PONE-D-24-39170Cooperation in the face of disasterPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Luistro Jonsson,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’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.

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ACADEMIC EDITOR: Two reviewers have provided constructive feedback. They both agree the paper has good merit and addresses a highly relevant issue in behavioural evolution. There are some suggestions they have provided for making further improvements to the paper. Please take them carefully into account when preparing the revision version. 

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Kind regards,

The Anh Han, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Two reviewers have provided constructive feedback. They both agree the paper has good merit and addresses a highly relevant issue in behavioural evolution. There are some suggestions they have provided for making further improvements to the paper. Please take them carefully into account when preparing the revision version.

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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: I Don't Know

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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: Yes

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: This manuscript explores what happens to cooperation

when disasters strike repeatedly using a threshold public goods game with stochastic shocks. To tackle this issue, they perform subjective experiments, mathmatical analysis, and simulations.

Their methods jointly show that cooperation is higher and persists when there is a risk for disasters to strike, and that this is sustained by unconditional cooperation. This is explained by a contribution divergence in uncertain environments wherein some give unconditionally while others free-ride. The key lesson by this study is that we are indeed capable of cooperating, but it is important for an unconditional cooperation mindset to dominate in order to successfully hurdle over thresholds in unstable environments.

I agree with its publication because this manuscript has suitable research questions, methods, results, and presenations basically. I have some minor points which would be helpful for the revision.

1) I think one of key elements of this study is to test the three different types of uncertainty about the disaster (the probability of a disaster, threshold level, and impact). Therefore, I believe it is important to show the influences of them on the experimental pereformances. Although in Results, the authors mentioned contributions, contextual differences, responses to checks, and conditionarlity, the summary (figures) of results, especially the impact on the three different types of uncertainty may be helpful for readers to understand.

2) The experiments were conducted during various periods in 2012-2013. I wonder why it took for more than ten years to submit this manuscript. Would you explain the situation briefly?

3) Their simulation results support for their experiments. Although the source code is avalible, I don't understand the detailed setting of the simulation. Please add the explanation.

Reviewer #2: The authors studied the change of cooperation patterns in the presence of uncertainty, represented by various types of probabilistic risks. Overall, this is an experimental study of human behavior, and I cannot argue with empirical observations. I believe that their observations are worth reporting, so I recommend its publications with a couple of minor comments.

First, in Abstract, the authors say that ``This is explained by a contribution divergence,'' but I do not agree. `Contribution divergence' is not an explanation, but just another way of describing the observation.

Second, the authors have identified a player's utility with the earnings (line 463). However, when describing the experimental results, they mention risk-willingness (line 232), which implies that a player's utility could depend on his or her risk attitude. I guess that even their main observation that people become more favorable to cooperation in an uncertain environment could be described better by incorporating the risk attitude in utility properly.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Isamu Okada

Reviewer #2: No

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Cooperation in the face of disaster

PONE-D-24-39170R1

Dear Dr. Luistro Jonsson,

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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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 onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

The Anh Han, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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

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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: I have confirmed all of the author's responses and agree to publish the article as is. I think this paper is of high quality.

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: Isamu Okada

Reviewer #2: No

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