Sustainable Tourism Development in Protected Areas of Rivers and Water Sources: A Case Study of Jiuqu Stream in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper aims to assess the economic , social and environmental effects of tourism development in a popular tourist location in China. As such it is of interest to readers of Sustainability, and its findings may well be of wider interest, especially to those managing tourism in World Heritage Areas elsewhere in the world.

 

To perform such an assessment by means of a survey of tourists (visitors) and residents is in principle an appropriate methodology. However, the validity of any survey depends on the quality of the sample and of the questions asked. In its present form, the paper tells us almost nothing about either of these. It therefore needs to be rewritten to present much fuller information about both of these aspects, without which readers cannot properly interpret or assess the results.   Full details of these aspects can be presented in an electronic supplement (for which this journal makes provision), with a paragraph or two in the main text summarising the key points (possibly with a table or two in support) .

 

A statistical sample is supposed to represent a population, i.e. to match the population from which it is drawn in regard to such demographic characteristics as gender , age, employment status,etc,   and in the case of “visitors” place of origin.  There are basically two populations represented here, i.e.  “residents” and “visitors”, whose perceptions can be expected to be different - as indeed the partial results in Tables 3,4 and 5 indicate.  The “residents” are a sample of what population? - the few whose houses abut the Jiuqu gorge?  or the larger population who live somewhere in the Wuyishan national park area, of which the gorge is just one of the attractions? If the latter, this includes the 250,000 or so who live in the city of Wuyishan. The characteristics of the latter should be available from the national census.  In what way was the sample random?  For example, did you just ask questions of every third person getting off  a bus in the park area?  For the tourists (also referred to as “visitors”, but that is probably OK in this context), again what are their demographic characteristics? In particular, where do they come from: other parts of Fujian province?  Other parts of China (if so, are there any “dominant places?-  , e.g.  the big cities like Shanghai ) ? Other  countries? - if so, which ones predominantly (e.g. Taiwan, USA, …)?  Your ref [2] may have such information for the visitor population as a whole, in which case the  question then becomes: how well does your sample match this?  ( I note that Wuyishan gets favourable mention in several international English-language tourist guides, which suggests there are some visitors from outside China.)  

 

Questions used in surveys have been known to  be open to misinterpretation, especially when the background knowledge (or language) of the respondents  differs from that assumed by those setting the questions. This makes meaningless the “results” derived from that question. Reputable survey agencies minimise this problem by doing a trial (pilot) of the draft survey with only a few respondents, but checking with them about how they interpreted the questions. Did you do this?

In any case, readers who want to judge the reliability of the results need to  know the exact questions asked. Therefore you should include (probably in an electronic supplement)  your complete questionnaire.  The list of topics now in Table 1 is useful but not sufficient for this purpose. The results in Tables 3, 4, and 5 include an “M” score , which is presumably a score on a Likert scale of some kind, but what are the maximum and minimum scores? I am left to guess  that the questions are of the kind : “health infrastructure is satisfactory: mark 0 if you disagree strongly, 6 if you agree strongly”,  or equivalent.

Were exactly the same questions  asked of both residents and visitors? If so, some of the answers are likely to be meaningless, as visitors would not normally have a basis to assess the status of (e.g.) “company building”.  If not, your supplement should include both questionnaires (in English) .  In what language was the questionnaire presented to respondents? Orally or in writing ? Does this choice exclude a significant proportion of the visiting population?

 

A few other aspects of the presentation also need attention.

• Page 1. The map (Fig.1) lacks the two essentials of a scale and an orientation (which direction is north?). Also what does the larger area map at left show? The whole of Fujian Province? If so, say so.
• Page 1. 15m tourist visits and USD43 bn . Over what period?
• Page 1-2. Readers from overseas, particularly managers of tourist areas,  might well want to apply some of the findings of this study to their own areas. It would help them for you to give an indication of why  this region is listed as a World Heritage Area. Is it because of its natural beauty, its biodiversity, its historic  significance or what?  This strongly influences the type and origin of visitors attracted, and thus their expectations of facilities provided.
• Page 3. Except for (3), the “hypotheses” listed in the first paragraph are not hypotheses as written but broad topics (“constructs”) to be investigated. Also the wording is peculiar. What do you mean by “status of consistent awareness”?   Does  “policy development status” refer to the development of policy (or perhaps infrastructure) over time? If so, how could a visitor assess this on his or her first visit?
• Page 4. Table 1 is jumbled up like a bowl of noodles. It is really three separate tables: Identity, Number and spending on trips, and Tourist purpose. Please separate these more clearly.
• Page 5. “Cognition” and “recognition” are not the same thing. Cognition is a philosophical concept which I doubt applies here.

