Can the Quality of Hospitality Services Play a Role in Sustainable Equestrian Tourism in Slovenia? Mediations, Effects, and Implications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study deals with an interesting topic and collected valuable data. However, major revisions are required in several areas to get qualified to the journal of Sustainability.

 

First, regarding the hypotheses, they need to provide theoretical, logical arguments to support the hypotheses in their own words. They may borrow some of Helgadottir and Siguardardottir’s (2008) logics if they agree with them. Especially, Hypothesis 1, 2, and 3 is not intuitively straightforward so that careful justifications for them are highly required. Without checking the measurement items, it is hard to accept Hypothesis 1, 2, and 3. So, please show the measurement items and their factor loadings in the paper as well.

Second, for Hypothesis 1, 2, and 3, they did not hypothesize casual relationships whereas they test them as casual relationships. Please modify Hypothesis 1, 2, and 3.

Third, they did not hypothesize the moderating effect of value on the relationship between tourists’ satisfaction and behavioral intention and did not report this effect in text in Results section.

Fourth, please report whether the questionnaires were sealed when they were distributed and the AVE of each construct.

Third, please double check the RMSEA of the structural model, which is now shown as .957 that is too high.

Fourth, please improve the quality of Figures and report t-value and R² as well in Figure 2.

Fifth, they did not test the significance level of the mediating effect. Please report how it was tested and the test result.

Sixth, the theoretical and practical implications are superficial. Please write them in depth based on the specific findings and related theories.

Lastly, please separate the limitation and suggestions for future research part from Discussion section.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

 

The manuscript is well written, organised, the methodology is well implemented, and the sample collection is considerable (444 valid answers). However, the connection between the proposed model and sustainable tourism development lacks of explanation. Therefore, I suggest the authors to revise these sections.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

An interesting paper, an advanced, multidimensional method of data analysis was used, however the content of the article does not appropriate into the issue of “Contemporary Trends in Sustainable Development: A Double-ECO (edged) Sword”.

Despite adopting the title of the article: "Can the role of hospitality services quality be a solution for sustainable equestrian tourism in Slovenia? Mediations, effects and implications”, Authors do not define what "the sustainable equestrian tourism" is and its content absences references to this issue in both the theoretical and research part.

Are there research results on horse tourism in the context of sustainability? Both in Slovenia and in other countries?

 

There is an error in the presentation of research hypotheses - the H₆₀ and H₆₁ hypotheses are identical. Moreover, in my opinion, no double hypothesis (H_n0 and H_n) is needed. Please ensure you present the layout of research hypotheses more clearly. Just H₁a to H₆ (without H₁₀ to H₆₀). It is worth introducing research hypotheses H_1a to H_6a to Fig. 1 by adding their symbols in the figure. Then the meaning will be clearer.

 

There is no explanation regarding the chosen method of selecting the research sample. What were the reasons for choosing self-select sampling? The advantages and disadvantages of this choice should be indicated. Furthermore, studies are not representative. This should be consider in the Conclusions.

 

The article lacks the characteristics of the described market – equestrian tourism in Slovenia (number of entities supply, characteristics, sales volume, etc.)

Fig. 2 (p. 7) is impossible to read. It should be improved.

 

The model description lacks the detailed characteristics of research constructs describing M, F&BS and ASQ variables. Only under Fig. 2 there is the explanation of the abbreviations. However, in the article there is no detailed interpretation.

 

Lack of clear information on the verification of research hypotheses. Maybe it is worth presenting the validation results in the form of a table together with information about the acceptance (rejection) of research hypotheses.

In the Conclusion part there are no references to sustainability, as suggested by the title of the article.

 

Only on p. 8 the authors write about "future sustainable goals" without developing the subject. I find no reference in the article to "equestrian tourism development as one of the popular concepts of sustainable tourism development in rural settings" (p. 1 Abstract).

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

For my comment “please double check the RMSEA of the structural model, which is now shown as .957 that is too high.” The authors of the paper said “RMSEA was double checked and its value is 0.957 as presented in the paper.” That means their structural model has an incredibly poor fit to the data. Therefore, the findings should be considered invalid.

Reviewer 3 Report

Accept in present form.