Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The topic of the paper is highly relevant. It offers valuable contributions to both livelihood resilience research and rural tourism studies. 

However, I have the following comments and recommendations:

The Abstract is informative but overly long and dense. I recommend shortening it by focusing on the key elements: the research objective, the core methods, the main findings, and the primary implications. 

The manuscript does not contain a clearly separated Literature Review section. For clarity and to focus on synthesizing existing studies on livelihood resilience and rural tourism, I recommend dividing the current Introduction into two distinct sections. 

In the first paragraph of the Introduction, several important claims and policy statements - such as references to "The 2025 No. 1 Central Document" and data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China - are presented without any citations. These sources should be properly referenced. 

Could you provide a brief justification for choosing the Bamboo Craft Village case in the Introduction rather than waiting until the methods section?

In my view, the subsections 1. A Tri-dimensional Framework of Farmers' Livelihood Resilience in the Context of Rural Tourism and 2.1.1. The Operational Mechanism Between Rural Tourism and farmers' livelihood resilience are more appropriately placed in the Literature Review or Conceptual Framework section rather than within the Methods sections. I therefore recommend restructuring the manuscript so that the Methodology section begins with the current subsection 2.2. Data and Methods. 

In Methodology, the authors apply several advanced quantitative approaches, but the reasons for choosing each method are not clearly explained. Please provide brief justifications for why each technique is suitable for measuring livelihood resilience and identifying key influencing factors. I find that in this section, numerous formulas, definitions, and explanations (especially for grey relational analysis and entropy weighting) are included in full detail. While technically correct, this level of mathematical exposition may exceed what is necessary. 

In the Results section, the obstacle ranking tables contain large amounts of information, but the narrative sometimes becomes too dense to follow. Please, provide a summary identifying the three most important obstacle themes and why they matter, while simplifying the descriptive detail. In this section, the visualizations are useful, but some are not fully explained in the text, especially the chord diagrams. 

Several figures, especially figures 8,9,10, contain text that is too small to read. Please, improve their readability. 

The Discussion section is too brief and does not provide sufficient integration with existing research. It currently cites only two references, which is inadequate for a meaningful academic discussion. This section should be substantially expanded to situate the study's findings within the broader literature and highlight similarities or contrasts with previous studies. 

The Conclusion is well prepared and clearly summarizes the main findings and policy implications of the study. However, the manuscript does not address the limitations of the research. I recommend adding a dedicated paragraph on limitations. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors The article and the conducted research are very interesting and address a relevant and timely topic. To further improve the paper and strengthen its overall structure, I suggest the following revisions: • Shorten the title, as this will make the focus of your research clearer and more precise. • The theoretical sections currently presented in 2.1.1, 2.1.2, and 2.1.3 should be reorganized. I recommend moving at least the first two subsections — which summarize the conceptual and model ideas you have presented — into a separate chapter titled Literature Review. This chapter could also integrate some of the theoretical background that is currently included in the Introduction. • The third subsection, titled “A Tri-dimensional Theoretical Framework for Farmers' Livelihood Resilience in the Context of Rural Tourism,” should be integrated into the Discussion section. This framework represents the model that you developed based on your chosen methodology and empirical results. It would therefore be most effective if positioned toward the end of the Discussion, where it could logically conclude the interpretation of your findings and highlight your original contribution. • The Introduction should be shortened and made more focused. It needs to emphasize the uniqueness of the research, its purpose,objectives, and clearly formulated research questions. These elements should be added explicitly. It is also important to provide a clear rationale for conducting the study — that is, to explain the research gaps or limitations in the existing literature that motivated your investigation. Please elaborate on these gaps and clearly justify the relevance and originality of your approach. • The Conclusion should also include a brief reflection on the limitations of the study, to provide a balanced summary of the research scope and future directions. • In addition, I suggest adding a short section that outlines the characteristics of the areas or regions where such an analysis andand implementation of the proposed model could be conducted. Identifying key criteria or indicators that these areas should meet would give the model a clearer practical purpose and applicability beyond the current study area. This restructuring would significantly improve the clarity, logical flow, and overall impact of the manuscript, while also strengthening its scientific and practical contribution. Literature is appropriate and the study is aligned with current trends in SD field and tourism.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, the research had a suitable approach and implementation process. The research topic is also appropriate for the journal. Basically, it is timely and contributes to the literature on rural livelihood tourism areas.  However, to consider this manuscript for publication, it requires serious revision.

1. Title:

The title has some redundant points. It should be concise, that looks like “Measurement and Influencing Factors of Rural Livelihood Resilience of Different Types of Farmers: Taking "Agri-Tourism-Commerce-Culture Integration" Areas in China

2. The abstract section:

- What is the “PSR” meaning? I don't think all readers will understand the full meaning of this acronym at first glance.

- Basically, the introduction should be concise in some places, such as:

+ Line 41: “Based on the research results, the study emphasizes common optimization…” should be rewritten to “The study implies that common optimization…”

+ Some sentences are too long, e.g. lines 33-45.

3. The introduction is too long. It is better to reduce it to 1.5 pages.
4. The section of “Research analysis and methods” needs to be reorganised significantly.

- Lines 181-184: “Rural tourism, as a pivotal vehicle for rural economic transformation, facilitates the multidimensional enhancement of farmers' livelihood resilience through various pathways. This process can be deconstructed into a five-dimensional interactive logic encompassing economic, social, cognitive, psychological, and systemic feedback mechanisms (Figure 1)”. This makes it clear to the readers that the process (as described in Figure 1) was entirely designed and created by the authors.

However, all the supporting sentences after line 184 show that the logic in Figure 1 is based on different dimensions and I believe they have been studied in the literature. Part of this is also revealed by the authors in another sentence (at lines 225-227). Therefore, this sub-section (2.1.1) needs to be cited. This also should be added in the next sub-section (2.1.2). Similarly, Figure 3 needs to add the citations (e.g., inspired by different sources).

- 2.2. Data and Methods should be changed to “2.2. Materials and Methods”

Figure 5 needs citation(s). All 39 indicators categorized in Table 2 need to be cited. All inherited calculation equations must also have their original source(s) clearly cited.

5. The section “Empirical Results and Analysis” and “Discussion”

- The heading needs to be changed to “Results”.

- Figure 7 needs to be larger to clearly see the difference between the two performance lines of participants and non-participants.

- Similar to Figures 8 to 10, they are too small.

- In general, the Results section is too long, while the discussion is too sketchy. The former should be reduced, and the latter should be provided with some deeper implications from the research findings compared to previous studies in the literature. The discussion with only two references is too cursory in the context of such a meaningful research topic.

Finally, I strongly suggest that for the next round, authors should provide a new version after scanning with advanced plagiarism detection software (e.g. iThenticate)

In brief, this paper needs to be enhanced to a major revision.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have undertaken a meticulous revision of their manuscript, incorporating all suggestions and addressing all comments raised during the review process. The improvements made fully resolve the issues previously identified, and the manuscript is now appropriate for publication.

Author Response

Thank you for your affirmation and meticulous review of our research. Meanwhile, during this round of revision, we have further optimized the manuscript in more detailed aspects, including improving sentence structure, enhancing clarity of expression, unifying terminology, and adjusting the format of tables, etc., to comprehensively enhance the readability and academic rigor of the manuscript.

More specific responses and explanations. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

As the authors have acknowledged the limitation of the research, I would leave the decision to the editor concerning whether sufficient contribution is warranted for publication at the journal.

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate your pointing out the limitations of the research. We have further clarified the research boundaries in the discussion section and supplemented the directions for future deepening (such as dynamic data tracking and multi-scale analysis). Meanwhile, in this round of revision, we have also optimized the details, such as improving sentence conciseness, unifying terms and adjusting the presentation of tables, to enhance the readability and logic of the article.

More specific responses and explanations. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper has been enhanced significantly. Only some minor points below should be noted and revised:

• Many sentences in the paper are too long. They need to be rewritten for greater conciseness, or each long sentence should be shortened to two sentences. E.g.,

+ The last sentence in the ‘Introduction’; Besides, it should not use the verb ‘hope’

+ Lines 1199 - 1204

+ Lines 1278 – 1283

+ Lines 1308 – 1322

+ etc.

• The words ‘not participants’ are replaced with ‘non-participants’.
• Table 10: Deleting the words ‘in tourism’ from the last two columns.
• Table 9: The numbers in the last two columns should be aligned.

Author Response

We sincerely appreciate your meticulous review and specific suggestions. We have made revisions to the manuscript item by item, including enhancing the conciseness of the language (such as shortening long sentences and avoiding the use of the verb "hope"), standardizing the terminology (for example, uniformly changing "not participants" to "non-participants"), and adjusting the format of the tables (such as aligning the numbers in Table 9 and removing redundant text in Table 10), to ensure that the content is more concise and standardized.

More specific responses and explanations. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf