Short-Term Accommodations and Long-Term Housing Challenges in the Margaret River Tourist Destination: A Perspective of Population Movement and Pricing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear author(s),

Here comes my review of your paper.

The topic of the paper is interesting, but the presented text requires a significant rethinking and rewriting. Some major points that I suggest you to think about:

1. The purpose of the paper should be presented in "Abstract" and in "1. Introduction" sections of the paper. You introduce it it in "3. Materials and methods" section. Why?

2. Section "2. Literature review" should be revised in a way that it clearly presents the research gap and connects it to your research question.

3. Section "3. Materials and methods" should not only include general description of what method are supposed to be used, but also a detailed description of why a certain method was chosen specifically for the purpose of your research. In lines 254-267 you wrote about "Thematic analysis", but in what way the "thematic analysis" is done for analysis of your results? 

4. Section "5.Discussion" should include discussion of your results (or answers on your research question). But your discussion text looks like discussion of results from other papers. Why?

3. In lines 263-268 you wrote about "Triangulation". But how (and where in the text?) have you applied it in your paper?

4. In what way your "4. Results" section provide answers on your research question stated in lines 184-180? It is not clear from the text for me as a reader of your paper.

5. In Lines 13-15  text indicates that: "Findings demonstrates that elevated short stay pricing and housing inequality are pulling longer stay residents into depression, resulting in the inability to secure a stable home.". However, the evidence of this "pulling longer stay residents into depression" is not presented in the "Results" section of the article.

6. Your paper topic include "pricing dynamics". But your paper lacks economic analysis of price dynamics. Why? It might be useful present an shorter overview to the reader on how the rents and prices have changed recently.

7. What are policy implications? They are supposed to be presented in "5.Discussion" section and/or "6. Conclusions" section. You talk about that "policies should be implemented", but what kind of policies do you suggest? Is it control, regulations, measures, restrictions or something else? It is not clearly stated in the paper.

8. List of references is long and impressive, but if to check it, some references are not academic references (i.e. they are not research articles, but just some other type of publications like magazine articles). Some of the references presented in reference list  are not used in the text of your paper. For example, references number 10, 29, 30, 80-82, 84-86 (and other) are not used in the main text of your paper. Why do you include it in the reference list? In lines 200-201 you use references Duranton and Puga (2004) and Fujita et al (1999), but you do not include it in Reference list. Why?

9. The style you present your sources in "References" should be revised. Please use one of the generally accepted ways to write reference list like, for example; Harvard reference style or APA style.

I recommend you when you will work on your paper to use any book on "Academic writing". It will help you to improve the content of your paper and make the text more coherent and academic.

Best regards,

Reviewer

Author Response

Kindly find attached the point-to-point response.

 

Thanks

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for allowing me to review this paper. I reviewed it with great interest, as it is current and vital. However, I have to conclude that the quality of the article in present form is insufficient for journal publication.

Therefore, I recommend the following changes:

 

(A) Major:

1. The literature review needs to be significantly improved. Based essentially on one text in the first two subsections [Gurran and Phibbs 2017, which, by the way, is not included in the reference list provided at the end of the study! (https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2016.1249011 ??)] is absolutely unacceptable. All the more so because not only world literature, but also Australian literature, has raised this problem several times.

I have the impression that the work tried to cover many topics, but none of them was properly presented and explored. In my opinion, the rigid separation of fragments about the sharing economy and, above all, local development does not affect the coherent presentation of the topic and the efficient perception of the content. Consequently, the subsection on the theoretical framework in this form seems unnecessary.

2. Generally speaking, the final conclusions and discussion do not provide in-depth knowledge on this topic. The reluctance of the local community, the increase in housing prices and problems with insufficient housing resources were described in this form (maybe apart from the valuable voice in lines 340-346) in the literature. If the topic is to be treated broadly (and this appears to be the case), it is worth mentioning studentification or possibly the difficulties students face when looking for apartments outside the university campus.

3. There is no information in the title, keywords or introduction that the work concerns Margaret River. While this is acceptable in the first two cases, how then can we explain the sentence in line 33? One sentence from verse 38 is not enough. One paragraph motivating the choice of this area seems necessary.

4. To what extent was the influx of people to Margaret River caused by the pandemic and to what extent, as the authors put it in line 452, "pursuiting of traquilly, opulence and magnificence"?

 

(B) Minor:

1. Information from lines 43-45 147-150 requires a source.

2. What is the name of the author mentioned in line 212?

3. Reference list should be checked precisely

Author Response

Kindly find attached the point-to-point response.

 

Thanks

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I have carefully considered and read the manuscript entitled “Housing Challenges in Regions: Short-Term Accommodations, Pricing Dynamics, and Policy Implications” and have the following observations:

This paper needs enough clarity about the main theme of your manuscript. Some issues need more clarifications and improvements to be reconsidered for publication in the social sciences.

In addition to the above, I have some major reservations for the authors to consider before resubmitting the manuscript:

1.     Should update your literature with a few latest studies (like if any studies available in the last three years) on the same region or individual country under discussion especially after COVID-19 happened that will make it more interesting as more individuals face homelessness after house price hikes.

2.     There are a lot of biases involved when doing a survey-based study, on how to tackle these issues there is no discussion provided in the present study which makes all results questionable, such as:

·         Sampling bias – when the sample is not representative of the population

·         Voluntary response bias – the sampling bias that often occurs when the sample is volunteers

·         Self-interest study – bias that can occur when the researchers have an interest in the outcome

·         Response bias – when the responder gives inaccurate responses for any reason

·         Perceived lack of anonymity – when the responder fears giving an honest answer might negatively affect them

·         Loaded questions – when the question wording influences the responses

·         Non-response bias – when people refusing to participate in the study can influence the validity of the outcome

·         Survey weights:  Ideally, the sample should represent the entire target population. However, this is usually not the case in survey data for two reasons.

a.       First is non-response, which may cause some groups to be over- or under-represented.

b.       Second is self-selection which typically relates to an online survey. This arises because not all respondents may have access to the internet.

In the presence of these problems, reliable conclusions cannot be drawn from the analysis of survey data.

3.     Sample size: Even though every sample survey is different, there are no hard and fast rules for determining sample size. The deciding factors are time, cost, operational constraints, and the desired precision of the results. Evaluate and assess each of these issues and you will be in a better position to decide the sample size. Also, consider what should be the acceptable level of error in the sample(Amrgin of error) . If there is one characteristic that is central to fulfilling the survey objectives and there is a lot of variability of this characteristic in the population, the sample size will need to be bigger to obtain the specified level of precision.

4.     The questionnaire is not provided which is an essential part of all that did in the present study: There are key steps that are essential before recommending or finalizing the questionnaire:

·         Instrument design: There is no information about instrument design. Several key steps are required to ensure that each survey question produces relevant information for Nova Scotians and decision-makers.

·         Target Population: There is no information regarding the Target Population?

·         Quality: It is essential to ensure the quality of survey data. These evaluations are based on the few key dimensions of data quality like relevance, accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, interpretability, and coherence. The purpose is to ensure that survey data are reliable and that they meet user needs. One way to do this is by conducting a variety of evaluations. Quality evaluation activities take place throughout the survey process, beginning before data collection and ending after dissemination.

 

5.     There is no information provided for the Area under discussion “ Margaret River region” please provide a Map of the area and some basic information, like trends in population, average income, and house prices over the last 5-10 years to strengthen your argument that why you are doing this study.   

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor English language editing is required

Author Response

Kindly find attached the point-to-point response.

 

Thanks

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Thank you for submitting a revised version of manuscript!

I see that you have done a significant improvement and provided clarification on my questions. After careful evaluation of the new version of your article I have the following suggestions for further improvement:

1. References - There are references that are mentioned in the text but they are not included in your Reference list. For example, references in line 498 Tracy (2019) and in line 503 (Jensen, 2010) are not in the reference list. References in lines 927-928 are in the middle of the text of section 5 without connection to the text. Many references that are present in Reference list are not mentioned in the text. Please check and adjust your references and reference list accordingly.

2. Name of the article should include the name of the place(region, country). Like, for example, "Short-term accommodations and long-term housing challenges: A perspective of population growth and pricing in Margaret river, Australia." Otherwise the context (or geographical location) of your study is not clear for international readers. 

3. Please extend the description of the Margaret River region in section "1. Introduction" with some economic information like, for example, how big is the housing sector, population, rent, price levels in this region. Your study use this region as a case, so it should be described a bit more.

4. In line 394 it should be numbering for subsection name "Research design", like "3.1.Research design".

5. In lines 439 and 443 you mention Appendices in the workshop - but they are not included in your article. Please revise and either include appendices or exclude references to it in the text.

6. In line 552 you mention "Thematic analysis" as method of your research, but you present your results as one common theme in line 652: "4.1. Price dynamics, market forces and availability and affordability of a longer stay". Is it one general theme that your article is focused on or is it several themes? Probably it would be better if you divide your results section text into several themes. Otherwise it looks a bit strange that you have section 4.1 and not section 4.2, 4.3 etc.

7. Line 645 should be renamed to "4. Results and Discussion" or "4. Results and analysis" since you have integration of discussion (or analysis) in the "Results" section.

8. Lines 856-920 Section "5.Discussion" should be about discussion of your results in connection to previous research done in this research area. Like now it looks more like a part of literature review. This section "Dscussion" should be about "major lessons learned" from your study with clear connection to the results of your study. You can either move this text to the "Results" section or revise and expand it that it looks like "Discussion".

9. Please include some sentences or paragraph about "Further research" at the end of section "6. Conclusion".

Best regards,

Reviewer

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We have provided all the necessary information to forge ahead, in our revision, we have adapted most of the recommendations you have provided. 

Kindly see the attached.

Sincerely,

Authors

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for sending the revised version of the manuscript. Compared to the previous version, its consistency and substantive value have improved.

However, two doubts still make me write:

(1) How accurately does the title reflect the content of the manuscript? Please consider including the word "tourism" and its derivatives in the title. Margaret River, as the authors point out, involves both permanent settlement of the area by new residents, having a "second home" there and, above all, short-term rental, the impact of which on the housing market should be emphasized. I am writing all this in relation to the phrase "population growth", which may have a completely different meaning than what this manuscript is about. "Population growth" is a very broad concept.

Therefore, if "tourism" does not fully correspond to the authors' concept, please consider changing the wording "population growth".

 

(2) In my opinion, authors still too often refer to the publication of Gurran&Phibbs 2017. This is especially the case in lines 161-170 (3 times), 192-198 (2 times) and 218-227 (2 times). When reading the manuscript, one sometimes gets the impression that it is the only and most important publication on this subject. I absolutely do not doubt the substantive value of this publication, but are there really no others that are equally important on this topic? As a consequence, there is doubt as to how much the Gurran&Phibbs narrative influenced the concept of the manuscript under review.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We have provided all the necessary information to forge ahead, and in our revision, we have adapted most of the recommendations you have provided. 

Kindly see the attachment.

Sincerely,

Authors

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you very much for addressing all the comments, just the last comment (#5) is not incorporated, please explain that it was left mistakenly  or for any specific reason:

There is no information provided for the Area under discussion “ Margaret River region” please provide a Map of the area and some basic information, like trends in population, average income, and house prices over the last 5-10 years to strengthen your argument that why you are doing this study.   

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We have provided all the necessary information to forge ahead, and in our revision, we have adapted most of the recommendations you have provided. 

Kindly see the attachment.

Sincerely,

Authors

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf