Development Priority Policies for Impact Control and the Recovery of Natural Tourism in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic in North Sumatra Province, Indonesia

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: Providing more explanation about this region, North Sumatra province could enhance readers’ understanding.

Response 1: We agree with Your review. We lack clear information about North Sumatra from the perspective of international readers. We have fixed it. We've also added a Research Location Map to make it clearer. Thanks

Comments 2: The literature review should include a discussion of the hypotheses proposed in the manuscript and their relationships that supported based on previous conceptual and empirical research. However, this section is missing in this manuscript.

Response 2: Thank you for Your Review. We have, accordingly, revised it. We have added a literature review by combining it in the introduction. We have tried to make the literature review contain conceptual and empirical explanations related to the background and urgency of this research.

Comments 3: The method and the data collection should be illustrated in detail.

Response 3: Thank you for your evaluation. We have, accordingly, revised the Methods section in the manuscript. We have also stated how and from whom primary data is collected. Hopefully it has become clearer

Comments 4: Materials and methods are not clear. Please add the qualitative research results if the method is mentioned. Second, the data collection should be illustrated. A number of the respondents and the demographic information are not clearly presented in the results.

Response 4: We have, accordingly, revised this point. We have improved the method section and added an analysis method for each aspect. We have also added explanations to corroborate the quantitative findings. We have added the data collection method, the number of respondents, and who are the respondents, namely the representative management leaders of the natural tourism objects that are the research samples, hopefully, it will be clearer. Thank you

Comments 5: On page 5, there are some results before the result section. This section would make readers confused. Please present all main results in the results section

Response 5: Thanks for the review. We have corrected the sentence so that this section becomes a theoretical assumption to lead to a discussion related to the research results. Hopefully it will be better

5. Comments 6: Hypotheses. There are not many significant results. The reasons should be explained

Response 5: Thank you for your comment. It is true that according to the facts studied, only 3 out of 5 variables are significant. We have added a clarification related to this point. 

Comments 7: The subtitle is very confusing and needs to be revised.

Response 7: Thank you for Your evaluation. We have fixed it according to its hierarchy, including sorting the subtitle numbers for the better. Thank you.

Comments 8: The hypotheses (research questions) and the results should be clearly illustrated, and the confirmation should be reported.

Response 8: We have revised it. Interviews were conducted with representative object management leaders from each sample of natural tourism objects. We have fixed it. We have declared the hypothesis by using the symbols of variables to simplify. We have improved the results section with clearer statistical and empirical explanations. We have confirmed the results for each aspect tested. Thank you.

3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: This is a significant and interesting paper, suitable to Sustainability, and well-thought of. 

Response 1: Thank you for your assessment. I will be happy to receive your input and will improve as best we can

Comments 2: The Introduction should be expanded, explaining more in detail the actual research goals of the article and the strategies implemented by the Authors to achieve them. Also, the Introduction should stress more on the relevance of this paper in its field - in academia and academic writing, nothing can be given for granted and nothing is self-evident.

Response 2: Thank you for the review, we agree. We have revised the introduction by clarifying the background, urgency, and research objectives of the article. We've also added ways to achieve this, although we've put more on the methods section.
We have improved the introduction by not doing any early justification. We are trying to build a narrative that basically we want to prove a theoretical assumption that the results are expected to be useful for development priority policies in efforts to recover natural tourist attractions, which of course require large costs.

Comments 3: The paper needs a proper literature review. At this stage, it is 'scattered' here and there, all over the article, and section 2 is not enough, the less in combination with the methods. A proper Literature Review section, located after the Introduction and before the Methodology, would make the paper more up to academic standards. More works need to be added and cited, also more general in content, to make the article more exhaustive and more 'user-friendly', even to a non-specialized 'audience'.  

Response 3: Thank you for pointing this out. We have tried to add a literature review, especially to the Introduction section before Methodology, according to the journal template. We also added more references that we cited. We tried to improve the narrative and language, especially in the introduction Hopefully it will be easier to understand, more 'user-friendly', even to a non-specialized 'audience'. 

Comments 4: The Methods are ok, clear enough, at least to this Reviewer, and actually reproducible. However, methodology and tables must be double-checked by at least another Reviewer with a more direct expertise than me in the procedures, for final validation and general fairness. This is something essential, that cannot be avoided. 

Response 4: Thanks for the review. We agree with this comment. The methodology and tables we use are basically in accordance with the testing procedures, through the usual validity, reliability, and preliminary test mechanisms. But to save space, we only display the resume. Essentially, the supporting data (including the questionnaire and the original results) is available and open to anyone.

Comments 5: Results are good, clear and 'tidy'. 

However, section 3 incorporates also the discussion - in / from 'Results Analysis', at least -, and that makes the format of the paper a bit confusing and not completely 'appropriate'. The Authors may want to think to 'split' the Results section into an independent part on the results themselves and another independent part on the proper discussion, perhaps entitled 'Discussion'. The Discussion should add more comments and 'analytical moments', and even more 'personal observations' by the Authors - these would not compromise the 'scientificity' of the paper, but would probably be a nice addition and expansion, useful to trigger an interesting debate. 

Response 5: Thank you for the good judgment. We admit that our efforts to discuss each outcome separately make the format of the paper a bit confusing. For this reason, we have improved the writing structure by placing each section in a group and the sequence number is correct for each one. We realized that we were still combining the results and discussions, with the intention that the problems in each section would be more focused. We realized that separating it might be better, but due to the limited time provided by the editors we were not able to finish it in round 1. However, we have tried to add analytical and empirical observation results by the author. Hopefully it will be more interesting.

Comments 6: The discussion is the 'meat' of an academic paper and, therefore, needs to be adequately developed and implemented.

Response 6: Thank you for your rating. I will be happy to receive your feedback and will improve as best I can. At this stage, we have tried to improve the manuscript thoroughly according to the reviewer's direction, and we have also used proofread editing services from MDPI as an effort to improve the quality of our manuscript

Comments 7: The Conclusions are ok - they should be expanded a little, at least by providing a synthetic list of the main findings, as a sort of 'reasoned summary', and, like in a 'mirror' with the Introduction, by highlighting again the value of this paper in the current panorma of studies.

Response 7: Thank you for the good judgment. In conclusion, we have corrected the main findings, which have been sorted in accordance with the order of the objectives, referring to the funding section. It is hoped that the conclusion that we have corrected can be more similar to a 'reasoned summary'. Hopefully the findings and recommendations we present can be understood more clearly. 

4. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Point 1: The English language is clear enough, but the written style looks somehow non-native. A quick revision, aimed at avoiding awkward sentences and repetitions and redundancies (which must be avoided at all costs), possibily with the help of a native speaker, would be highly beneficial to this article. All in all, a good paper, which definitely deserves to be considered for publication - after a thorough revision, though. 

Response 1:   We realize that English is not our mother tongue, not native, so in order to improve the quality of our language, we have requested language editing services from MDPI. A proofreading certificate for this manuscript is attached.

5. Additional clarifications

We strive to display every change by highlighting or including track changes for each section, but because we do major revisions and use MDPI's language services as a whole, we are not able to show all of them. We apologize for that, hopefully it will not be any obstacle