Willingness to Pay for More Sustainable Tourism Destinations in World Heritage Cities: The Case of Caceres, Spain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study presents interesting descriptive analysis of data about tourist willingness to pay for sustainable services in a specific Spanish destination. Authors also present other statistical analysis, applying for example ANOVA, to study differences in demographic characteristics. 

Nevertheless, authors should address the following main weakness.

Authors state that the aim of the study is “to contribute to the knowledge of the degree of sustainability awareness that exists among tourists by measuring this consciousness through their willingness to pay extra for a more sustainable product or service” (page 2: 70-72). A contribution that merely aims to describe the degree of sustainability that exists, although interesting, should be expanded including a deeper goal that really contributes in advancing scientific knowledge. Apart from the valuable explanation of Contingent Valuation Method and other approaches for measurement explained in section 2, authors could benefit of studying theories about how demographic consumer characteristics have an influence in their behavior. In this sense, the paper has another (not yet very integrated) part in which socio-demographic factors are analyzed. I therefore suggest a better integration of the different parts of the manuscript through the inclusion of a theoretical approach. By grounding the arguments in a theoretical perspective should help authors in: i) finding a gap that improves the aim of the study; ii) stablishing theoretically possible relationships with variables and arguments of some of the statements made in the paper; iii) improving the empirical part introducing an integrated view of the two currently separated analysis and testing the gaps founded in the theoretical analysis. For example, the theoretical part should explain which the factors that influence customer awareness are, or how awareness is connected with future behavior, or how consciousness is assimilated with willingness to pay (as authors assume in the aim of the study). I suggest reviewing the theoretical approach used in other studies in this field, like for example the Theory of Planned Behavior, which could help authors in explaining why some sociodemographic factors are antecedents of behaviors. Then, the empirical part can be improved testing also some of these relationships, apart from the analysis already introduced.

Furthermore, methods are explained in different sections along with results. It could be interesting having a Methodology section, where population, sample, data collection, measurement of variables, and methods are explained, and then another section with results.

Citations in the text are correctly indicated by numbers, but in some sentences a subject is necessary to better understand the tex. For example, in page 3, line 104, instead of “[17] carried out a detailed analysis…”, it should be “Carson et al. [17] carried out a detailed analysis…".

Author Response

The study presents interesting descriptive analysis of data about tourist willingness to pay for sustainable services in a specific Spanish destination. Authors also present other statistical analysis, applying for example ANOVA, to study differences in demographic characteristics. Nevertheless, authors should address the following main weakness. Point 1. Authors state that the aim of the study is “to contribute to the knowledge of the degree of sustainability awareness that exists among tourists by measuring this consciousness through their willingness to pay extra for a more sustainable product or service” (page 2: 70-72). A contribution that merely aims to describe the degree of sustainability that exists, although interesting, should be expanded including a deeper goal that really contributes in advancing scientific knowledge. Apart from the valuable explanation of Contingent Valuation Method and other approaches for measurement explained in section 2, authors could benefit of studying theories about how demographic consumer characteristics have an influence in their behavior. In this sense, the paper has another (not yet very integrated) part in which socio-demographic factors are analyzed. I therefore suggest a better integration of the different parts of the manuscript through the inclusion of a theoretical approach. By grounding the arguments in a theoretical perspective should help authors in: i) finding a gap that improves the aim of the study; ii) stablishing theoretically possible relationships with variables and arguments of some of the statements made in the paper; iii) improving the empirical part introducing an integrated view of the two currently separated analysis and testing the gaps founded in the theoretical analysis. For example, the theoretical part should explain which the factors that influence customer awareness are, or how awareness is connected with future behavior, or how consciousness is assimilated with willingness to pay (as authors assume in the aim of the study). I suggest reviewing the theoretical approach used in other studies in this field, like for example the Theory of Planned Behavior, which could help authors in explaining why some sociodemographic factors are antecedents of behaviors. Then, the empirical part can be improved testing also some of these relationships, apart from the analysis already introduced. Response 1. The paper has now a better structure, because studies confirming the influence of consumer characteristics on willingness to pay were added. The theory of Planned Behavior was introduced to justify the influence of socio-demographic factors on consumer’s behavior. Point 2. Furthermore, methods are explained in different sections along with results. It could be interesting having a Methodology section, where population, sample, data collection, measurement of variables, and methods are explained, and then another section with results. Response 2. A Methodology section was introduced. And the Results section was presented later, distinguishing between global results and partial results conditioned by socio-demographic factors. Point 3. Citations in the text are correctly indicated by numbers, but in some sentences a subject is necessary to better understand the tex. For example, in page 3, line 104, instead of “[17] carried out a detailed analysis…”, it should be “Carson et al. [17] carried out a detailed analysis…". Response 3. Mistakes in citations were corrected.

