findings, regardless of the following caveat about sample size- unsurprisingly (given the small sample size) most findings were not significant. The manuscript should rephrase all similar claims to ensure the following journal requirement is met: ‘Authors should avoid overstating their conclusions. Authors may discuss possible implications for their results as long as these are clearly identified as hypotheses instead of conclusions’.

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Minor comments

1. Flow and content of the introduction

o Page 4 – The manuscript would benefit from reviewing the flow of the introduction. This section seems to include a literature review, methodology, and findings in no clear order. For a reader, this flow is confusing and causes unnecessary repetition throughout the paper.

o Page 5 - Greater detail on certain topics before they are introduced as part of the research methodology would aid the readers’ understanding of why they were included e.g., disruptive communication, or Transformative Learning Theory.

o Page 6 – The justification of hypotheses could do with citations.

2. Consistent sample definition

o Page 8 – There seem to be some instances where the number of neighbourhoods is incorrectly references, for example, ‘We implemented three events in each of nine neighbourhoods’. Should this be seven?

3. Text bolding

o Page 4 – There is a reliance on bolding throughout the text for clarity. Recommendation to check that this font manipulation would carry through to publication format, and if not, ensuring the flow is clear enough in plain text.

o Pages 10-14 – The bolding of key information is inconsistent throughout this section.

4. Structure

o Page 9-12 – The details of the interventions might benefit from a table to more easily compare the interventions in different places and follow the narrative.

Reviewer #3: Thank you for the opportunity review this paper describing an intervention study at the neighbourhood level on collective climate action in various European cities. I think that the premise of the study is interesting and interventions in this area are badly need. I do find several major methodological limitations to this study, including a small sample size, lack of examination of whether or not intervention and control groups are equivalent (or adjustment for this if needed) and significant heterogeneity in intervention content (without assessment of the impacts of individual sub-components). The manuscript is lengthy and there is also a lack of clarity around how this study fits within the larger study, which included a portion of the survey data collection. As a result, some key information (e.g. on recruitment of the sample) is also unclear. There is very minimal description of the intervention selection and design process. I think that the manuscript could be improved if re-framed as an intervention development and pilot paper rather than as an evaluation paper, as the design does not support evaluation inference.

Abstract

Introduction

- More clarity is needed on how this study relates to the past study that the authors refer to multiple times (this also applies to mention of the initial study in the methods section). I wonder if some sort of figure showing a timeline of data collection and what was included in the first publication vs. the present paper would be helpful.

- A definition of “environmental identity” would be helpful.

Methods

- It would be helpful to understand more about the selection and design of intervention components for a given context. How were these decisions made and by whom? What was the design process? Did the study team manage their implementation, or were local organizations involved?

- I wonder if it would help to organize the interventions by site into a table. This would save a substantial amount of text and would help to clarify common vs. distinct elements between them.

- Some of the first interventions (e.g. in Italy) seem like they uniquely involved sharing information about the project (i.e. aims). I am not convinced that this constitutes an “intervention” in and of itself. Perhaps the author could clarify what additional elements were included in these first interventions, if any.

- The authors describe children participating in several interventions yet at another point in the article they say that minors were excluded.

- In the descriptions of the interventions the authors also include subjective statements about their impacts (e.g. “Participants developed a shared sense of purpose and agency, reinforcing their belief in their ability to influence perceptions, policies, and practices collaboratively” pg. 11, “By involving local politicians and extending the invitation to nearby neighbourhoods, the intervention strengthened collective efficacy” pg. 12). This kind of information should be reserved for the results section and such statements should be made based on evidence. It should also be clear how such assessments of impact were made. In the methods (or better, in a table that summarizes all of the interventions) it would instead be appropriate to comment on the goal or intended mechanism of the intervention (e.g. what that specific intervention component was designed to do – but not what it actually did, since the latter must be demonstrated in the results).

- I am curious why the authors did not assign random study IDs to participants? It seems that there is a risk that participant data was not included if at post-intervention assessment participants did not enter in the same (seemingly complex) individual code as they had entered at baseline.

- It would be helpful to include some information about how the sample was recruited and how the survey was administered.

Results

- It would be helpful to clarify what the total sample size for analysis (evaluation) was in each group in the main text of the results. Do I understand correctly that this sample included only 13 people who participated in the interventions?

- If the goal of the evaluation is to compare (retrospectively) those who participated in the interventions to those who did not then some kind of demonstration that these samples are otherwise equivalent is needed. For instance, demographics of the two groups should be described separately in a table along with any other factors that could potentially confound the association of interest.

- I am concerned about the inference of these analyses given the small sample size.

- Given the heterogeneity of interventions it is also impossible to assess what specifically may have had an effect, making it challenging to build upon this work.

Discussion

- Some of the information in the discussion on interpretation of resulst belongs in the methods (e.g. on effect size). Similarly, table 3 belongs in the results.

- Given the sample size and other methodological limitations of the study, I do not think that statements about the effectiveness of the interventions can be made (e.g. “Our intervention events seem to be successful in making social norms salient and create a stronger identification with the neighbours; … among the other factors, climate change perception in the neighbourhoods and perceived social capital were apparently not affected by the interventions.”)

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what does this mean? ). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Can neighbourhood interventions strengthen collective climate action?

PCLM-D-24-00304R1

Dear Dr. Klöckner,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Can neighbourhood interventions strengthen collective climate action?' 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.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact climate@plos.org.

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

Best regards,

Fanli Jia

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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publication criteria?>

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

Reviewer #1: Thank you for your thorough consideration of the reviewers' comments. This paper is a valuable piece of knowledge and I appreciate you sharing it in this journal.

Reviewer #2: N/A

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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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