Author Response

Review 1  

To perform such an assessment by means of a survey of tourists (visitors) and residents is in principle an appropriate methodology. However, the validity of any survey depends on the quality of the sample and of the questions asked. In its present form, the paper tells us almost nothing about either of these. It therefore needs to be rewritten to present much fuller information about both of these aspects, without which readers cannot properly interpret or assess the results.   Full details of these aspects can be presented in an electronic supplement (for which this journal makes provision), with a paragraph or two in the main text summarising the key points (possibly with a table or two in support) .

 Dear Review:

Thank you for your suggestion. For the corrections here, see page 4, lines 129-150

A statistical sample is supposed to represent a population, i.e. to match the population from which it is drawn in regard to such demographic characteristics as gender , age, employment status,etc,   and in the case of “visitors” place of origin.  There are basically two populations represented here, i.e.  “residents” and “visitors”, whose perceptions can be expected to be different - as indeed the partial results in Tables 3,4 and 5 indicate.  The “residents” are a sample of what population? - the few whose houses abut the Jiuqu gorge?  or the larger population who live somewhere in the Wuyishan national park area, of which the gorge is just one of the attractions? If the latter, this includes the 250,000 or so who live in the city of Wuyishan. The characteristics of the latter should be available from the national census.  In what way was the sample random?  For example, did you just ask questions of every third person getting off  a bus in the park area?  For the tourists (also referred to as “visitors”, but that is probably OK in this context), again what are their demographic characteristics? In particular, where do they come from: other parts of Fujian province?  Other parts of China (if so, are there any “dominant places?-  , e.g.  the big cities like Shanghai ) ? Other  countries? - if so, which ones predominantly (e.g. Taiwan, USA, …)?  Your ref [2] may have such information for the visitor population as a whole, in which case the  question then becomes: how well does your sample match this?  ( I note that Wuyishan gets favourable mention in several international English-language tourist guides, which suggests there are some visitors from outside China.)  

 Dear Review:
Thank you for your suggestion.
For the residents, the researchers initially went to tourist areas and neighboring villages for sampling.
In the later period, due to the epidemic situation, the snowball sampling method was adopted to seek the wishes of the interviewees, and to assist the relevant participants to fill in the answers, as shown in lines 173-178.
For the tourists, most of the Chinese tourists were found in the on-site survey, and the main axis of the study only explores the views of the two rights holders of tourists and residents on the issue, and does not consider the background information of tourists and residents. Therefore, in this study, there is no Too much explanation.
Based on the above description, the working hours and willingness of residents with limited samples, the impact of the epidemic situation, and the main research axis of this research, which may lead to defects in sample collection and data analysis, here will be a follow-up research recommendation.

Questions used in surveys have been known to  be open to misinterpretation, especially when the background knowledge (or language) of the respondents  differs from that assumed by those setting the questions. This makes meaningless the “results” derived from that question. Reputable survey agencies minimise this problem by doing a trial (pilot) of the draft survey with only a few respondents, but checking with them about how they interpreted the questions. Did you do this?

Dear Review:
Thank you for your suggestion.
The research tool goes through a series of validation procedures and analysis and evaluation to determine the tool recognition level. Relevant instructions, such as page 3, lines 120-171, contain the contents of tables 2 and 3.

In any case, readers who want to judge the reliability of the results need to  know the exact questions asked. Therefore you should include (probably in an electronic supplement)  your complete questionnaire.  The list of topics now in Table 1 is useful but not sufficient for this purpose. The results in Tables 3, 4, and 5 include an “M” score , which is presumably a score on a Likert scale of some kind, but what are the maximum and minimum scores? I am left to guess  that the questions are of the kind : “health infrastructure is satisfactory: mark 0 if you disagree strongly, 6 if you agree strongly”,  or equivalent.

Dear Review:
Thank you for your suggestion.
The content has been revised with reference to the relevant recommendations, such as page 7, lines 189-200, 271-273, etc.

 

Were exactly the same questions  asked of both residents and visitors? If so, some of the answers are likely to be meaningless, as visitors would not normally have a basis to assess the status of (e.g.) “company building”.  If not, your supplement should include both questionnaires (in English) .  In what language was the questionnaire presented to respondents? Orally or in writing ? Does this choice exclude a significant proportion of the visiting population?

Dear Review:
Thank you for your suggestion.
The questionnaire for residents and tourists is slightly different. Between your suggestions, the article has been economically supplemented. Relevant amendments are shown in Table 1.

A few other aspects of the presentation also need attention.