Reviewer 2 Report

This article contributes to the highly-important issue of tourism sustainability and deals with an internationally-important example of Caceres. The study itself is in-depth and strong, and its outcomes (e.g., this paper) deserve publication in Sustainability. In my opinion, this paper can be accepted after certain revisions (I do not wish to be over-critical – I just wish to see this paper published in such a good form as it deserves). My recommendations are as follows.

You should state which kind of sustainability is considered in this paper. Do you relate sustainability to tourism industry (economic sustainability, sustainable destination growth, sustainable demand) or environment (sustainable tourism development in regard to ecological problems and natural landscape)? Line 68: sustainable hotel, Line 216: sustainable museum – what are these? There should be a section describing Caceres as a tourist destination – its main attractions, tourist flows, local tourism-related authorities, accommodation possibilities, etc. Please, provide a figure showing the discussed destination on a simple map. Also try to think about photos of the main tourist attractions of the destination. Where is the section Methodology? You should list and explain briefly the materials and methods used for the purposes of this study. Do not mix methods with results! Why not to provide questionnaire (as a figure/table or as appendix)? There should be a section called Results to include two subsections, which are now sections 4 and 5. There should be a section called Discussion. There, please, explain what the results mean, whether these are comparable with the results of similar investigations in the other destinations, and what do these results mean for tourism practice (something can be moved to there from Conclusions). Conclusions should only list the main findings in abridged form and also inform about tasks for further research. Please, bring the paper formatting in order – see template at the journal's official web-page. E.g., do not capitalize the entire title, do not provide citations in bold, graphs, charts -> Figures, add missing technical sections (e.g., funding) at the end, provide full author affiliations, style the list of References according to the rules, etc.etc. Please, increase the technical accuracy of the paper! The language quality is enough to understand and to follow the story, but for publication in a top journal, English should polished slightly (it would be good to ask a native speaker for help with this). I suggest to avoid too short paragraphs like these are in Introduction.

Author Response

This article contributes to the highly-important issue of tourism sustainability and deals with an internationally-important example of Caceres. The study itself is in-depth and strong, and its outcomes (e.g., this paper) deserve publication in Sustainability. In my opinion, this paper can be accepted after certain revisions (I do not wish to be over-critical – I just wish to see this paper published in such a good form as it deserves). My recommendations are as follows. Point 1. You should state which kind of sustainability is considered in this paper. Do you relate sustainability to tourism industry (economic sustainability, sustainable destination growth, sustainable demand) or environment (sustainable tourism development in regard to ecological problems and natural landscape)? Line 68: sustainable hotel, Line 216: sustainable museum – what are these? Response 1. The kind of sustainability considered in the paper was discussed in order to correctly understand what sustainability means in a cultural tourism destination such as a World Heritage city. Point 2. There should be a section describing Caceres as a tourist destination – its main attractions, tourist flows, local tourism-related authorities, accommodation possibilities, etc. Please, provide a figure showing the discussed destination on a simple map. Also try to think about photos of the main tourist attractions of the destination. Where is the section Methodology? Response 2. A new section describing Caceres as a tourist destination was added. A figure showing the destination on a simple map was introduced in section 3. Point 3. You should list and explain briefly the materials and methods used for the purposes of this study. Do not mix methods with results! Why not to provide questionnaire (as a figure/table or as appendix)? There should be a section called Results to include two subsections, which are now sections 4 and 5. There should be a section called Discussion. There, please, explain what the results mean, whether these are comparable with the results of similar investigations in the other destinations, and what do these results mean for tourism practice (something can be moved to there from Conclusions). Conclusions should only list the main findings in abridged form and also inform about tasks for further research. Response 3. There is now a clear differentiation between methodology and results, by considering separate sections, one for methodology and one for results (with two subsections: one for global results and one for segmented results). A section called Discussion of results was incorporated. This section includes both a comparison of results with other similar researches and implications in terms of tourist management. The section Conclusions only summarizes the main findings, recognizes some limitations of the research and informs about future research. Point 4. Please, bring the paper formatting in order – see template at the journal's official web-page. E.g., do not capitalize the entire title, do not provide citations in bold, graphs, charts -> Figures, add missing technical sections (e.g., funding) at the end, provide full author affiliations, style the list of References according to the rules, etc.etc. Response 4. The paper has been formatted using the template of the journal. Point 5. Please, increase the technical accuracy of the paper! The language quality is enough to understand and to follow the story, but for publication in a top journal, English should polished slightly (it would be good to ask a native speaker for help with this). I suggest to avoid too short paragraphs like these are in Introduction. Response 5. A native speaker helped us to increase the language quality. Some short paragraphs in Introduction were fused with other ones to construct longer paragraphs.

Reviewer 3 Report

Within a heritage sites, the number of visitors is an important issue. If the willingness to pay is high, even increase the entrance fee can not solve the problem of over-crowding. This could reduce the quality in tourism. So please address the issue in this paper to show whether heritage site analyzed has problem of over-crowding. Need a table to describe all variables analyzed. When analyzing the difference in willingness to pay between different socioeconomic groups, the other factors have been controlled. The results of the analysis could be confounded because the other factors are not controlled.A multi-variable regression method is suggested for authors who can solve this kind of problems. Open ended questionnaires are used in this study. However, it is very easy to have an extreme value problem. Author should clear explain how they deal with the extreme value problems. The conclusion should not just repeat the results from section 4. Please provide more insight regarding these empirical results or compared the results from this study to those from previous researches.

Author Response

Point 1. Within a heritage sites, the number of visitors is an important issue. If the willingness to pay is high, even increase the entrance fee can not solve the problem of over-crowding. This could reduce the quality in tourism. So please address the issue in this paper to show whether heritage site analyzed has problem of over-crowding. Response 1. Some data about tourism activity in Caceres were provided in the new section 3 (not only quantitative information about number of tourists, but also some ratios relating tourists with distribution of flows along the year, local population or surface). This data try to confirm that Caceres has not (at least until now) problems of over-crowding. Point 2. Need a table to describe all variables analyzed. When analyzing the difference in willingness to pay between different socioeconomic groups, the other factors have been controlled. The results of the analysis could be confounded because the other factors are not controlled.A multi-variable regression method is suggested for authors who can solve this kind of problems. Response 2. The estimation of a multi-variable regression model is now the object of research of the authors in order to publish the results in another paper. But these results are still in a very preliminary stage. Authors would like to thank the reviewer this suggestion and, in fact, the use of regression techniques has been added as a future research in the Conclusions section. Thank again to reviewer for this really valuable suggestion. Point 3. Open ended questionnaires are used in this study. However, it is very easy to have an extreme value problem. Author should clear explain how they deal with the extreme value problems. Response 3. The questionnaire used in this paper (really a part of a whole questionnaire used by one of the authors in a doctoral research) was included as an appendix. Some comments about extreme values were added. Comparison between bounded means and arithmetic means allows confirm that extreme values are not a serious problem in this research. Point 4. The conclusion should not just repeat the results from section 4. Please provide more insight regarding these empirical results or compared the results from this study to those from previous researches. Response 4. The results are compared with other results from previous researches in the Discussion of results section. There is now a clear distinction between contents included in discussions section and in conclusions section.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have improved the manuscript and are in a good way of advancing in the research. Methods are now better explained and the results have been divided in two sections according to the different analysis in the study. Nevertheless, the fundamental concerns about the paper that I commented in my previous revision, still apply in this new version.

As I pointed in my previous review, a “contribution that merely aims to describe the degree of sustainability that exists, although interesting, should be expanded including a deeper goal that really contributes in advancing scientific knowledge”. In fact, authors cite now in future lines of research the use of multivariate regression to estimate the effect of a factor… I understand that a descriptive analysis with also ANOVA comparison, although useful, is not enough for contributing in advancing knowledge in a journal like Sustainability.

Furthermore, authors have introduced a paragraph with the Theory of Planned Behaviour, as I suggest, but they are not using the theory really, to stablish relationships, or to analyze results suggesting how results improve theory. Therefore, the paper still lacks a theoretical approach.

From a theoretical point of view, authors also assume that the degree of awareness, consciousness and willingness to pay are the same, without explaining any more. These concepts, and the literature that propose relationships between them should be analyzed.

Authors explain now in a brief way factors could affect the willingness to pay, but they still lack in  i) finding a gap that improves the aim of the study; ii) stablishing theoretically possible relationships with variables and arguments of some of the statements made in the paper.

Other aspects:

The order of the references is not correct. For example in page 3, where reference 19 or 20 or 22, have not been cited yet, reference 37 appears, etc.

There are some new tables not cited in the text.

The numbers of the tables do not match with the tables in some cases. For example, in page 7 Table 1 is cited in line 246, but authors refer to the new Table 3 I suppose, or in the text some references to “Graph” appears and then there are only Figures…

 

Authors are in the first phases of a promising research, but now is still not fully developed to a journal such as Sustainability.

