The Influence and Mechanism of Digital Economy on the Development of the Tourism Service Trade—Analysis of the Mediating Effect of Carbon Emissions under the Background of COP26
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Greetings,
The paper is well written. In order to make it better, it is necessary to make certain corrections. First, the paper needs to be made according to the template. When citing references, use square brackets [ ]. This needs to be corrected as follows. Convert the first references first page (Ma, 2019) to [1]. When you have the author and then the year, for example: Saqib (2022) you leave the author Saqib but instead of the year a square bracket [5], so it should look like this Saqib [5]. Arrange all references in this way. When it comes to references, their citation should also be in accordance with the instructions. This is how the first reference should look like: Ariu, A.; Breinlich, H.; Corcos, G.; Mion, G.; The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm level. Journal of International Economics 2019, 116, 173-188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jinteco.2018.10.005.
Switch from selection 2.1. This paper establishes ... The main objective of this study... in the introduction before Against this background.
The formulas or expressions you used cannot be read. The tables should all be in accordance with the template. You did a good job with the results and explanations.
All the best.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. All your opinions and suggestions are very important to us. We have carefully considered your suggestions and made modifications in the following aspects.
Point 1: First, the paper needs to be made according to the template. When citing references, use square brackets [ ]. This needs to be corrected as follows. Convert the first references first page (Ma, 2019) to [1]. When you have the author and then the year, for example: Saqib (2022) you leave the author Saqib but instead of the year a square bracket [5], so it should look like this Saqib [5]. Arrange all references in this way. When it comes to references, their citation should also be in accordance with the instructions. This is how the first reference should look like: Ariu, A.; Breinlich, H.; Corcos, G.; Mion, G.; The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm level. Journal of International Economics 2019, 116, 173-188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jinteco.2018.10.005.
Response 1: Thank you very much for your review. We have modified the relevant format of the article according to the template, and adjusted the literature citation and other parts. The revised parts have been marked in red.
Point 2: Switch from selection 2.1. This paper establishes ... The main objective of this study... in the introduction before Against this background.
Response 2: Thank you very much for your advice, which has benefited us a lot. We adjusted the order of some paragraphs according to the requirements, and slightly modified them, so that the full text can be read more smoothly and logically. Mainly in the introduction,marked with red font
Point 3: The formulas or expressions you used cannot be read. The tables should all be in accordance with the template.
Response 3: We are very sorry. In the newly uploaded document, we re entered the formula with the template, and adjusted the format of the table.
Just in case, here I list the three formulas constructed in the article, as follows:
lnitr??=α+α1de??+α2de??2+α3control??+μ?+φ?+ε?? (1)
Where ? is the province, ? is the year, lnitr is the logarithmic value of foreign exchange income from international tourism, de is the development of the digital economy at a provincial level, control?? is the control variable in the equation, which includes foreign direct investment (fdi), goods export trade (ex), ticket revenue of scenic spots (ticket), level of traffic facilities (transport), and accommodation level (hotel). To alleviate the endogenous problem of the missing variables, we controlled the fixed effect of province and year with μ? and φ?, where ε?? as the random error term. To eliminate the influence of heteroscedasticity be-tween provinces, a robust clustering standard error was included in the subsequent analysis.
To test the possible mechanism of action between digital economy and tourism ser-vice trade, we refer to Wen and Ye’s mediating effect test method (2014). On the basis of Equation (1), we take carbon emissions as an intermediary variable and add it to the same analytical framework with digital economy and tourism service trade and set up the re-gression equation as follows:
lnperce??=β+β1de??+β2de??2+β3control??+μ?+φ?+ε?? (2)
lnitr??=γ+γ1de??+γ2de??2+γ3lnperce??+γ4control??+μ?+φ?+ε?? (3)
According to the test method of Wen (2014), α1 in Equation (1) represents the total effect of the digital economy on the tourism service trade; β1 and γ3 in Equations (2) and (3) represent the intermediary effect of carbon emissions; and γ1 represents the direct impact of the digital economy on the tourism service trade in the dimension of per capita carbon emissions. On the basis of α1 significant: if β1 and γ3 are significant, and when γ1 is significant, there is a partial mediation effect of carbon emission, but if γ1 is not significant, it is a complete mediation effect; If either β1 or γ3 is not significant, a bootstrap test is per-formed, and a positive test indicates the existence of a partial mediation effect
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper titled "The Influence and Mechanism of Digital Economy on the Development of the Tourism Service Trade - Analysis of the mediating effect of carbon emissions under the background of COP26" explores the impact and mechanism of the digital economy on the tourism service trade, where authors adopted two-way fixed effects and mediating effects models, and conducted empirical studies based on panel data of 30 provinces in China.
paper looks interesting, I have the following suggestions:
- text is not written in the same font/size - check it with template,
- please correct your paper according to template (e.g. literature sources citation),
- equations (1)-(3) - are not readable,
- please insert short paragraph into conclusion section - why is your research better than existing ones, and what is new and what is known.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time to read this article. All your opinions and suggestions are very important to us. We have carefully considered your suggestions and made modifications in the following aspects.
