Place Attachment, Cultural Involvement, and Residents’ Attitudes towards Tourism Development: The Case of Novi Sad, the European Capital of Culture 2022

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The reviewed paper is in my opinion a good quality scientific article. The content presented is up-to-date and may be of interest to potential readers. Although I evaluate the article positively, I suggest a few more additions:

1. In the introduction and discussion, I propose to refer to the publications of Yi Fu Tuan (Space and Place) and

Wang, M.; Jiang, J.; Xu, S.; Guo, Y. Community Participation and Residents' Support for Tourism Development in Ancient Villages: The Mediating Role of Perceptions of Conflicts in the Tourism Community. Sustainability 2021, 13, 2455.

Spennemann, D.H.R. The Nexus between Cultural Heritage Management and the Mental Health of Urban Communities. Land 2022, 11, 304.

I also encourage direct references to sustainable development/sustainable tourism, the role of culture in sustainable development

2. In chapter 3.1. I suggest adding a location map of the study area and a map of the functional-spatial structure of the city of Novi Sad with the described cultural sites/objects marked

3. The questionnaire used in the study I propose to add as an appendix. Besides, it is interesting why the city districts where the respondents live were not identified. It is necessary to answer whether the surveys complied with ethical requirements? Please provide details of the Research Ethics Committee that approved this study, or add "Ethical review and consent were waived for this study for reason (please provide detailed justification)".

4. The abbreviation CFA should already be expanded when it is first used (in line 321 instead of line 338)

5. In verse 424 there is a reference to the publication by Ganji et al. (2020) but I did not notice it in the References. On the other hand, in line 449 there are doubled references to publications. This should be corrected.

6. In the future, it would be interesting to address the changes brought about by the COVID -19 pandemic on place attachment, cultural involvement and residents’ attitudes towards tourism development.

Author Response

We would like to thank you for comments and valuable suggestions that helped us improve our paper. In the table which we upload an attachment, we provide the answers for the comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the invitation to review. This is a well written paper that has potential to contribute to the field. Please see my comments below. I look forward to the revision.

-       The introduction is clear.

-       The literature review could benefit from more recent research. Currently, many of the references in the list are prior to 2020. Since it may be Q3 or later if the paper is published, it is important for the authors to show readers that they are up-to-date with the most recent literature. For example, in the socio-cultural impacts of tourism in Section 2.3, the authors could note the negative impacts such as stereotypes (Tung et al., 2020) and discrimination against tourists by residents (Tse & Tung, 2021) as per studies in Journal of Travel Research and Annals of Tourism Research, respectively. Please see “Tung, V. W. S., King, B. E. M., & Tse, S. (2020). The tourist stereotype model: Positive and negative dimensions. Journal of Travel Research, 59(1), 37-51” and “Tse, S. & Tung, V. W. S. (2021). Residents’ discrimination against tourists. Annals of Tourism Research, 88, 103060.”

-       Please report assessment of common method bias.

-       The ‘Discussion and Conclusion’ section is currently a summary of the findings. The authors noted ways that the study results are consistent with previous research, which is great. However, I would also recommend highlighting the ways in which the study contributes to new ideas beyond previous research.

-       In terms of practical implications, the authors made an interesting point: “These insights may be used by urban planners and developers to create communication strategies that address specific challenges presented by each group of respondents.” It may be a good idea to provide readers with more specific examples of these ‘communication strategies’ that urban planners and develops can create. This would give concrete and actionable ideas to readers.

-       In terms of future studies, I would recommend highlighting the use of implicit measures in research on attitudes and impacts as per Tse and Tung (2020). This could give more support to your study findings in future research. Please see “Tse, S. & Tung, V. W. S. (2020). Assessing Explicit and Implicit Stereotypes in Tourism: Self-Reports and Implicit Association Test. Journal of Sustainable Tourism. doi: 10.1080/09669582.2020.1860995”.

Author Response

We would like to thank you for your comments and valuable suggestions that helped us improve our paper. In the table which we upload an attachment, we provide the answers for the comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I have no further comments.