Author Response

The authors have improved the manuscript and are in a good way of advancing in the research. Methods are now better explained and the results have been divided in two sections according to the different analysis in the study. Nevertheless, the fundamental concerns about the paper that I commented in my previous revision, still apply in this new version. Point 1. As I pointed in my previous review, a “contribution that merely aims to describe the degree of sustainability that exists, although interesting, should be expanded including a deeper goal that really contributes in advancing scientific knowledge”. In fact, authors cite now in future lines of research the use of multivariate regression to estimate the effect of a factor… I understand that a descriptive analysis with also ANOVA comparison, although useful, is not enough for contributing in advancing knowledge in a journal like Sustainability. Response 1. In our opinion, the use of descriptive measures could be an excellent antecedent of inferential analysis. And inferential techniques (such as a normality test, a non-correlation test, a t-test for comparison of a pair of means, or an ANOVA test for comparison of more than two means) contribute to the advance in the knowledge of sustainability, at least, as regression techniques does. We also would like to inform the reviewer that the estimation of a multi-variable regression model is now the object of research of the authors in order to publish the results in another paper. But these results are still in a very preliminary stage. This is the reason why the results of the application of this statistical technique are not included in the present paper. Point 2. Furthermore, authors have introduced a paragraph with the Theory of Planned Behaviour, as I suggest, but they are not using the theory really, to stablish relationships, or to analyze results suggesting how results improve theory. Therefore, the paper still lacks a theoretical approach. From a theoretical point of view, authors also assume that the degree of awareness, consciousness and willingness to pay are the same, without explaining any more. These concepts, and the literature that propose relationships between them should be analyzed. Authors explain now in a brief way factors could affect the willingness to pay, but they still lack in i) finding a gap that improves the aim of the study; ii) stablishing theoretically possible relationships with variables and arguments of some of the statements made in the paper. Response 2. The inclusion of a paragraph to briefly introduce the Theory of Planned Behavior was done to be into account the first suggestion of the reviewer. We would like to use this theory to stablish relationships among different constructs of TPB, such as “Attitude toward the behavior”, “Subjective Norm”, “Perceived behavioral control” or “Intention”. But, unfortunately, we have not included in the questionnaire items to measure these dimensions. The questions used in this paper are a little part of a more complex questionnaire that one of the authors is using in a doctoral research. The objective of the global questionnaire is to advance in the knowledge of sustainability in Word Heritage cities, but not to prove the validity of the TPB in this concrete case. In other words, TPB is not a central issue in our research, but it is a way to justify the influence of socio-demographic aspects in the willingness to pay in subsection 5.2 (as the reviewer suggested in his/her first review). This is the reason why the questionnaire does not include items to check this theory. So, we would like to use this theory in our research, but unfortunately we do not have empirical data to validate this use. Other aspects: Point 3: The order of the references is not correct. For example in page 3, where reference 19 or 20 or 22, have not been cited yet, reference 37 appears, etc. Response 3. In version 2 of the manuscript, references 19, 20 or 22 (in fact, references between 18 and 21) appear in a previous paragraph (“Among possible applications of the CV methods …”) while the reference 37 appears in the next paragraph (“In addition to cultural heritage,…”). What appears in a previous paragraph (“Regarding the advantages and disadvantages …”) is reference 17, not reference 37. Point 4: There are some new tables not cited in the text. The numbers of the tables do not match with the tables in some cases. For example, in page 7 Table 1 is cited in line 246, but authors refer to the new Table 3 I suppose, or in the text some references to “Graph” appears and then there are only Figures… Response 4: The paragraph where figures in Table 1 were commented is missing in this second version of the paper. This paragraph appears now in the third version. On the other hand, every graph in the text was renamed as figure. Authors are in the first phases of a promising research, but now is still not fully developed to a journal such as Sustainability.

Reviewer 2 Report

I'm satisfied with this revised version, and, in my opinion, the paper can be accepted in its present state. I just wish to increase slightly the technical accuracy of the paper:

Table 1: (Year 2017) -> (state for 2017)

Many tables: dot after (), not before.

However, these tiny little corrections can be done at the stage of proof check.

Author Response

I'm satisfied with this revised version, and, in my opinion, the paper can be accepted in its present state. I just wish to increase slightly the technical accuracy of the paper: Point 1: Table 1: (Year 2017) -> (state for 2017) Many tables: dot after (), not before. However, these tiny little corrections can be done at the stage of proof check. Response 1: Text in Table 1 was correct (“Stated for” instead of “Year”). Tables, graphs and figures were corrected using the dot in the correct place.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors mentioned that the comparison of the results from different studies in the discussion section was provided. However, the references of the literature should be provided.

Author Response

Point 1: The authors mentioned that the comparison of the results from different studies in the discussion section was provided. However, the references of the literature should be provided. Response 1: Really, the comparisons with results from other studies were not included in the discussion section, but in the results section. In fact, in this section the following paragraphs were included: (…) These results match the ones obtained by López-Sanchez & Pulido-Fernández [86]. (…) This result resembles the ones obtained by other previous studios [70,63,86]. (…)The influence of the educational level on the willingness to pay for more sustainable tourism products and services verified empirically in this work is aligned with the results achieved in other studies [46,63,69,70,71]. In all cases, one or more references were included in order to allow comparison among results.