Tourism Village Carbon Footprint after COVID-19 Pandemic: A Challenge to Sustainability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The text presents the result of an interesting and methodologically well-developed research. The research has a well-presented focus and brings the necessary data for a thorough analysis  The methodology is clearly presented. The results were exhaustively presented, making the validity of the proposal clear. The discussion of the data with the related literature is incipient. It is also necessary that the authors dedicate themselves to exploring the theoretical and practical implications of the proposed model. The conclusion is still incipient. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The whole concept of the study is not clear. For example, why should we include Dieng Kulon? It stands out as it is much bigger than other villages. Moreover, the villages are described only by the number of population, and emissions, etc. - only quantitative characteristics. We do not know whether they have any waste management system or sewage treatment plants. Moreover, we do not know much about their tourist capacity - what was the accomodation base occupancy rate before covid-19?

The model, presented as one of the main contibutions of the study, is not fully described. Are the colours meaningful? Why do you have "carbon/CO2 emissions" and "tourism village" twice in the model. In my opinion in current shape the model is just a bunch of randomly picked factors and concepts and it should be rebuild. What about the arrows in the model? Do they mean anything? Causality?

Abstract: the names of the villages are not familiar to non-Indonesian readers. Therefore, to show the findings in a more appealing way, there should be information on key characteristics of them.

This indicated that the high number of carbon emissions was due to the large volume of solid waste produced by the visitors and the population. – it is too obvious to even write about it! If Dieng Kulon was excluded the results would be more insightful.

Some phrases sound bizzare or are hard to comprehend - examples:

The impact of this pandemic is found to be devastating for rural communities, specifically tourism villages, leading to the necessary implementation of low-carbon exploratory activities, to achieve sustainability (lines: 133-134) – I do not understand how COVID-19 coerced low-carbon solutions.

low demand of tourist arrivals and sectors (131)- what is meant by this phrase?

However, the concern of a low-carbon sustainable Tourism Village has not been completely implemented (146) – concern or concept?

Based on this study, a big question was observed regarding (301) – bizarre phrase - how do you observe a question?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Thank you very much.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

I found the method and results presented in the manuscript with interest and I will be very pleased to see a revised version of it published in its final form in the journal Sustainability. 

My comments are mainly concern with the way work is presented and less with the contents, though I would like to see them considered in the final version of the manuscript. 

- Affiliations are repeated several times (between lines 6 and 22). It is sufficient to mention this affiliation only once, assigning the same number to each author.

- In Table 1 the abbreviation EF (Emission Factor) must be expressed in full. These must be the most complete as possible, because figures should be legible without the need to see the main text.

- Figures 1 and 2 need to be thoroughly revised. For one thing, figure 1 should present a smaller scale regional context in order to frame the regional location of the country (Indonesia) and the island of Java. In Figure 1 the photographs of the villages are not readable, so I suggest that they be removed, with only the points where they are located represented. As for figure 2, it is not clear what its purpose is. The limits and names present in the images may confuse the reader, not bringing much information related to the work. Therefore, I suggest to replace this figure by another composite figure, with the photographs of each village, something that the authors tried to add in figure 1. These photographs should be of good quality and size that allows its reading. Titles should be avoided (as in figure 2, with a pink background).

- In this sense, titles of figures 1 and 2 should be:

Figure 1. location of Kandri, Lerep, Samiran, Karangrejo, Candirejo, Samiran, Dieng Kulon, and Pentingsari Tourism Villages in Central Java and Yogyakarta Special Region Provinces, Indonesia. 

Figure 2: Kandri, Lerep, Samiran, Karangrejo, Candirejo, Samiran, Dieng Kulon, and Pentingsari Tourism Villages in Central Java and Yogyakarta Special Region Provinces, Indonesia.

- I suggest that "7 tourism villages" used in the titles of tables 3 to 11 and figures 3 and 4 should be revised. Even though the names of the villages appear in these tables and figures, it is important to reinforce that the data represented are for the 7 specific tourism villages considered for the study presented here. Thus, it is suggested something like "... of the seven Tourism Villages in Indonesia considered in this study..."

- The title of Figure 5 would look better as:

Figure 5. Schematic model proposal for the "low-carbon sustainable Tourism Village".

Furthermore, the use and differentiation of colors in the scheme is not clear. These colors should have a meaning (by type of input or action).

- Conclusions - I think that this chapter is too short, presenting itself more as a summary of what has been said above than true conclusions. I suggest discussing, for example, the specific reality of Indonesia for the existence of this type of tourism and whether or not the results obtained can be extrapolated to other regions of the world with similar characteristics.

Regards

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Thank you very much.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised version of the manuscript is a significant improvement. The paper can be published in this version.