What motivates consumers to buy organic foods? Results of an empirical study in the United States

Raghava R. Gundala; Anupam Singh

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0257288

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJanuary 7, 2021
18 Jun 2021 Decision Letter - Ali B. Mahmoud, Editor PONE-D-21-00520 What Motivates Consumer to Buy Organic Foods? Results from an Empirical Study in Midwestern United States PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Singh, 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 submit your revised manuscript by Jul 25 2021 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. 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Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://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, Ali B. Mahmoud, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments: Please revise the statistical methods employed in this study. For instance, the probability value is never equal to zero. More accurately, it is always above zero. COVID perceptions effects on adopting healthy food habits are not investigated. Thus, this must be addressed as a research limitation/implication by citing [1, 2]. Also, parental attitudes need to be highlighted for future research [1, 3]. References 1. Mahmoud AB, Hack-Polay D, Fuxman L, Naquiallah D, Grigoriou N: Trick or treat? – when children with childhood food allergies lead parents into unhealthy food choices. BMC Public Health 2020, 20(1):1453. 2. Mahmoud AB, Hack-Polay D, Fuxman L, Nicoletti M: The Janus-faced effects of COVID-19 perceptions on family healthy eating behaviour: Parent’s negative experience as a mediator and gender as a moderator. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 2021. 3. Mahmoud AB, Grigoriou N: Modelling parents’ unhealthy food choices for their children: the moderating role of child food allergy and implications for health policy. Journal of Family Studies 2019:1-19. Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1.Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. 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(2009) Unpublished honours degree project as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-reference-style. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes 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 ****** 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: Dear Author(s) Congratulations on a rigorous study on an important and relevant topic. Here are some of my comments - 1) I am uncomfortable with the title where the focus seems to be on consumers from Mid-western US. I understand that the authors may be located in the area and it is acceptable to focus in that region. However, given that your title is specifically about Midwest consumers, there needs to be a detailed section in the Literature review on why you chose consumers from that area. Any stats on mid-west consumers' spending on organic food? Why are they important compared to the rest of US consumers. If you cannot justify this, then I am uncomfortable with the entire study and you should label the data as convenience sample. 2) The limitations of this study should include that the data was collected by means of a snowball sampling technique. 3) With respect to the survey questions, did you disqualify respondents if they did not "purchase organic products" (Q2)? 4) For Q2 above, you should have indicated a time frame on when they purchased organic products in the past? Why did you generalize as "organic products" and not "organic food"? 5) The first line under Conclusion indicates that the study tested the research model on US consumers. You cannot generalize your conclusions to all of US consumers if you are just focusing on Mid-west consumers 6) Provide justification for why gender differences were not significant in your study. Reviewer #2: The manuscript is well written and well read on the consumer perception of organic food. The analysis taken was fresh, suitable and justified. The findings obtained contribute to the numerous study on consumer perception with the uniqueness of the assigned community of Midwestern United States addressed. Research ethics had also been addressed. ****** 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. 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: Yes:** Farah Ayuni Shafie [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257288.r001
Revision 1
29 Jun 2021 Author Response We thank the editor and the reviewers for their very thoughtful comments on our paper. All the suggestions and queries of reviewers have been considered carefully. We have responded to each comment and made appropriate changes to the manuscript. Reviewers and editor’s comments are in bold, authors’ responses are in plain text. Reviewer#1 1) I am uncomfortable with the title where the focus seems to be on consumers from Mid-western US. I understand that the authors may be located in the area and it is acceptable to focus in that region. However, given that your title is specifically about Midwest consumers, there needs to be a detailed section in the Literature review on why you chose consumers from that area. Any stats on mid-west consumers' spending on organic food? Why are they important compared to the rest of US consumers. If you cannot justify this, then I am uncomfortable with the entire study and you should label the data as convenience sample. Authors: We agree with the reviewer's comment on the title. We changed to title and removed the word 'mid-western. Since there is no difference with the rest of the US consumers, it isn't easy to justify this. The data details are changed to a convenience sample. 2) The limitations of this study should include that the data was collected by means of a snowball sampling technique. Authors: It is added to the limitations. 3) With respect to the survey questions, did you disqualify respondents if they did not "purchase organic products" (Q2)? Authors: No. Respondents who did not purchase are also considered for the survey. We are interested in knowing what factors might influence them to purchase in the future. 4) For Q2 above, you should have indicated a time frame on when they purchased organic products in the past? Why did you generalize as "organic products" and not "organic food"? Authors: The reason for not adding a time frame is to avoid 'recall error.' It might be difficult for the respondent to remember the time frame of purchase. Authors: Regarding the “organic products”, we are extremely sorry that old version of questionnaire was appended. Intially, we were interested in studying the consumer buying behaviour toward organic products. But, during the pilot survey we learned that “organic products” would be a too broad term which includes clothing and personal care items, and consumers may view or behave differently for different items such as food, clothing and personal care. Therefore, in the final survey, we used the term ‘organic food products’. We thank the reviewer for highlighting it. The final version of questionnaire is appended in the revised manuscript. 5) The first line under Conclusion indicates that the study tested the research model on US consumers. You cannot generalize your conclusions to all of US consumers if you are just focusing on Mid-west consumers. Authors: Noted, and the changes are made in the document by removing the word 'mid-western consumers.' Reviewer#2 Authors: Thank you for the feedback. Response to editor 1) Please revise the statistical methods employed in this study. For instance, the probability value is never equal to zero. More accurately, it is always above zero. Authors: We agree with the editor that p-value (probability) is always above zero. Using SPSS software, in our tables, p-values are rounded off to three decimal places. Using built-in rounding rules, it was rounded down and reported as .000. The value reported as .000 is not absolute zero or exctally zero. The probability (p-value) is very small, however, there is a still some chances of occurance of the event. We have provided notes to the table in the revised manuscript. Thanks for highlighting it. 2) COVID perceptions effects on adopting healthy food habits are not investigated. Thus, this must be addressed as a research limitation/implication by citing [1, 2]. Also, parental attitudes need to be highlighted for future research [1, 3]. Authors: Noted. We have incorporated the suggestions in the revised manuscript. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257288.r002
31 Aug 2021 Decision Letter - Ali B. Mahmoud, Editor What Motivates Consumers to Buy Organic Foods? Results of an Empirical Study in the United States PONE-D-21-00520R1 Dear Dr. Singh, 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. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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, Ali B. Mahmoud, 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: (No Response) ******** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: (No Response) Reviewer #2: (No Response) ****** 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: Archana Kumar Reviewer #2: Yes:** Farah Ayuni Shafie https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257288.r003
Formally Accepted
3 Sep 2021 Acceptance Letter - Ali B. Mahmoud, Editor PONE-D-21-00520R1 What Motivates Consumers to Buy Organic Foods? Results of an Empirical Study in the United States Dear Dr. Singh: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Ali B. Mahmoud Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257288.r004

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