PONE-D-24-14900Opportunities and challenges within green spaces during COVID-19: Perspectives of visitors and managers in Maine, USAPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Soucy,

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"This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under the Grants No. 1824961, 1828466, 1849802; the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, McIntire Stennis project number #ME0-42017 through the Maine Agricultural & Forest Experiment Station; and by a University of Maine Research Reinvestment Fund Rural Health and Wellbeing Grand Challenge grant."

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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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: N/A

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: The paper is well written, adequately describes methods and results, had presents implications for managers.

My only concern is that not all the concepts used in the research are fully detailed in the literature review (e.g. place attachment is a complex topic, that needs more explanation, if the results related to identity and dependence are to be useful to readers.)

Reviewer #2: General Comments

The paper is well-structured and well-written, focusing on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on green areas in Maine, USA. The study employs a qualitative methodology, comparing different projects to understand how people, due to the pandemic, changed their ways of interacting with the green areas in the case study analyzed. It aims to explore the opportunities and challenges related to changing customs in the use of green areas, particularly the influence of COVID-19 on these changes in activities, perceptions, and uses within the case study. This topic is both interesting and necessary. However, the paper could benefit from a more in-depth examination of certain aspects to enhance the robustness of the results and reinforce the research gap and the importance of conducting similar studies. Below, I provide some comments and suggestions that can help to improve the paper, in case the authors want to consider them.

Specifically, I recommend that the authors expand the Introduction section to include more background on the research related to COVID-19 and the importance of green areas. Recent studies, in fact, have explored this topic from different perspectives. Additionally, it would be beneficial to clearly specify the research gap and the innovative contributions this article makes to the literature, differentiating it from other related studies. This will help to increase the robustness and novelty of the current study by clarifying its unique contributions compared to other research. Currently it is not so clear to me reading the text the novelty that the paper brings if we compare it with other literature on the same topic. The Introduction and Conclusions are likely good sections in which to highlight these aspects in more detail.

Specific comments

- Introduction – Literature Review section. In lines 92-95 and 100-102, the authors state that people have positive and negative experiences in green areas due to various factors, but do not go into detail. Can you provide examples or further elaborate on how people perceive green spaces differently according to the literature? What roles do values and socio-cultural or individual factors play in influencing these experiences?

- Line 132-135. Can you further explain in the text what causes an increase or decrease? What are the most common factors you found in the literature?

- Line 178. Figure 1. I think adding a figure of the green areas in the case study analyzed, with their distribution, different typologies, or some representative photos, could help the reader better understand the context being analyzed and the results obtained later.

- Line 186. Are you referring to visitors, local citizens, or tourists? Is the sense of place the same for people who don't live in the area compared to local people? Are you considering these distinctions, or are you talking about all types of visitors in these green spaces? It would be better to specify this in the text.

- Line 234. Can you add more information on how you triangulated the participants and methods? This could help increase the ease for readers who want to replicate the same methodology.

- Line 285-289. Can you provide further details about how you identified this 3 main category and what criteria helped you define them?

- Line 328-329. What type of “ecological damage” or “ecological worries” are you referring to?

- Line 402-404. Can you further elaborate on the concept of "attachment to the state"? What are you referring to? I think it can help the reader to better understand the concept of sense of place, identity, and attachment of you case study, as well as helping to extrapolate it more generally.

- Line 414. Table 3. It seems that the terms "Place Identity" and "Place Dependence" appear here with great importance, but their meanings have not been explained in detail in the text. I think lines 187-189 would be a good place to add a paragraph briefly explaining how the authors understand these two concepts within the context of their study, as these terms can have completely different meanings depending on the socio-cultural factors of the context being analyzed.

- Line 439-440. This reflection and suggestion is valid for all the results and discussions presented in the article. Is this perception different compared to the pre-COVID period? How was the general sense of attachment of people in your case study before the COVID-19 pandemic? Are there any differences? Could you further elaborate on this comparison between pre- and post-pandemic? How has the sense of place and identity of people changed? I think that giving more details could help to underline the innovative insights that have come to light with this study and give it greater robustness

- Line 591-593. You should discuss more about the values, norms, and perceptions of the people, as individual and community factors, in the case study analyzed, both as individual and community factors, in the case study analyzed, not just referring to other literature. Could you provide some concrete examples related to your results? This will strengthen the connection between results and discussion sections.

- Line 721. Could you further elaborate on the importance of local values and socio-cultural factors in influencing people's changing attitudes and perceptions regarding the use of green areas? How can these factors could influence the results?

- In the conclusions section, I would recommend that the authors to further emphasize the novelty of their study, distinguishing it from other literature that studies similar aspects related to COVID-19 and the change in people's perceptions and attitudes towards green areas.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes:  Enrica Garau

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Opportunities and challenges within green spaces during COVID-19: Perspectives of visitors and managers in Maine, USA

PONE-D-24-14900R1

Dear Dr. Soucy,

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Kind regards,

Mario Soliño

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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