• Page 1. The map (Fig.1) lacks the two essentials of a scale and an orientation (which direction is north?). Also what does the larger area map at left show? The whole of Fujian Province? If so, say so.
• Page 1. 15m tourist visits and USD43 bn . Over what period?
• Page 1-2. Readers from overseas, particularly managers of tourist areas,  might well want to apply some of the findings of this study to their own areas. It would help them for you to give an indication of why  this region is listed as a World Heritage Area. Is it because of its natural beauty, its biodiversity, its historic  significance or what?  This strongly influences the type and origin of visitors attracted, and thus their expectations of facilities provided.
• Page 3. Except for (3), the “hypotheses” listed in the first paragraph are not hypotheses as written but broad topics (“constructs”) to be investigated. Also the wording is peculiar. What do you mean by “status of consistent awareness”?   Does  “policy development status” refer to the development of policy (or perhaps infrastructure) over time? If so, how could a visitor assess this on his or her first visit?
• Page 4. Table 1 is jumbled up like a bowl of noodles. It is really three separate tables: Identity, Number and spending on trips, and Tourist purpose. Please separate these more clearly.
• Page 5. “Cognition” and “recognition” are not the same thing. Cognition is a philosophical concept which I doubt applies here.

Dear Review:
Thank you for your suggestion.
1. On page 1, the map has been modified and the direction is indicated. Its description is as follows.
2. The source of the information has been added, please refer to page 1.
3. The local area has tea, natural ecology and boating experience, and other sightseeing resources, the relevant instructions are described in lines 27-37.
4. Thank you for your discovery, we have revised the wording, eg.
Page 3, (3).
5. Regarding the original description on page 4 and table 1 (currently amended to be table 4), we have made reference to your suggestions and made corrections, as shown in table 4.
6. Thank you for your suggestion. In the wording of "Cognition" and "recognition", we have revised the wording and adopted "Perceptions".

 

 

 

Dear Reviewer

Thank you for the above suggestions, I have made corrections based on your suggestions, and hope to have better results.

Many thanks and best regards

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors should clarify, especially in the Introduction section, what the particular thrust of their approach is. The chosen methodology seems, at points, to be narrower than what is needed to support the broader conclusions of the work. The authors should work harder on the approach adopted, establish a clear theoretical background to contextualize the analysis and narrow the scope of the analysis to specific aspects. The key to effective research is not just gathering a lot of information, but also evaluating the information and making sense of it. A large proportion of the manuscript needs to be substantially rewritten to provide a more robust analysis of the issues that it raises. The authors do not draw mostly on any sources to support their points. Lack of high-quality peer-reviewed sources to support key points made by the article represents the key area for the development of the article as it stands, and addressing this will constitute most of the work of revision. An idea might be the authors concentrate mainly on recent research included in WoS and Scopus and see what relevant analyses reveal, and only then organize conclusions of their own. Too much old or irrelevant references. There are no journal references from the past 3 years.

Author Response

Review 2 

The authors should clarify, especially in the Introduction section, what the particular thrust of their approach is. The chosen methodology seems, at points, to be narrower than what is needed to support the broader conclusions of the work. The authors should work harder on the approach adopted, establish a clear theoretical background to contextualize the analysis and narrow the scope of the analysis to specific aspects. The key to effective research is not just gathering a lot of information, but also evaluating the information and making sense of it. A large proportion of the manuscript needs to be substantially rewritten to provide a more robust analysis of the issues that it raises. The authors do not draw mostly on any sources to support their points. Lack of high-quality peer-reviewed sources to support key points made by the article represents the key area for the development of the article as it stands, and addressing this will constitute most of the work of revision. An idea might be the authors concentrate mainly on recent research included in WoS and Scopus and see what relevant analyses reveal, and only then organize conclusions of their own. Too much old or irrelevant references. There are no journal references from the past 3 years.

 

Dear Review:
Thank you for your suggestion.
With your suggestion, we did find the problem, so we have enriched the manuscript content description and supplemented the latest literature to increase the importance and structural strength of the researcher’s adoption of this research method from the perspective of peer research, such as page 2, line 62-69, 70-93.

Furthermore, in the manuscript, we clearly describe the current status of research on related issues in the river. After a brief discussion and analysis, we emphasize the contribution of this research topic and the importance of the research methods used.

And in lines 129-171, the questionnaire tool editing and verification process is explained, indicating the follow-up research method to increase the strength of the research structure.

 

Dear Reviewer

Thank you for the above suggestions, I have made corrections based on your suggestions, and hope to have better results.

Many thanks and best regards

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Although recent sources have been added, more diversity of cited journals from Q1 and Q2 WoS would have improved your research.