Creative Tourist Segmentation for Nature-Based Tourism: A Social Media Framework for Sustainable Recreation Planning and Development in Thailand’s National Parks

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

the paper presents a well-structured study on creative tourism within Thailand’s national parks, emphasizing the interplay between visitor segmentation based on creative tourism activity preferences and digital media engagement patterns. The mixed methods design combining extensive document review, field surveys, and a large visitor questionnaire (1,133 respondents) is appropriate and executed rigorously, providing valuable insights for sustainable tourism planning. Below are some considerations to improve the document:

Theoretical Contextualization: While grounded in creative tourism literature, the manuscript would benefit from a deeper theoretical framing linking creative tourism to sustainability transitions frameworks and digital behavior models, such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model cited, to strengthen analytical rigor and scholarly reach.​

Longitudinal and Generalizability Limitations: The cross-sectional nature and focus on popular parks limit insight into temporal dynamics and representativeness of niche or emerging visitor groups. A brief acknowledgement and call for longitudinal research would enhance transparency.​

Interaction Effects: The separate analysis of content type and media format is a limitation. Future iterations should explore interaction effects between content and format to better understand multi-modal digital communication effectiveness.​

Expanding Visitor Characteristics: The sample skewed heavily female and young (Generation Z dominant). Consider discussing potential biases and how these might influence segmentation and media preferences, or whether demographic weighting could be applied for balance.​

Add a concise literature synthesis linking sustainability tourism frameworks and social media communication theories in the Introduction.

Insert a Limitations subsection discussing sample representativeness, temporal scope, and measurement constraints.

Provide exploratory analyses (even preliminary) of combined content-format influence on engagement, with plans for deeper study.

Discuss how varying visitor demographics might affect social media strategy efficacy, especially given the Generation Z predominance.

Clarify any data quality/checking protocols used in survey administration to maintain reliability claims.

Figures and tables are clear and relevant but should be cross-checked for labeling consistency and accessibility (font size, color contrast).

The writing style is professional and readable. Minor proofreading for grammar and flow would improve clarity.

The supplementary materials should contain detailed questionnaire instruments, survey administration protocols, and additional data or analysis outputs for replicability.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions. The authors have carefully considered your feedback and revised the manuscript accordingly. Please find the revised manuscript and the detailed response to your comments attached.

Please see the attachments.

Best regards,
Sangsan Phumsathan
Corresponding Author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

• Is there a need for a "Literature review" section? These issues are usually discussed in the introduction. Due to the fact that the authors have made such a section separately, the introduction has increased significantly. What is the need?
• Figures 1 and 3 look bad. Fonts are not visible on them. Replace the Figures.
• It would be good if the authors made a separate section on practical recommendations in the field of tourism.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions. The authors have carefully considered your feedback and revised the manuscript accordingly. Please find the revised manuscript and the detailed response to your comments attached.

Please see the attachments.

Best regards,
Sangsan Phumsathan
Corresponding Author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study mainly explores the segmentation of tourists engaging in creative tourism in Thailand's national parks and proposes communication strategies based on social media, aiming to provide practical references for sustainable recreation planning and development. However, the current version of the manuscript still has considerable room for improvement in terms of methodology, results, and discussion. Specific suggestions are as follows:

Firstly, the introduction section clearly expounds the "critical communication gap" of the surging number of visitors to Thailand's national parks but insufficient environmental awareness in the context of the digital age. On this basis, it would be even more perfect if it could more explicitly explain how the segmentation of tourists and customized social media strategies will directly and specifically promote the goal of "sustainable recreation planning". Meanwhile, although the literature review and summary section points out the research gap, when introducing Richards' creative tourism framework, it could discuss in more detail the unique challenges or opportunities faced when applying it to the natural environment to highlight the theoretical expansion value of this research.

Next, in the methodology section, this study mainly adopted a mixed research design. However, the description of the clustering method (Cluster Formation) was somewhat vague and might have certain biases. Moreover, this method of "allocating respondents to the cluster corresponding to the factor with the highest average score" is more like a classification based on dominant preferences compared to traditional statistical clustering algorithms. It requires a more detailed explanation and a discussion of the possible impacts it may bring.

In the results and discussion section, the EFA results indicated that "Nature-based learning" accounted for 52.57% of the variance, while the other three factors explained much less variance. Does this significant disparity imply some important information?

If the title and introduction emphasize "sustainability", then in the discussion section, can we further deepen the exploration of the specific theoretical connections and practical mechanisms for achieving sustainability through corresponding strategies, rather than merely remaining at the level of raising awareness?

In the discussion of the research in dialogue with previous studies, much emphasis has been placed on the "consistency" with previous research. Then, does this study have any differences or unique aspects? For instance, are the tourist segments identified in this study significantly different from those found in other countries or cultural contexts? And what could be the reasons for this?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable comments and suggestions. The authors have carefully considered your feedback and revised the manuscript accordingly. Please find the revised manuscript and the detailed response to your comments attached.

Please see the attachments.

Best regards,
Sangsan Phumsathan
Corresponding Author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear author’s,

Thank you for addressing the comments raised in the previous review round. I have carefully reviewed the revised manuscript and I am satisfied with the changes and clarifications provided. I believe the paper has improved and I have no further suggestions at this stage.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your positive feedback and for taking the time to review our revised manuscript. We truly appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions, which have significantly helped us improve the quality of the paper and clarify the key points of our research.

Best regards,
Sangsan

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this version of the manuscript, the author has responded carefully and meticulously to the reviewers' comments, making significant improvements in the introduction, methodology, results, and discussion. Nevertheless, there is still room for further refinement and enhancement in the presentation and argumentation of some details.

In the introduction section, although multiple theories were successfully introduced and explained, it is recommended to present more clearly the logical connection of how these theories are nested or interact within the research framework. Additionally, at the end of the introduction, the research gap and three specific goals are stated. It is suggested to add a clear core research question, such as: How can a social media framework, informed by creative tourist segmentation, be designed to foster sustainability-oriented recreation within Thailand’s national parks?

In the methods section, the authors provided details on the sampling method, but they failed to offer a brief explanation or justification for the specific sampling interval of "every third group of visitors".

In terms of result presentation, the long paragraphs in Table 5 describing the characteristics of each group seem a bit crowded. It could be considered to transform it into a more structured format, for instance, setting up sub-columns for "Creative Activities Interest", "Media Preference" and "Trip Character" respectively, and using bullet points to list the features.

In the discussion section, the structure could be made more compact. For instance, there is some overlap in content between Section 4.1, "Theoretical contributions..." and Section 4.2, "Digital Engagement...," both of which touch upon ELM and generational differences. It is suggested that these sections be integrated to a certain extent.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

On behalf of all co-authors, we sincerely appreciate your valuable comments and suggestions. We have carefully revised the manuscript in accordance with your feedback, and all changes have been highlighted in the revised version.

Please find the revised manuscript and the detailed response to reviewer attached for your consideration.

Thank you very much for your time and constructive input, which have helped us improve the quality of our work.

Best regards,
Sangsan Phumsathan (Corresponding Author)

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf