Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments

Sustainability-2035597--Factors affecting the benefits of households participating in tourism activities in Phong Dien tourist village, Vietnam

A study on Phong Dien tourist village, Vietnam, was conducted to explore and identify factors affecting the usefulness of households participating in tourism activities. A household survey based on stratified random sampling was conducted in Phong Dien. 125 questionnaires were completed. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and linear regression analysis were carried out to identify factors influencing the advantages of households engaging in tourism-related activities in Phong Dien tourist village. Findings from data analysis identified three factors representing 66.5% of the explained variance extracted from 23 variables: 1. Natural environment, 2. Government's support, 3. Social environment, 4. Household participation. Finally, the authors suggested some solutions to enhance the households' benefits.

Thanks for inviting me to review this work. My suggestions to the authors for the improvement of the paper relate to the following:

1.       The introduction needs to be completed. The authors should be motivated. What is the contribution of the paper to the tourism literature? In other words, why is it important to write this particular article? What additional will it contribute to the international literature? Also, in the introduction, there should be the method you follow and a summary of the article's results.

2.       2. Section 2, in 2.1 (Theoretical Framework), is the literature review which is so limited and poor. The authors should enrich their references so that the article can be at a level for publication in the journal. The authors should refer to the literature review on tourism and health quality (Konstantakopoulou, 2022). This paper is not cited, and hence it is a significant omission.

3.       In the empirical analysis, there is no reference to the Tables, i.e., an analysis of the results of the tables is carried out without referring to the tables. The authors should mention Table 1 reports the Result of the rotated factor matrix, etc.

4.       The authors should put more effort and thoroughly discuss point estimates, estimated effects, and the intuition behind the results backed up by the literature. Generally, the empirical part is poor; it is not documented why they choose the specific method they apply, etc.

References

Konstantakopoulou, I., 2022. Does health quality affect tourism? Evidence from system GMM estimates. Economic Analysis and Policy, 73, 425-440.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

While your article is quite interesting, as far as the theme is concerned, I have a few issues that must be addressed before the next round of review:

1. I fail to understand why you selected such a small area Phong Dien tourist village (sometimes you refer to it as village and others as district) and ignored the big centres of Vietnam, like Hanoi and Ho Chi Min, as well as the other major tourism regions. How can you make inferences about households tourism benefits from such a small village and its limited population? Does it mean that in Hanoi and Ho Chi Min and other regions, the population contribution to tourism is not there?

2. I suggest you either justify clearly the reason why you selected only Phong Dien mentioning clearly its contribution to the total tourism revenue to the economy or expand your article to other major centres and cities.

3. Your literature is too old. Only one article is dated 2018 and the others, are more than 5 years old (26 of them). You are requested to update at least 75% of the literature to less than 5 years (or in other words, 2017 onwards) and rewrite your points 1 and 2.

4. In addition your article is very small (only 8 pages, including the bibliography). You will be able to expand the article if you include other major regions of the country in your study.

5. The number of questionnaires is too small: 125. Please increase it to at least 300 (You can easily do this if you expand the sample size if you increase the study to other major cities and regions of the country).

6. You have made certain claims and statements that are not at all clear (line 26, 27: it is not clear; line 31: 2,72 million or 2.72 million?; line 43: it is not clear; line 46: it is not clear; line 134: 18.3 or 18.3%?; Table 2: rephrase the options, as they are not clear, line 155: locusts? what are locusts???; line 161: making ponds? what is making ponds???

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments

Sustainability-2035597--Factors affecting the benefits of households participating in tourism activities in Phong Dien tourist village, Vietnam

A study on Phong Dien tourist village, Vietnam, was conducted to explore and identify factors affecting the usefulness of households participating in tourism activities. A household survey based on stratified random sampling was conducted in Phong Dien. 125 questionnaires were completed. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and linear regression analysis were carried out to identify factors influencing the advantages of households engaging in tourism-related activities in Phong Dien tourist village. Findings from data analysis identified three factors representing 66.5% of the explained variance extracted from 23 variables: 1. Natural environment, 2. Government's support, 3. Social environment, 4. Household participation. Finally, the authors suggested some solutions to enhance the households' benefits.

Thanks for inviting me to review this work. My suggestions to the authors for the improvement of the paper relate to the following:

1.       The authors should be motivated. What is the contribution of the paper to the tourism literature? In other words, why is it important to write this particular article? What additional will it contribute to the international literature?

2.       In the following sentence, it needs to be clarified what the Authors mean (lines 75-76): The growth of the economy by the tourism industry has long been recognized as a critical factor [17,18,19]. Economic impacts are often the most tangible of the effects.

3.       In the following sentence, it needs to be clarified what the Authors mean (lines 76-77): The most crucial financial benefit is the generation of income [20]. Tourism creates a source of income for any individual or business providing tourist goods or services.

4.       In the following sentence, it needs to be clarified what the Authors mean (lines 81-82): The main benefits of tourism devel- 81 opment are reducing unemployment and attracting young people to come.

5.       Lines 87-88. The authors noticed that: Tourism development improved standard of living. There should be a reference because this is not the case; the opposite is true.

6.       Lines: 108-111. The main advantages of tourism are its good environmental consequences, such as increased environmental awareness and better environmental management, restoration of historical structures and monuments, and protection of natural and cultural heritage sites [37].

The authors note the following reference to support their claims.

Öztürk, A. B., Özer, Ö., & Çalışkan, U. (2015), The relationship between local residents’ perceptions of tourism and their happiness: A case of Kusadasi, Turkey, Tourism Review, 70(3), 232-242.

But first, the reference supporting lines 108-111 is wrong. And secondly, Tourism is known to have negative effects on the environment, so authors should also note the relevant literature (Zhang et al, 2020, ect.).

7.       There are so many mistakes in the manuscript the Authors have to re-examine it line by line in depth.

8.       The authors should refer to the literature review on tourism and health quality (Konstantakopoulou, 2022). This paper is not cited, and hence it is a significant omission.

9.       The authors should put more effort and thoroughly discuss point estimates, estimated effects, and the intuition behind the results backed up by the literature. Generally, the empirical part is poor; it is not documented why they choose the specific method they apply, etc.

References

Ning Zhang, Ran Ren, Qiong Zhang, Tao Zhang. 2020. Air pollution and tourism development: An interplay. Annals of Tourism Research, Volume 85, 103032.

Konstantakopoulou, I., 2022. Does health quality affect tourism? Evidence from system GMM estimates. Economic Analysis and Policy, 73, 425-440.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I think your article looks good now for publication. However, there are still some grammatical mistakes to be corrected. Kindly ask a native English speaker or English language teacher to do a thorough review of the text, before submitting it again.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper in this version is improved.