PONE-D-24-35650Enhancing student-centered walking environments on university campuses through street view imagery and machine learningPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. JIANG,

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PLOS ONE

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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: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: I Don't Know

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

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: Enhancing student-centered walking environments on university campuses through street view imagery and machine learning

The authors' study on enhancing student-centered walking environments through street view imagery and machine learning is highly relevant and insightful. It effectively examines how campus environments impact students' academic performance and mental well-being by developing a deep learning framework. The use of Baidu Street View Images (BSVIs) and machine learning models like Random Forest and linear regression to predict perceptions of aesthetics, security, depression, and vitality offers a fresh approach to understanding campus spaces. The findings, which highlight how different visual elements such as vegetation, sky, and sidewalks influence student perceptions, provide valuable insights into designing more student-friendly walking environments.

This is a particularly interesting study because it links physical and human elements, reflecting the complexity of urban environments. The authors present a robust and consistent analysis. However, I have a few suggestions to further enhance the paper:

• The introduction rightly emphasizes the importance of campus walking perceptions, especially in China, where rapid educational expansion has led to the creation of new campuses. Well-designed walking spaces improve students' psychological health, encourage outdoor physical activity, and enhance academic performance. These spaces are crucial in fostering daily social interactions and are key to improving the overall quality of campus environments, as viewed through environmental psychology.

• In addition to the authors' insights, recent studies have explored how urban design influences social behavior in various dimensions, such as well-being, health, and social relationships. I strongly recommend referring to "How Cities Influence Social Behavior" (MIT Press, 2024), which would provide greater depth and consistency to the arguments in this study.

• The authors' use of recent technological advancements, such as crowdsourced services and geotagged images (Baidu Street View and Google Street View), is a notable strength of the paper. The results are timely and relevant. However, I suggest adding a section in the discussion to explore other emerging technologies. For instance, some recent studies have started evaluating the use of AI in the design and perception of cities, including aesthetics and aspects of well-being (e.g., "Leveraging Generative AI Models in Urban Science"). Expanding the discussion to include these advancements would provide a broader framework for the manuscript and position the research within a more comprehensive technological context.

Reviewer #2: Reviewer Comments to Author

This paper examines the relationship between the environmental features and four dimensions of walking perceptions among Chinese college students across four universities, utilizing street view imagery and machine learning technologies. It is an interesting and important exploratory study with the potential to contribute to the development of more walkable and healthier campus environmental design and planning.

However, several aspects require improvement to enhance the overall quality of the manuscript, particularly in the areas of the literature review, methods, and results. The authors are encouraged to avoid overinterpreting the results and drawing conclusions that extend beyond the scope of the study. Furthermore, the writing somewhat hinders the clarity and readability and requires improvement. Therefore, I recommend a major revision before the manuscript can be considered for publication. Please refer to my specific comments below for more details:

Title.

Please explain why your title is specific to student-centered walking environments, as there are many other campus users such as faculty, staff, and surrounding residents. Is it because you only recruit college students as volunteers? If so, please add more details on the volunteers in the Methods section.

Abstract.

1. The opening sentence should provide a research background that is closely related to the purpose of the study. The current version is too broad and lacks focus.

2. Please include more details about the study methodology. Specifically, mention the number of images analyzed, the involvement of volunteers, and relevant information about the campuses. This will give readers a clearer understanding of the study design and scope.

Introduction.

1. The introduction should clearly state why it is important to study the walking environment in higher education settings? What is the rationale behind focusing on this topic? Highlight the existing problems or challenges posed by inadequate walking environments and their impacts on students' daily academic experiences or health.

2. Consider combining paragraphs 2 and 3 to create a more cohesive and organized transition

Literature review

1. Consider incorporating more relevant, recent literature on each subtopic. For example, in section 2.1, as your study focuses on walking environments in university campuses and college students’ perception, please include references that specifically address these aspects. Please refer to the systematic review paper: Ding, Y., Lee, C., Chen, X., Song, Y., Newman, G., Lee, R., ... & Sohn, W. (2024). Exploring the association between campus environment of higher education and student health: A systematic review of findings and measures. Urban forestry & urban greening, 91, 128168.

2. Lines 122–124: Provide references to more recent literature to ensure the review remains current and reflective of recent advances in the field.

3. Lines 156–157: Please specify why DeepLabV3+ was chosen for this study. Include justification for its suitability compared to other methods. In addition, fix the grammatical issues in this sentence to ensure clarity and correctness.

Methods.

1. Line 164, why did you choose 50-meter intervals? Provide supporting evidence, references, or a rationale to justify this decision.

2. Line 168, please provide additional details about the volunteers. Are they college students, professionals, or experts in the field? What qualifications make them suitable for image evaluations? Were there any inclusion or exclusion criteria.

3. Lines 211-212, please specify how you cleaned up the data and excluded invalid images. What criteria were used to determine invalid images, and what steps were taken to ensure data quality and consistency during preprocessing?

4. Lines 256-257, is a participant pool of 50 individuals sufficient to generalize the perception scores across a dataset of 15,596 images, particularly considering the dataset likely includes diverse images with varying levels of environmental perceptions? Address potential limitations due to the small participant pool and justify how you ensure the perception scores are not biased.

5. Lines 259, please provide more details on the question items utilized to measure four perceptual dimensions. In addition, regarding the measurement of depression, this term often refers to a chronic mental health condition, and I was concerned about its validity as a momentary measure. Please conduct further research on depression measurement to ensure the measurement approach is justified and appropriate.

Results.

1. Lines 277-279, please justify this sentence by providing valid and relevant references to support the claim.

2. Lines 327-329, please specify how perception scores were linked to each feature to create Figure 7. From the methods described, it seems volunteers evaluated perception scores for each image rather than for individual features. If this is the case, explain the process used to associate perception scores with specific features.

3. Line 335-337, consider moving this sentence to the Discussion section to maintain focus in the Results section on interpreting data.

4. For table 7, please refine the table following the APA format, including key statistical information such as 95% confidence intervals and R-squared values. Also specify the units of the measurement for the 10 features in this analysis.

5. Table 7 indicates that the vegetation was negatively associated with aesthetics, security and vitality, and positively related to depression. This is kind of conflating with previous studies. The interpretation of these results (Lines 407–409) appears abrupt, ambiguous, and overly intuitive. How can it be determined that vegetation is "excessive and dense" rather than "well-maintained and healthy"? Provide evidence or further analysis to support this statement. If this claim is speculative, acknowledge the uncertainty and suggest possible explanations in the Discussion section.

Discussion/Conclusion.

1. For limitations, it is important to highlight that this is an exploratory study based on data from only four schools, which may limit external validity and generalizability.

2. Ensure that the discussion and conclusion are closely aligned with the study’s actual findings. Please avoid over interpretation (i.e. discussion about excessive vegetation) and ambitious conclusions related to theory development (Line 430).

3. Expand on the implications for future research and campus design guidelines. Discuss how these findings can inform practical strategies for creating more walkable and health-promoting campuses.

Other issues

1. Please proofread the manuscript thoroughly to correct all grammatical errors and typos, enhancing its readability.

6. 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.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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PONE-D-24-35650R1Enhancing student-centered walking environments on university campuses through street view imagery and machine learningPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. JIANG,

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.

==============================

• Please pay attention to the pixels in the figures, so that it can present the information clearly and completely.
• Please proofread the language to ensure there are no errors.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 11 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 plosone@plos.org . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ 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 academic 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'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols . Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols .

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Bifeng Zhu

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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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

**********

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: Dear Authors,

I would like to commend you for the comprehensive and thoughtful revisions made to your manuscript. Your responses effectively addressed all of my concerns, and the improvements have enhanced the overall clarity and impact of your work.

Given these significant enhancements, I am pleased to recommend your manuscript for publication. Congratulations on this achievement, and I wish you success in your future research endeavors.

Best regards, the Ass. Editor

Reviewer #2: The authors have effectively addressed all reviewer comments and revised the paper in line with the suggestions. The new version has improved significantly in both presentation and content, now appearing much more incisive overall.

Some minor issues need to be addressed before publication:

1. Replace “Person correlation” with “Pearson correlation” in Figure 1.

2. Clarify where Appendix Table S1 is cited in the main text.

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

**********

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Enhancing student-centered walking environments on university campuses through street view imagery and machine learning

PONE-D-24-35650R2

Dear Dr. JIANG,

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,

Bifeng Zhu

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments: