Applying Values-Led Communication Design to Engage Stakeholders in Developing Dementia-Friendly Visitor Destinations
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please see the attached word file for comments.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Once again, thank you very much for your insightful comments and suggestions, which have enabled us to greatly improve the quality of our manuscript. Revisions in the manuscript to each of the points are shown as below.
Point 1: Value are obvious an important central point to their paper. The authors should be clear as to what constitutes values beyond “guiding principles that lead people’s motivations and behaviors”. This of course begs the question as to the difference between values and principles. It is perhaps more salient to draw from the existent literature on designing for values such as that by Batya Friedman in the over 30 years of literature on value sensitive design (VSD). VSD refers to values as “what a person or group of people consider important in life” (Friedman et al. 2008). While this definition is kept broad, Friedman and colleagues also provide “a list of human values with ethical import that are often implicated in system design”. When talking about ethical or moral values the question arises whether certain values are universal.
Response 1: This study considers it is better to apply the definition of values from Friedman et al. (2008) as it is not only matching the main idea of values-led, but also more concise. The modification is shown in the lines of 91-95, 255-256. Moreover, this study found that the moral values proposed in VSD can trigger stakeholders’ motivation to engage in DFVD development in the first place; however, to sustain the development of DFVD, other types of values (e.g., economic values) should not be neglected. The arguments are shown in the lines of 896-917.
Point 2: Secondly, from lines 73-107 the authors discuss ‘stakeholders’ as well as draw on participatory design. The authors should note that not all relevant stakeholders exist equally, that being, they exist and are relevant across different proximities to the designed technology or object. There are direct stakeholders and indirect stakeholders. For example, a direct stakeholder is an individual or group who interacts directly with a technology/design. For example, a system of electronic medical records might be designed for doctors and insurance companies. Indirect stakeholders then are an individual or group who is impacted by a technology but does not directly interact with it. For example, some systems of electronic medical records are not intended to be used by patients but, quite obviously, the use of an electronic medical record by doctors, insurance agencies will impact patients. When a small drone flies over a bystander, she may be bothered by its sound and presence and her privacy might be violated. The bystander would be an indirect stakeholder. In contrast, the operator of the drone would be a direct stakeholder (see Friedman and Hendry 2019 for more on stakeholder types).
Response 2: This study has explained the different types of stakeholders in the lines of 71-77. Indeed, to sustain the development of DFVD, simply engaging one side of stakeholders (e.g., users) is not enough. The finding has showed the importance of considering the values from both the direct stakeholders (e.g., PwD, carers, staffs) and the indirect stakeholder (e.g., the manager of visitor destination, government) to sustain the DFVD. The argument is shown in lines of 672-674.
However, as social innovations are often open-ended issues, it is difficult to identify who are the key stakeholders and whose values should be taken into account. Thus, a step-by-step of negotiation for values to explore the latent values and disconnection is crucial to dig out the people who should participate. The modification is shown in lines of 1006-1007.
Point 3: With regards to the introduction, the authors provide a nice background to the problem that their study aims to address, however, they do not explicitly state the novelty and contribution that their paper aims to offer to the reader. In essence, the ‘why’ of the paper is missing. This, however, can be easily and swiftly addressed. The authors can consider adding in a short paragraph as the penultimate paragraph (i.e., before the last paragraph in the introduction) that states something along the lines of “Whereas previous research on this topic has focused on x, y, z..., this paper is comparatively unique in that it does x, thus it aims to address an important research gap of y.” Something along these lines will help the reader situate the importance of this work.
Response 3: To explicitly state the novelty and contribution of this study, we have added a short paragraph in the lines of 170-175.
Point 4: The authors of obviously well researched in their scholarship, however, the literature review is stunningly lacking in terms of parallel, and far more adopted research within the domain of stakeholder co-creation in design programs, or, more aptly, they sideline the once again three decades of VSD research which has since accumulated more that 17 different methods of which a number of are directly focused on stakeholder identification (Nathan et al. 2008; Umbrello and van de Poel 2021), interaction (Yoo 2018), legitimation (Czeskis et al. 2010), representation (Woelfer et al. 2011), and co-creation (Yoo et al. 2016). The authors should seriously engage with this work so as to not reinvent the wheel as well as to more accurately situate their approach to understanding the values of stakeholders.
Response 4: We have reviewed the theory of VSD and the related methods. The modification is shown in the lines of 265-276. However, Hollaran et al. (2009) and Iversen et al. (2012) mentioned that values are not constant but can emerge and change through interaction, so the aims of involving stakeholders should not focus on identifying values and then designing for them, but to engage them in the process of values reformulation. Especially, the findings in this study show that in the fuzzy front-end of social innovation, the stakeholders might not be able to articulate clear goals and values that are worth engaging with. As a result, this study argues that the way of working with values as mentioned in VSD may fail to identify values and key stakeholders through investigation. Therefore, a dialogical process is needed to allow the values to be emerged, reformed, developed, and grounded. Also, to sustain the development of DFVD, a communication process for value creation system establishment is required to engage stakeholders to commit long-term relationships. The arguments are shown in the lines of 313-318, 842-844, 849-866, and 1003-1013.
We hope that the revisions in the manuscript and our accompanying responses will be sufficient to make our manuscript suitable for publication in the journal of Sustainability.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript discusses the exciting and trending topic. Recently, dementia-friendly visitor destinations' development has been a critical issue in sustainable tourism and sustainable tourism destinations and the challenge for social innovation. Thus, the manuscript fits well to the "Sustainability" journal's thematic area in general and the special issue's theme in particular.
The manuscript is prepared under strict academic rigour. The relevance and the previous development on the subject are convincingly justified; the knowledge gap is presented, and the study's contribution is identified. Indeed, insufficient communication based on values is critical in developing DFVDs. Moreover, the authors proposed their research framework rooted in the literature on DFVD and participatory design. The study process is adequately documented and argued. Using the action research methods, they verified the framework in Leofoo Village Theme Park. As a main contribution of the study, the model of the value-led communication design process is introduced.
Every part of the manuscript, i.e. the introduction, literature review, method, results, discussion, and conclusion, is soundly developed. I read it with great interest.
I would suggest the authors would work on three issues concerning the manuscript.
First, the authors could elaborate on the features that create the added value of their approach in relation to similar approaches found in the theory and practice of DFVD development and participatory design.
Second, the authors could strengthen the avenues for further research and implications for practice. For example, are there conditions that destinations should fulfil to adopt the value-led communication design process?; Are they any circumstances that do not allow to introduce of the process?; etc.
Third, the authors of the photographs used in the result section should be identified to meet the journal copyright regulations. Adding the phrase "Source: Authors" could work here at least.
I wish the authors many citations and replication studies.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Once again, thank you very much for your insightful comments and suggestions, which have enabled us to greatly improve the quality of our manuscript. Revisions in the manuscript to each of the points are shown as below.
Point 1: First, the authors could elaborate on the features that create the added value of their approach in relation to similar approaches found in the theory and practice of DFVD development and participatory design.
Response 1: This study has compared with VSD (value sensitive design) proposed by Friedman et al. (2008) and values-led PD proposed by Iversen et al. It is worth to know that our approach views values are dynamic rather than being constant. Thus, a dialogical process is needed to facilitate the stakeholders to explore the values that are worth engaging with. The modifications are shown in lines of 988-1013.
Point 2: the authors could strengthen the avenues for further research and implications for practice. For example, are there conditions that destinations should fulfil to adopt the value-led communication design process? Are they any circumstances that do not allow to introduce of the process?; etc.
Response 2: As values are varied, how to organize a suitable communication process to realize the reformation is a crucial issue; however, it still remains unknown. Therefore, based on this notion, this study has proposed the future research and implication as shown in lines of 1014-1019.
Point 3: Third, the authors of the photographs used in the result section should be identified to meet the journal copyright regulations. Adding the phrase "Source: Authors" could work here at least.
Response 3: All the figures have been added “source: authors.”
We hope that the revisions in the manuscript and our accompanying responses will be sufficient to make our manuscript suitable for publication in the journal of Sustainability.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The article takes up an important topic of developing dementia-friendly visitor destinations. The structure of article is correct, the conclusions are interesting and application in nature. Authors indicated the limitations of the research and directions of future studies. In the discussion and the theoretical part they refer to the latest literature.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Dear Reviewer,
Once again, thank you very much for your insightful comments and suggestions, which have enabled us to greatly improve the quality of our manuscript. Revisions in the manuscript to each of the points are shown as below.
Point 1: The article takes up an important topic of developing dementia-friendly visitor destinations. The structure of article is correct, the conclusions are interesting and application in nature. Authors indicated the limitations of the research and directions of future studies. In the discussion and the theoretical part they refer to the latest literature.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your comments on our manuscript.
We hope that the revisions in the manuscript and our accompanying responses will be sufficient to make our manuscript suitable for publication in the journal of Sustainability.
