“I Am Here to Fly, but Better Get the Environment Right!” Passenger Response to Airport Servicescape

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

By analyzing the passengers' information obtained from web-based mode of questionnaire distribution, this paper discusses the combined effects of the substantive and communicative staging of servicescape on consumer responses. The measurement method used in this study is effective and reliable. The manuscript is rich in research content but there are some parts of the paper that can be further improved. The following comments from the reviewer need to be addressed.

1. Line 117-118, page3: " Customers are said to respond to the elements of the service setting holistically." Please explain how to know the customer responses. The authors need to clarify the basis of this statement or provide corresponding references.

2. Line 471-473, page11: The complete definition of 5-point Likert scales and 7-point bipolar scales are not given in the article, please provide a more detailed explanation or corresponding references.

3. In section 6.4, it is mentioned that the respondents' language ability will affect the research results. May I ask whether the nationality of the investigated passengers is a factor to be considered? Since it is not provided in the article.

4. Line 879-885, page23: The corresponding web address is not provided at the end of references 22-24. Please note the uniform format of references.

5. Line 919, page24: Please do not capitalize the name of the magazine of reference 38.

Author Response

Reviewer #1                                                                  

1. On referencing the notion that customers respond holistically to the service environment, we thank the reviewer for this suggestion. We have supplied a citation for this idea. Please check page 3, line 124.
2. On referencing measures for the study, we thank the reviewer for this comment. We first stated the measures and their sources and then we indicated how the measures were scaled. So, the references for the measures can be found in the discussion preceding the nature of scaling. Please see page 11, from lines 472 – 178 for the references for the measures. Additionally, the author column of Table 3 has the sources of all the items. Please check page 12, lines 530 – 552.
3. On whether or not passengers’ language serves as a limitation of the study, we thank the reviewer for this inquiry. We state that yes. The broader idea here is that, the study targeted Chinese travelers and hence, Chinese speakers. So, our measures were translated to Chinese for that purpose (See page 11, lines 490 – 499). This limits the generalizability of the study findings as Chinese travelers would likely respond to the different components of the airport servicescape as compared to say Americans, Africans or Europeans. Hence, testing our model in other airport contexts is recommended (Please see page 21, lines 799 – 804).
4. On adding the digital object identifiers (DOIs), we thank the reviewer for this suggestion. We have added the dois. Please see pages 24, lines 923 – 925.
5. On de-capitalizing the journal name of a reference, we thank the reviewer for the comment. We have done as suggested, please see reference 44 on pages 25, line 959.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Drawing on the S-O-R model, this study examines the impact of airport servicescape on passengers' positive emotions and satisfaction, and subsequently on behavioral responses. In doing so, the moderating effect of travel frequency was also questioned. I must admit that I enjoyed reading the work and I found the perspectives of the authors intriguing because I work in a similar field. I feel that the research will contribute to the body of knowledge, however it would benefit from a few improvements.

-Standardize citations as required by Sustainability journal. Do not cite in the paragraph as in the APA style.

-Discuss the contributions of the study in the introduction section.

-The frequency of travel was categorized as low-moderate-high and its moderating role was investigated.  I believe the most crucial aspect is the foundation for this categorization. Authors should definitely discuss how they classify the travel frequency of passengers as low, moderate or high.

-The content under 5.2 and 5.2.1 is the same. Remove content under 5.2.

-R2 – squared multiple correlations are noted in Table 3, but are omitted from the table itself.

-The authors used Fornell and Larcker criteria for the discriminant validity of the study. However, this approach has been criticized in the literature for its poor performance. I thus urge that writers use the HTMT criteria.

-The study includes one source from 2021 and none from 2022. More recent references should also be included in cited references.

-There is an uppercase usage such as "THE BASIC EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTS" and "THE JOURNAL OF SERVICES MARKETING" in the references. Please rectify these errors and standardize the reference section.

Good luck to the authors.

Author Response

Reviewer #2

1. On standardizing in-text citations, we thank the reviewer for this comment. We have re-checked the website of the journal for instructions on in-text citation where scholars are named. We could not find any instructive examples or commentary on that. So, we checked our previews papers, and this citation style where authors are mentioned in-text is acceptable [For details, please see O. Antwi, J. Ren, W. Owusu-Ansah, H.K. Mensah, M.O. Aboagye, Airport self-service technologies, passenger self-concept, and behavior: An attributional view, Sustainability. 13 (2021) 3134.]
2. On articulating the contributions of the study in the introduction, we thank the reviewer for this comment. We have, as suggested by the reviewer, presented the key contributions of our study in the introduction. Please see pages 2 and 3, lines 98 – 104.
3. On justifying the basis for travel frequency categorization, we thank the reviewer for this comment. We followed the attributes’ categorization for improving airport service quality in Liou et al’s (2011) decision rules approach to improving airport service quality [Please see page 13727 of J.H. Liou, C.H. Tang, W.C. Yeh, C.Y. Tsai, A decision rules approach for improvement of airport service quality, Expert Systems with Applications. 38 (2011) 13723–13730. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2011.04.168.]. Please see page 11, lines 487 – 489.
4. On removing content under subsection 5.2, we thank the reviewer for his/ her attention to detail. We agree that the content was a duplicate and have therefore deleted it. Thank you.
5. We thank the reviewer for this observation. We have deleted the R2 – squared multiple correlations, from the notes on Table 3.
6. On HTMT recommendation, we thank the reviewer for this suggestion. We performed the HTMT and discovered that the constructs are sufficiently distinctive. Please check page 14, lines 556 – 558.
7. On citing more recent research, we thank the reviewer for this suggestion. We have added recent studies as suggested by reviewer 3 and added more references from 2022.
8. On de-capitalization of paper title, we thank the reviewer for this comment. We have effected this change. Please check page 22, lines 828 and 829.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper needs some improvements to be ready for publication,

- The references have to be presented in correct way following the Journal style.

- Figure 1, all texts have to be presents with one style.

- Line 456, how did you justify that 387 samples are enough for your study?

-Some related works to passenger satisfaction have to be discussed in the introduction, the following recent works are recommended :

https://doi.org/10.3390/su11010009

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103647

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2020.106920

Author Response

Reviewer #3

1. On presenting journal-consistent references, we thank the reviewer for this comment. As was also indicated by other reviewers, we have formatted all paper and journal titles in capital letters to be consistent throughout the references.
2. On being uniform with font style of the text in Figure 1, we thank the reviewer for this comment. We have formatted the texts to be consistent in style in terms of font type.
3. On justification for sample size, we thank the reviewer for this inquiry. We followed Namukasa's (2013) recommendation that acceptable sample size for passenger inquiries typically ranges between 270 and 602. And the author supports this position with relevant literature [Please consult J. Namukasa, The influence of airline service quality on passenger satisfaction and loyalty the case of Uganda airline industry, TQM Journal. 25 (2013) 520–532. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-11-2012-0092., on page 525].
4. On adding relevant literature, we thank the reviewer for this recommendation. We have read the studies and added them to our study.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is now acceptable. 

Author Response

Reviewer #1

1. On our manuscript being acceptable, we are grateful for the reviewer’s time and dedication to improving our paper and finding it acceptable. Thank you.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has been improved, however, the citation style still not similar with journal's style. Please, modify. 

Author Response

Reviewer #2

1. On modification of citation style to be consistent with the journal’s style, we thank the reviewer for this comment. We have formatted our manuscript to be consistent with the journal’s style.