Exploring the Influence of Green Mindset on Passengers’ Intentions Toward Sustainable Air Travel: Evidence from Thailand

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

• p. 1: In the abstract, the title of the paper should not be written by capital letters, but lower cases.
• pp. 1-2: There found several terms that were undefined such as "sustainable air travel",  "sustainable industry practice", and "transportation sector."
• p. 1: It is difficult to understand what the first paragraph of the intro is about. Is this about emission or Thailand? Additionally, the author(s) should account for why Thailand was singled out as a research scope.
• pp. 1-2: The paper should explain a logical connection between an environmental issue of industry in Thailand and attitude/role of passengers pertaining to environment. Also, the paper should provide more clues and explanations about market growth.
• The paper does not logically account for why the jargons of attitude, awareness, and behavioral intention of passengers were selected in the text.
• The term of "green mindset" was undefined in the text.
• pp. 2-4: The literature review should be re-structured as like 1) green mindset in Thailand, 2) Air travel in Thailand, and 3) TPB in the tourism and travel field. 
• p. 4: The paper should explain how the research model and hypotheses were established and why the theory of the TPB was determined for the study. As to research hypotheses, directions of hypotheses should be provided such as (+) positive or (-) negative relationships between variables.
• p. 4: what does "full-service airline in Thailand" stand for? Furthermore, how did the author(s) deal with purposive and stratified sampling methods in detail?
• p. 5: The paper makes itself questionable of how not only sample size but also ratios of gender, age, and so on were dealt with.
• p. 5: It is questionable of how those items from section 1 to 5 on the survey were picked up and of why 6-point Likert scale was decided.
• The paper should answer of many questions of "why" and "how" related to expert consultation, online survey, SEM, and the like.
• The paper has mentioned that appropriate Cronbach's alpha should be more than .7 as a strong criterion for reliability. How?
• If this paper tells a research model using SEM, the title in this paper should be revised.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

To achieve writing of academic level, the paper should be double-checked before submission to the journal.

Author Response

Comments 1: In the abstract, the title of the paper should not be written by capital letters, but lower cases.

Response 1: The researcher has already revised them to lowercase.

Comments 2: There found several terms that were undefined such as "sustainable air travel", "sustainable industry practice", and "transportation sector." Response 2: The researcher has already provided definitions for these terms in the Introduction section.

Comments 3: The paper should explain a logical connection between an environmental issue of industry in Thailand and attitude/role of passengers pertaining to environment.

Response 3: The researcher has already explained the relationship between the environmental issues of the industry in Thailand and the attitude/role of passengers pertaining to the environment in the Introduction section, paragraph 2, line 46. Comments 4: The literature review should be re-structured as like 1) green mindset in Thailand, 2) Air travel in Thailand, and 3) TPB in the tourism and travel field.  Response 4: The researcher has restructured the literature review according to the reviewer's suggestions. Comments 5: As to research hypotheses, directions of hypotheses should be provided such as (+) positive or (-) negative relationships between variables. Response 5: The researcher has already specified the direction of the relationship (positive) in the hypotheses. Comments 6: The paper makes itself questionable of how not only sample size but also ratios of gender, age, and so on were dealt with. Response 6: The researcher has already explained the rationale behind the sample size in Section 3.1, Population and Sampling, paragraph 2, line 218. Comments 7: It is questionable of why 6-point Likert scale was decided. Response 7: The researcher has explained the use of the 6-point Likert scale in Section 3.2, Research Instrument, line 233. Comments 8: If this paper tells a research model using SEM, the title in this paper should be revised. Response 8: The researcher has revised the title to better reflect the SEM approach as follows: "Exploring the Influence of Green Mindset on Passengers’ Intentions Toward Sustainable Air Travel: Evidence from Thailand."

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. This study uses ‘Green Mindset’ in the title and seems to be the main core of the study; however, I did not see any specific definition regarding this term. Is it the ‘Attitude’? the ‘Awareness’? Or the ‘Perception’? To me, I was thinking that the ‘Green Mindset’ would be a construct reflecting in various sub-constructs like ‘Attitude’ and/or ‘Awareness’. Anyhow, I suggest that the authors should define the ‘Green Mindset’ clearly.
2. The authors have mentioned the importance of fostering green mindsets among air travelers in the Introduction section, but I think it would be much better if the authors could indicate a research gap(s) concerning the situation of sustainable air travel in Thailand, particularly citing some specific statistics, and point out potential drawbacks or insufficiencies in the past research.
3. The research framework is mainly borrowed from, but does not adopt directly, the theory of planned behavior (TPB); however, there is no explanation or inference why ‘Awareness’ is the antecedent construct of ‘Attitude’, ‘Perception’ (‘Perceived Airline Sustainability’), and ‘Behavioral Control’. In other words, how did the authors develop the SIX hypotheses?
4. Please check the terms or abbreviations used in the article. Some might be wrong, for example, PAS or PBS? BI or PBC or BC? By the way, the figures in the tables are also inconsistent. Like the AVEs in Table 2 are not inconsistent with the square roots in Table 3, and this is not just a rounding issue. In Table 5, the p-value for PBS to BI (or PAS to BI?) shows insignificance, but there is a triple-star superscript marked next to it. Please check again.
5. ‘Perceived Airline Sustainability’ and ‘Behavioral Control’ should be the key constructs mediating the effect of ‘Awareness’ on ‘Intention’; however, there is no significant effect for these two mediators. It means that even ‘Awareness’ affects ‘Perceived Airline Sustainability’ and ‘Behavioral Control’ significantly, but is still useless. ‘Awareness’ only has an impact on ‘Behavioral Intention’ through the mediation of ‘Green Attitude’. The authors should dig more into it and see potential reasons leading to the results. Comparing with the findings of the relevant studies would also be worth doing.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Need to be further improved.

Author Response

Comments 1: This study uses ‘Green Mindset’ in the title and seems to be the main core of the study; however, I did not see any specific definition regarding this term. Anyhow, I suggest that the authors should define the ‘Green Mindset’ clearly.

Response 1: The researcher has already defined the term ‘Green Mindset’ in the Introduction section, paragraph 3, line 61.

Comments 2: The authors have mentioned the importance of fostering green mindsets among air travelers in the Introduction section, but I think it would be much better if the authors could indicate a research gap(s) concerning the situation of sustainable air travel in Thailand and point out potential drawbacks or insufficiencies in the past research.

Response 2: The researcher has clearly elaborated on the research gap in the Introduction section, paragraph 4, line 68.

 

Comments 3: The research framework is mainly borrowed from, but does not adopt directly, the theory of planned behavior (TPB); however, there is no explanation or inference why ‘Awareness’ is the antecedent construct of ‘Attitude’, ‘Perception’ (‘Perceived Airline Sustainability’), and ‘Behavioral Control’. In other words, how did the authors develop the SIX hypotheses?

Response 3: The researcher has explained the rationale behind the development of all six hypotheses in Section 2.2, Development of the Research Model and Hypotheses, line 146.

 

Comments 4: Please check the terms or abbreviations used in the article. Some might be wrong, for example, PAS or PBS? BI or PBC or BC? In Table 5, the p-value for PBS to BI (or PAS to BI?) shows insignificance, but there is a triple-star superscript marked next to it. Please check again.

Response 4: The researcher has reviewed and corrected the issues accordingly.

 

Comments 5: Awareness’ only has an impact on ‘Behavioral Intention’ through the mediation of ‘Green Attitude’. The authors should dig more into it and see potential reasons leading to the results. Comparing with the findings of the relevant studies would also be worth doing.

Response 5: The researcher has already elaborated on this issue in the Discussion section, paragraph 2, line 366, by comparing it with the findings of relevant studies.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper addresses a contemporary issue of very high importance in the sustainability context. while most other issues have been well addressed, I am of the opinion that the methods section needs to be considerably expanded. It needs to have a preamble to illustrate the overall methodological steps that have been used with their relevance and integration of how they have come together in one coherent whole. After this, each one of the methods and the associated selection criteria needs to be individually discussed with the staged results of data analysis and the considered/interpreted outcomes, further explaining how these feed into the next stage. 

I provide this review for the benefit of the many readers who may not be fully familiar with the methods used, the rationale for their selection, and their integration into an analysis model. 

Author Response

Comments 1: I am of the opinion that the methods section needs to be considerably expanded. It needs to have a preamble to illustrate the overall methodological steps that have been used with their relevance and integration of how they have come together in one coherent whole.

Response 1: The researcher has already explained the overall methodological steps in the Methodology section, starting from line 198.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Accept