Big Data Analysis of Korean Travelers’ Behavior in the Post-COVID-19 Era
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I find this manuscript to be well written and conclusions have a sound scientific basis. However, I do not agree with the authors' statement that they have proposed sustainable solutions for tourism development in the post-Covid 19 era. It seems as if sustainability is used as a buzz word, without a clear linkages between research results and final conclusions (in terms of sustainability). Therefore I strongly suggest that authors either clearly emphasize connections between the results of their research and sustainable practices, or that they omit the statement that they have "provided academic and practical meaning in developing the strategy of sustainable tourism industry in the post-corona era". I do believe that their results are sound enough without the reference to sustainable tourism, if they are to leave the manuscript in this form.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
There is a big leap here between linking prospective traveler's search behavior with the propensity to travel.
Neither a causal or associative relationship is clearly determined.
No consumer behavior literature on travelers' motivations is included in this study, and that must be remedied
Figures 2,3,4, and 5 are illegible. Each vector line/strand cannot be should if the reader is to follow the trends. The graphic program needs to aggregative/bundle the strands so that it is more intelligible; even the rectangular boxes cannot be read without the use of a magnifying glass.
The paper should have lots of caveats and the limits of the research (which most business papers include). There are lots of caveats.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
At the outset, the entire paper shifts back and forth on proper nouns and regular nouns. Some place names with "island", for example, are not capitalized, while some nouns (corona) should be. The abstract includes a messy compilation of acronyms that are not spelled out. More careful attention must be given to the tenets of English-language technical writing.
Abstract: Four (differentiate between cardinal and ordinal numbers; should be fourth).
meaning: Does the abstract mean to state "implications" instead of meaning? "Theoretical" instead of "academic."
The abstract (all abstracts) should declare the findings of the study. This abstract does not. Spell out clearly the managerial and theoretical benefits of why reading this paper would be beneficial.
double semi-colons in keywords
l. 31. Start out with strong active voice; switch the clauses around.
. 43 No new paragraph. Same thought continues.
The weak, transitional word "However" is used five times. Mix up your word choice.
Lines 30-60 and elsewhere: Use the year 2020 after all dates. As it stands, this is inconsistent. Historically, people will look back on this pandemic and read carefully. We are not out of the woods yet!
Lines/paragraphs on 58 and 61 should be part of the same paragraph.
Text mining is a newer word; content analysis is the long-standing term. Unless text mining is a software term, content analysis should be used. There are two types of content analysis universally recognized: manifest and latent. The authors need to incorporate these terms into their writing. If they are just doing frequent counts, that is latent content analysis. If the words carry various meanings (which is not explored deeply in this paper/research), then it is "latent" content analysis. I strongly urge the use of this conventional laveling scheme
l. 76 Should be Tourist and not Tourist's
NEVER use the word you are defining in the definition of itself. Thus, this must change: "the 79 psychological driving force that elicits tourism behavior is tourism desire, and the power that morphs 80 this tourism desire into an action is tourism motivation..." USE SYNONYMS OR QUOTE NATIVE SPEAKERS VERBATIM FOR DEFINITIONS.
Citation error on line 80: is tourism motivation Lundberg(1990).
Can this be stated more simply: "Tourism motivation shows 83 indivisible correlation with the decision-making behavior of the tourist"
Weak paragraph lead sentence: 91 Furthermore, tourism motivation h
WOM is common; is e-WOM a new term? If so, the first time it is introduced, state "electronic word of mouth".
Sources needed here: "And the more useful it is 104 perceived, the more positively it affects users’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. Among the 105 attributes of tourism information, usefulness, reliability, and interactivity increase the pleasure of 106 tourism information. The more reliable information, the greater the influence on the behavioral 107 intention."
Re-state this: "subdivided the Solo Travel market to conceptualize the idea of 141 Solo Travelers" (e.g., to tease out the nuances and sub-categories of this cohort).
l. 156. Unclear what is "imperative" here: "After the outbreak of Covid-19, it is imperative ...."
For consistency's sake, use "Group Travel' versus 159 2.3. Group Tour
lines 181-183 are out of place; perhaps combine with last paragraph in section?
Data collection; Recall notes above about content analysis/text mining. Just because software is "mining it," it is still content analysis.
PHEIC is never spelled out/defined in this paper.
What is this? 226 Internettrend (two words??) Place endnote 68 after Internettrend, perhaps?
Travel and World Information are broad categories. Travel is but a subset of "world" information, is it not? So I'm not sure what value this 37% figure reflects.
Very confusing this; "The operator “” was used to search for exact matching words and sentences for data. First, words 230 such as ‘Naholloyeohaeng’, ‘Ho"
Do we really need to know that you used quotation marks to highlight the search keyword? I don't think so. To confuse further, you then use single quotes ( ' ) to illustrate the point.
The paragraph starting on line 229 is dreadful passive voice, which could be avoided if you used active voice and "We..." or the "The authors....
Figure 1. Refine should be "Refinement" and "Text Mining" should be either "Manifest Content Analysis" or "Latent Content Analysis"
This definition should come earlier in the paper: "Text mining is a process of extracting high-quality information from unstructured data 242 and is a technique that derives patterns to evaluate and interpret results through structuring text 243 data. 244 [It also raises the question is about "high-quality" information. Did you discern this or did the software do this? Clarify, please.]
Why did you use the top 100 words most frequently used? What literature or method states that this is appropriate? It is a nice round number but you must justify it. Why not higher? Lower? Otherwise, this sounds willy nilly. Incidentally, frequency counts are called "manifest content analysis" See any of the many volumes/editions of Babbie's The Practice of Social Science Research at https://www.cengage.com/c/the-practice-of-social-research-14e-babbie/9781305104945/
In this revision, I don't see much improvement in the output of Netrdraw; while you added some lines and larger font, it still appears that everything is connected to everything else. The purpose of science is to generalize based on patterns. Visually, this Netdraw distracts instead of clarifies (for me, at least).
I think a real Achille's Heel in this research is that you have no pre-COVID statistics to compare the impact of the pandemic on tourist information searches. Granted, Covid is #5, but what were the data like in 2019 as a point of comparison? Can you address this please? I do see healing is a term. See the work by cultural and medical geographers on 'healing landscapes.' Pioneer author was Wil Gesler at U of North Carolina.
Odd that tables 1 and 2 do not have words like "safety" or "healthy"; other than Covid, there is no indication that a pandemic is afoot! How do you explain this?
Is this a novel finding or somewhat axiomtic when you write: "Keyword Covid-19 ranked #4 in ‘Group Tour’ in frequency while #4 in Degree Centrality and #5 345 in Eigenvector Centrality. That is to say, Covid-19 has a greater impact on group tourists."
And what do you mean, "impact"? This is a very, very general and ambiguous noun and verb.
At this point in the paper, you have aked the reader to plow through several hundred lines of text and a myriad of research steps. The question in mind is whether there is reader fatigue and if the findings are that novel. You need to stick to Covid and how it shapes travel decision making. There are some loose correlations to which you allude, but very little causal or highly suggestive relationships that you uncover.
l. 351 In group tour, it is indicated that the use of government subsidies have greater impact a....
THIS WORD IMPACT --AGAIN-- FAILS TO SHOW A DIRECTION OR CAUSAL IMPLICATION. It is as if everything impacts everything else.
"Prove" is not the correct word here: "CONCOR analysis proves ..." CONCOR might show possible relationships but it does not prove anything in a mathmetical sense.
It is unclear why you believe that all the COVID -19 key words are clustered together; your drawing a blue circle around them does not make it so. For example, culture, activity, and sightseeing could go anywhere else. I am very suspect of the "pattern" or "impact" of this cluster. In that vein, "apprehension" and "safety" might naturally be located in COVID, but they are not. Can you explain these apparent contradictions?
I don't understand Table 5 and the difference between "extracted" and "significant' words. You seem to be splitting hairs here.
Figure 5 is hard to read. Same concerns remain with Table 6.
the word extrapolated in line 396 is incorrect. The words were identified, only.
Keep your key terms all in English; mixing them confuses the reader (403 attributes. As keywords such as ‘Gunpo’, ‘Anyang’, and ‘Church’,)
You are moving very quickly here and there is a lot to unpack: "The result presents copious applicable 406 working theories. After the outbreak, solo travelers expressed a stronger desire to travel than group 407 tourists. It confirms that people need to rest to relieve psychological stress due to Covid-19. It can be 408 assumed from keywords like Review, Recommendation and Information that the tourism industry 409 needs to provide customized information for different types of travelers." Is it so counter-intuitive that solo traveling is less risky behavior than group travel? I think not. If after all this research, that finding is your principal discovery, then this paper has a problem.
You imply but do not show how government subsidy is enough to eliminate thoughts about health safety/personal safety and the propensity to travel. I don't think your paper has proven this: "In order to promote tourism, 413 the government issued what is called a national tourist gift certificate to people who post on their 414 social network service after visiting local festivals and tourist spots or staying overnight. " The statement assumes that subsidizing homeschooling, health care, vaccination, and other competing needs are less important than travel. Perhaps this is so in Korea, but I'm unsure the rest of the world would share this sentiment.
Your conclusions are merely a re-hashing/summary of the paper.
Your limitations listed do not strike me as the major limitations of the study.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Suggested title: Big data analysis of Korean travelers’ behavior in the post-COVID-19 era
line 30 no new para.
line 40 has been --> had been
line 43 proves--> suggests
line 62 "analyzing words" is called "performs a content analysis..."
rewrite/awkward: "network analysis is sufficient for academic research in the tourism sector [12]. " How about: "We use (or employ) a network analysis of the tourism sector to...." You are not a marketing agency for network analysis.
line 67 "Text mining, a form of content analysis [reference needed],...."
line 75 "On the other hand," 'strike this. Parallel structure in writing indicates that you need "On the one hand" to use this prepositional phrase.
lines 91-110. this adds little to your analysis. We know what IT does. Get on with your study. This adds little value to an already very long paper.
strike or write this: "The bloggers are 112 ordinary people" Bloggers have a point of view; they are influencers. Social science is all about studying the seemingly obvious.
line 62 (redux): You need to map out your paper. Something like "We begin with a literature review that examines solo and group behavior. Next, we turn to the patterns revealed in various tourist segments in Korea. The main part of paper presents the network analysis patterns. We show that.....Our findings indicate that...." (something like this and then go right into your literature view. This suggestion means that every major heading that follows in the paper should be mentioned in a single setting; this is a road map that the paper really needs).
line 155, 160, 163 and elsewhere: Group tour ---> Group touring
lines 178-181 should follow immediately after reference 65. Cut and paste here.
line 211 Never embed a long URL in the body of a text. Give it a reference name and the reader can then find it there in your bibliography or literature cited
line 225. Before "big software" came about and even the micro-computer, researchers would count words. This elementary process if called frequency content analysis or simple manifest content. I'm glad to see you used those terms in the following graphic. The hidden meaning is called "latent analysis". Use these terms here.
line 236 no new paragraph
lines 292 to 309. Why repeat in detail everything already listed in the previous tables. Why not focus on the top 20 words or so? Regardless, don't re-hash what is already listed. The reader wants to know what you think these words illustrate about travel during the pandemic, and why you think that way. You are getting buried under the data analysis. Set back and look at the big picture and then tell the reader what you see. You need to summarize your interpretation and make your point. Now. Quickly. Succinctly.
lines 310-332. Reduce it considerably. Give us the big picture results succinctly!
Figs. 2 and 3 much improved.
lines 356-370 same issue: too long. Don't rehash. Look for trends, groups of words, or clusters, and focus on that. The purpose of science is to generalize and extrapolate based on your research. Less telling and more showing here, please.
line 374. You shift to first-person "I" when there are multiple authors. Correct here and elsewhere.
lines 408-418. Again, don't rehash. Tell us in a sentence or two why these frequencies have meaning.
Begin your conclusions. "Our research points to four key findings. So delete the first pargraph and go forward with one paragraph for heach finding.
Use a subheading on "Limitations of Study" and include a "Future Research" section/subsection/subheading.