Point 1: text is not written in the same font/size - check it with template
Response 1: We have unified the full text font according to the template. Thank you very much!
Point 2: please correct your paper according to template (e.g. literature sources citation)
Response 2: We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to your review. We have adjusted the article according to the template, including references, table size, font, etc. Thank you very much
Point 3: equations (1)-(3) - are not readable,
Response 3: We are very sorry. In the newly uploaded document, we re entered the formula with the template
Just in case, here I list the three formulas constructed in the article, as follows:
lnitr??=α+α1de??+α2de??2+α3control??+μ?+φ?+ε?? (1)
Where ? is the province, ? is the year, lnitr is the logarithmic value of foreign exchange income from international tourism, de is the development of the digital economy at a provincial level, control?? is the control variable in the equation, which includes foreign direct investment (fdi), goods export trade (ex), ticket revenue of scenic spots (ticket), level of traffic facilities (transport), and accommodation level (hotel). To alleviate the endogenous problem of the missing variables, we controlled the fixed effect of province and year with μ? and φ?, where ε?? as the random error term. To eliminate the influence of heteroscedasticity be-tween provinces, a robust clustering standard error was included in the subsequent analysis.
To test the possible mechanism of action between digital economy and tourism ser-vice trade, we refer to Wen and Ye’s mediating effect test method (2014). On the basis of Equation (1), we take carbon emissions as an intermediary variable and add it to the same analytical framework with digital economy and tourism service trade and set up the re-gression equation as follows:
lnperce??=β+β1de??+β2de??2+β3control??+μ?+φ?+ε?? (2)
lnitr??=γ+γ1de??+γ2de??2+γ3lnperce??+γ4control??+μ?+φ?+ε?? (3)
According to the test method of Wen (2014), α1 in Equation (1) represents the total effect of the digital economy on the tourism service trade; β1 and γ3 in Equations (2) and (3) represent the intermediary effect of carbon emissions; and γ1 represents the direct impact of the digital economy on the tourism service trade in the dimension of per capita carbon emissions. On the basis of α1 significant: if β1 and γ3 are significant, and when γ1 is significant, there is a partial mediation effect of carbon emission, but if γ1 is not significant, it is a complete mediation effect; If either β1 or γ3 is not significant, a bootstrap test is per-formed, and a positive test indicates the existence of a partial mediation effect
Point 4: please insert short paragraph into conclusion section - why is your research better than existing ones, and what is new and what is known.
Response 4: Thank you for your suggestion. In the second paragraph of the conclusion section of 5.1, we made some modifications, explained the known conclusions and expandable aspects of this research, introduced the possible contributions and innovations of this paper, and marked them in red. The details are as follows:
(Although the above literature review has produced relatively rich research results and shows that the digital economy will directly affect service trade through digital technology, there are still some areas to be expanded: previous studies mainly focused on the impact of traditional factors on international tourism, such as transportation infrastructure, residents' consumption level, etc., and were mostly based on bilateral or multilateral research models. Less attention is paid to the impact of internal changes in a country. Moreover, China, as the second largest economy in the world, has few empirical studies in this regard and is limited to a single level, which cannot accurately describe the role of the digital economy in promoting tourism and the specific path of carbon emissions in this process. Therefore, in this paper, we take advantage of the carbon emission reduction effect of the digital economy, innovatively put the digital economy, tourism and carbon emissions in the same framework, build a unified mathematical model for comparative analysis, verify the relationship between the three and provide an economic explanation. Possible contributions are a more comprehensive perspective on the construction of a model of the impact of China's digital economy on international tourism service trade and an analysis of the impact mechanism of the digital economy on international tourism; and a study of the heterogeneous impact of China's digital economy on international tourism based on geographical location and tourism resource endowment. Further, the mediating role played by carbon emissions is discussed and validated with empirical analysis to deepen the existing literature.)
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Greetings,
The authors have complied with the corrections. The paper should now be accepted.
All the best
