Sustainable Development and Tourism: A Review of the Literature in WoS from 2001 to 2020

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper conveniently frames the research from the approach of the object of study and the methodological procedure, offering results that may be useful in publications related to sustainable tourism.

WOS is taken as a source of consultation as it is an international bibliographic reference, although in subsequent research the consultation can be expanded to other sources of interest as well.

The results graphs show a significant increase in the number of publications and citations from 2019 and 2020. It would be interesting to propose a hypothesis about the possible causes. Perhaps it derives from the Covid 19 pandemic, from the confirmation of the effects of global warming and climate change, etc.

The countries that occupy the first positions in the list of publications and citations are located in three continents (Europe-Finland, Oceania-Australia, Asia-China and North America-Canada), but they do not occupy relevant positions in the rankings of sending or receiving countries. of tourism. Which may be due?

It would be very clarifying to know what the object of study is (at the territorial level) of research on sustainability in tourism, so that it could be identified whether they refer, on the one hand, to emerging or alternative destinations or, on the contrary, to mature or consolidated tourist destinations. In this way, adaptability, corrective measures or changes in the sector can be investigated from a pragmatic perspective.

Finally, a future line of study together with the three proposals of SDG, governance and innovation would be that of positioning and image. That is, measure how, despite public regulations on the matter and promotional campaigns, sustainability in tourism does not remain a simple corporatist or government alibi without effective application.

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper reviewed presents a literature review regarding two topics: sustainable development and tourism. It uses Vosviewer program. I have feeling that functionality of this program defines the scope of research. That's why I ask authors to revise and improved following aspects of their paper:

- deeper justification for conducting such review (Are there similar reviews regarding the same or similar topics? What is  the contribution of this paper in their prospect?)

- clarification of the method used. Is it systematic review of literature or umbrella review (or some other method)?

- the main research question should be divided into specific ones regarding the recognition of popularity of these topics in scientific literature (in historical dimension), main influential authors and finally main discussed issues. 

- authors should state limitations for conducted study in conclusions section.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors of the article analysed a large amount of data. Based on the data, they carried out the analysis. However, the scientific novelty and further scientific analysis of this entire study remains a fundamental question. There is a legitimate question about the applicability and usefulness of this research Therefore, I would recommend the authors to justify the following:

1.      Introduction Part.  The usefulness of the study. The usefulness of the research should be argued and justified in the introduction when developing the scientific discussion. It is also advisable to review more scientific literature in the introduction to avoid misunderstandings when presenting empirical research data. My recommendation would be to simply emphasize the need to analyse the paradigm of sustainable development in the field of tourism (pollution, statistics that link, for example, tourist trips with CO2, or similar). In my opinion, such or a similar scientific discussion would only increase the readers' interest in this article.

2.      Part 2 „Materials and methods“. It is recommended to justify the method chosen for conducting the research. Why was this particular method chosen? How does this method benefit scientific discourse? A more extensive scientific discussion would also be useful in analysing the data presented in Figure 1. Recently, research in various fields is very often associated with sustainable development. The tourism industry is no exception. Therefore, it is natural that the research data showed this. However, deeper insights would help to actualize why it is important for the tourism industry. 3.      The use of the data of the conducted research in the context of further research. Further research should also be argued and presented in the last part of the article. Comments on the Quality of English Language

No specific comments. Quality of English language is good.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

The topic is current and very relevant.

Keywords are appropriate and enough.

The methodology is clear. Methods are good explained.

The paper is well structured and very clearly written.

The results are well presented.

Author Response

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Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper addresses a very interesting topic and the approach is very promising.

However, beyond knowing which are the most cited authors and universities, or the three main clusters (too generic, I would say ..) some insights and reflections are missing.

