PONE-D-23-40470Examining agricultural land manager willingness to adopt climate change mitigation measures in the UK.PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Oyetunde-Usman,

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The first Author - AJ, was financially supported by the Science Initiative Catalyst Award (SICA) programme, a Rothamsted Research internal UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UKRI-BBSRC) award. GM and ALC acknowledge funding from Rothamsted Research’s Institutional Strategic Programmes ‘Soil to Nutrition’ (S2N) supported by UKRI-BBSRC BBS/E/C/000I0320 & BBS/E/C/000I0330 and ‘Resilient Farming Futures’ supported by UKRI-BBSRC BB/X010961/1.

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AJ was financially supported by the Science Initiative Catalyst Award (SICA) programme, a Rothamsted Research internal UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UKRI-BBSRC) award. GM and ALC acknowledge funding from Rothamsted Research’s Institutional Strategic Programmes ‘Soil to Nutrition’ (S2N) supported by UKRI-BBSRC BBS/E/C/000I0320 & BBS/E/C/000I0330 and ‘Resilient Farming Futures’ supported by UKRI-BBSRC BB/X010961/1.

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The first Author - AJ, was financially supported by the Science Initiative Catalyst Award (SICA) programme, a Rothamsted Research internal UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UKRI-BBSRC) award. GM and ALC acknowledge funding from Rothamsted Research’s Institutional Strategic Programmes ‘Soil to Nutrition’ (S2N) supported by UKRI-BBSRC BBS/E/C/000I0320 & BBS/E/C/000I0330 and ‘Resilient Farming Futures’ supported by UKRI-BBSRC BB/X010961/1.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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 ONE 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: Congratulations to the authors for a well designed and timely piece of research, which contains many interesting findings which I believe will be of interest to both the academic and agricultural communities.

I have a few comments which I believe should be addressed before this research is ready for publication.

Firstly, I think there needs to be much more consideration of the limitations of the chosen analysis here. The authors are clearly aware of the debate over the use of means based on likert-style (ordinal) data. While I do not have a problem with how this has been done here, I have low confidence in the results because there is very limited information on the data distribution, spread etc. There is also no discussion of the ordinal nature of the data, whereby the scores are not equidistant making grouping, calculation of means and use in models dangerous - all of which have been conducted here without allowing for proper scrutiny. Some clearer, simpler information on frequency distributions of the underlying data would be welcome here.

Furthermore, I am slightly uncomfortable at the subsequent use of stepwise regression, which has potential pitfalls including biased parameter estimation, model selection inconsistencies, and inappropriate focussing on one 'best' model or even multiple hypothesis testing. I would like to see more discussion, or even further testing of the degree to which these have occurred and therefore how trustworthy the results are.

Finally, I cannot see a copy of the questionnaire that was delivered, which is important to be able to scrutinise. Especially since some of the responses given in the supplementary material were questioning the posing of some questions. This should be provided, as should more clarity on the underlying data behind the means and percentages given (see comment above here too).

Please see below for some additional comments relating to the line numbers given. The manuscript would benefit from further proof reading to pick up on a few typos.

Line 10: Initial should be AJ?

44: delete "were needed"

122: This sentence mixes up a range of causes and effects and does not make a good link between grazing intensity, biodiversity or pollination services. Suggest the authors make a broader statement, backed up with a recent review of the effects of livestock grazing on biodiversity including pollination (e.g. Schils et al. 2022, Agr. Eco. Env., 330; 107891)

133: Not clear what this % refers to. Potential of fertilisation reductions to reduce total GHG emissions? Suggest clarify.

134: delete comma after reference

177: cover (not covers)

183: change comma to full stop

192-205: This paragraph is lacking some balanced evaluation of the impacts of bioenergy crop production. Whilst Overall this may be true (e.g. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac22be/meta) it is context dependent and dependent on previous land use (e.g. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcbb.12067).

236: I would like to see more detail of these removals. How many? What were some of the examples removed?

243: It is not clear to me where some of these figures come from, and therefore cannot be well scrutinised. E.g. where is the 70.6% figure from and what does it specifically refer to? What is it comparing? SImilarly - where does the 39% figure and no direct costs come from against increasing fresh grass?

331: As above it is currently unclear how some of these figures have been derived. For example, the figures next to "own livestock" seem different from those mentioned in the text. Please clarify or outline the discrepancy.

370: "whose"

382-387: The effect of labour availability is an interesting, if not surprising result. It would be nice to see this set in the current context of labour supply changes following the UK's exit from the EU and other longer term changes to labour supply. Suggest an expansion of discussion here.

Reviewer #2: This article provides an interesting survey on adoption of GHGs mitigation policies by farmers in UK. Overall, it seems considerable for publication in PLOS ONE, however, before it is considered for publication, it needs to be revised and improved. There are several other studies published on this topic, what is the rationale for the current study? Did you find some different results? Could you provide a comparison with other studies?

1. Revise the title to make it attractive.

2. There are a lot of grammatical and syntax mistakes throughout the manuscripts, please revise carefully. Rewrite sentences: L137, L150, L154-156, L168-172 (break into smaller sentences), 206-207,

3. Write objectives of the study in the last paragraph of introduction.

4. Flow of discussion is missing, try to cite more relevant literature and discuss properly.

5. Section headings are not meaningful and attractive, e.g. the first heading of Methods is "Data" , which does not convey the message properly. Authors are advised to revise the sections headings carefully.

6. Revise the conclusion and recommendation section, authors are encouraged to give their viewpoints to cover the gap they mentioned in that section.

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Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Willingness to AdoptGreen House GasMitigation Measures: Agricultural land managers in the United Kingdom

PONE-D-23-40470R1

Dear Dr. Oyetunde-Usman,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Muhammad Aamer Mehmood, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Reviewers' comments:

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. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately 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?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). 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 ONE 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 to the authors for their thorough and detailed responses to my questions, which have been addressed well with the amendments to the manuscript. The caveats within the discussion and the extra information in the supplementary material have allowed for far more scrutiny of the underlying data.

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Richard Francksen

Reviewer #2: No

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