Evaluation of Sustainable Rural Tourism Development with an Integrated Approach Using MDS and ANP Methods: Case Study in Ciamis, West Java, Indonesia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The title of the article is confusing, the acronyms used have no meaning. Please, reconsider your title, it should be precise one!

What does it mean ANP and MDS methods? Not even in the abstract is the meaning of the acronyms explained!!! Not even in the introduction!!! Why the authors choose a Hybrid Approach Using ANP and MDS Methods? Please specify!

In the title “Exploration…”; In the abstract: “…the sustainability strategy for developing rural tourism was carried out”, but in the introduction: “This study aims to analyze the sustainability strategy of rural tourism development in Panjalu”. In my opinion, they are different things! What is the proposed approach?

In the introduction, please clearly highlight the novelty aspect of this study, in its current form, I am just not convinced how your study advances the existing body of knowledge.

The literature analysis is very short and without clarifying the concepts and methods used in the article.

The methodology is unclear, unfounded, combined with elements related to literature analysis (e.g. table 1, table 2). A series of methods (i.e. MCDM, AHP) are mentioned but they are not explained nor used in this work.

What are the “model construction”? “Model construction aims to define the problem”!!! Where is the problem defined?

What did the interviews consist of? What were the questions? It is suggest to let the reader know, what were the specific questions that were asked during the interview? Were there two series of interviews? One for MDS analysis, another for ANP analysis? Were interviews audio recorded? What were the steps to transcribe the data?

Result and Discussion are unclear, with many mistakes of expression, without being based on a systematic analysis of the answers provided by the interviewed persons (about which we know nothing more). Some values for average scores ... based on words cannot be taken into account!

The authors confuse “the preparation of the network strategy” with the “analyze the sustainable rural tourism strategy”!

The conclusions contain other values for sustainability index that the results section: “The MDS results show that rural tourism in Panjalu is included in the sufficient category with a sustainability index of 68,327 for ecological criteria, 71,859 for social and cultural, and 65,606 for economic criteria”???

Moreover, in the conclusions of the paper, reference is made to the factors that affect enhancing rural tourism's quality? What are the factor? What is the quality of rural turism?

The paper is written in a totally inappropriate, careless style and without the scientific rigor required for an ISI article. Check text and grammar!

Author Response

We are very much thankful to the Editors and Reviewers for their in-depth review of this manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving the manuscript. We have revised the manuscript carefully based on suggestions and comments. We tried to improve the manuscript and made changes in the manuscript. We appreciate for Editors' and Reviewers' warm work earnestly.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

dear authors,
I found the article interesting and well structured.
But I think it would gain in academic value if the following changes were made to it:
1. In the introduction it would have been better to establish some research questions that are answered with the methodology used, being duly related in the conclusions/discussion
2. In any case, the objectives can be stated more clearly,
3.- The review of the literature, I think, should qualify some brief definitions of the most significant authors that it deems appropriate for its investigation, where it refers to what we understand by rural development, especially in the areas under study.
4.. The methodology seems excellent to me, since it should provide a situation map of the place analyzed for a better vision of which part of the world it refers to.
5.- The conclusions should be preceded by a brief discussion section, where the limitations are specified and not in section 6 as they appear now. A discussion that will not be difficult to build by expanding those limitations but with a more practical sense. For example, in the paragraph that is expressed below, different opinions are observed, this is perfectly contained in the discussion... I think that this would give the article a higher level
"The next priority strategy is “rural tourism based on environmental education and conservation”, with a percentage of 34.64%. Previous researchers have formulated many rural tourism strategies based on environmental conservation, one of which is the term ecology-based tourism in Turkey, which is expected in order to safeguard the region's
and its surroundings' ecological framework"...
In any case, I congratulate the authors because it is a work whose publication brings practical implications of interest.
Best regards

Author Response

We are very much thankful to the Editors and Reviewers for their in-depth review of this manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving the manuscript. We have revised the manuscript carefully based on suggestions and comments. We tried to improve the manuscript and made changes in the manuscript. We appreciate for Editors' and Reviewers' warm work earnestly.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Hi, I congratulate the authors of the article on the New Year and wish them good health.

This article has good quantitative and conceptual aspects for rural sustainability. But it needs to be explained why you use a mixed quantitative model, do you use in-depth interviews? So you need to justify why you used interviews and how you quantified them!

You have mentioned four groups, but you have collected data from three groups.

Other points are highlighted in the text of the article

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We are very much thankful to the Editors and Reviewers for their in-depth review of this manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving the manuscript. We have revised the manuscript carefully based on suggestions and comments. We tried to improve the manuscript and made changes in the manuscript. We appreciate for Editors' and Reviewers' warm work earnestly.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the effort put in elaborating the issues raised by me in the first review. I hope you found my remarks useful in enhancing the clarity of your study.

Although there is still some potential to make minor spell check corrections and the conclusions thoroughly supported by the results referenced in secondary literature, I think the manuscript is worth presenting to the international scientific audience.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The article has been modified and now meets the conditions for its publication. Congratulations