 

Below are the main ones:

- specify what the choice to use the WoS database means from a representative point of view

- specify what it means to have chosen the period from 2001 onwards from the point of view of the prevailing themes. There is a lack of literature analysis on any similar studies reviewing literature prior to 2001

- aspect linked to the previous point: important themes appear to be missing from the analyzed literature, including, e.g., that of the application of sustainability indicators for strategies: UNWTO SDGs are cited by the authors, but there are no studies on their use to guide management initiatives; the European ETIS system, used in many European destinations, but not represented in the literature considered. It would be important to understand the motivation for these gaps, whether due to a non-representative WoS sample of the entire literature on sustainability, or to a lack of interest on the part of the authors, or to the fact that the topic of quantitative analyzes on sustainability and tourism dates back to an earlier period compared to the one taken into consideration.

- it is also strange that there are no papers relating to the most congested destinations (from the most famous art cities and urban destinations - Barcelona, ​​Amsterdam, Venice, etc. - to seaside destinations - from the Red Sea to Bali etc..). This lack also suggests a limited representativeness of the literature investigated. The authors should argue this point.

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 6 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The main goals of the literature review performed by the authors were to uncover the key contributions regarding sustainable tourism development in the present century and generate an agenda of possible future research themes. These goals have been achieved through the analysis of published documents and citations, identification of the most frequently cited and co-cited researchers in the field, and presentation of the main thematic groups regarding sustainable development and tourism as well as emerging themes.

There are, however, a few elements that should be justified and added. First of all, no justification is given for using only the Web of Science database and also the selected time frame should have some justification, especially that in the Introduction section it is mentioned that one of the earliest publications regarding sustainable development and tourism was presented in 1990. It is also not clear why the latest studies (2021-23) are not included in the review. Secondly, the search time frame should be mentioned not only in the title but also in the Materials and Methods section. Thirdly, the date of performing the searches should be given. Moreover, it seems strange that when I performed a search including all given parameters the search results differed significantly – for the first search the result was 1,261 documents, and after further refinements the final database included 649 documents – 478 articles, 145 proceeding papers, and 31 review articles. Maybe some additional parameters, that are not mentioned in the paper, were taken into account. 

Another important deficiency of the review is the lack of mentioning and discussing previous literature reviews done by other authors on the same or similar topic (e.g.: Huang, R. Y., Chang, W. J., Chung, Y. C., Yin, Y. S., & Yen, J. C. (2019). A Literature Review of Sustainable Tourism (1990–2016): Development Trajectory and Framework. Int. J. Tour. Res, 6, 20-49; Streimikiene, D., Svagzdiene, B., Jasinskas, E., & Simanavicius, A. (2021). Sustainable tourism development and competitiveness: The systematic literature review. Sustainable development, 29(1), 259-271.  

I suggest a more comprehensive description of Table 1 because, in the present form, it is a bit vague.

In Table 2 I suggest using literature reference numbers in the first column (instead of Order number) and not in the Abstract column.

There are some formatting issues with the figures – row numbers appear on the left and interfere with the figures.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors improved the content of the paper. They made indications regarding previous studies on issues discussed, defined the method, improved results presentation and discussion, and provided limitations of  conducted research. The paper is ready to be published in my opinion. 

Author Response

We appreciate your comment.

Reviewer 5 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have satisfactorily replied to the comments

Author Response

We appreciate your comment.

Reviewer 6 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The sentence in lines 134-136 ("Given the satisfactory number of studies...") is unintelligible. Please, consider its modification.

If possible, a more convincing reason for limiting the review time frame to the years 2001-2020 should be given (the only explanation which I found is "The timeframe was delimited from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2020, to encompass the first two complete decades of publications").

Author Response

The sentence in lines 134-136 ("Given the satisfactory number of studies...") is unintelligible. Please, consider its modification.

Answer: the wording of the idea was adjusted, lines: 135-136

If possible, a more convincing reason for limiting the review time frame to the years 2001-2020 should be given (the only explanation which I found is "The timeframe was delimited from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2020, to encompass the first two complete decades of publications").

Answer: More arguments were added about the decision of the period to be studied. Lines: 154-169