Tourism Crisis Events Affecting Intention towards Forest-Based Health Tourism: A Structural Equation Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you very much for the opportunity to read this text. It is very interesting and, in my opinion, of great scientific value. I have a few minor comments I would like to share with the authors of the manuscript.

 

Specific comments:

If all authors present the same institution, it is not necessary to mention it 3 times

Abstract - please elaborate on the acronym - line 13. It is only in line 96 that we have an explanation of what SOR is. In line 15 - please state when the study was conducted

Introduction;

What is meant by the statement "forest health tourism, as a product of natural geological processes..." line 43 - please elaborate

Line 69 refers to global demographic changes. Please also cite the source which shows that the situation in China is exactly the same as the rest of the world

Literature review;

I have no comments on the literature review. It is a very well-designed text from which the various hypotheses are clear. However, I am not entirely convinced by hypothesis 7. I understand that it is somewhat of a tie-breaker for all the hypotheses. The hypothesis is more like a conclusion than a theorem that needs to be proven. Please consider eliminating this point

Material and methods;

Is it certain that item 22 mentions that the total output value of the Guizhou forest-based health tourism industry will reach 19.657 billion yuan in 2021? Please provide the correct citation source

Results;

I have no comments on the presentation of the collected material and discussion.

Conclusions;

I suggest that in the conclusions of the research, issues not directly arising from the research should be omitted. Lines 502-507 can be omitted without detriment to the article

 

Author Response

Thank you so much for reviewing this article despite your busy schedule. Your comments on this research have been extremely helpful to our team, so we sincerely appreciate your support and encouragement for our research work.

The reply to the reviewer's comments is in the submitted attachment, [ Please see the attachment. ]

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.         My major reservation with the MS is that the findings are both tautological and commonsense; i.e., areas subject to geological disasters will be perceived by people as areas of risk.

a.         Do we really need a study to tell us that, “As the number of natural disasters increases, travelers' perceived risk factors towards destinations also rise, often labeling them as ‘dangerous places’” (lines 64-65) or Hypothesis 1, Tourism crisis events negatively impact the image of forest-based health tourism destinations (line 181)?

2.         This concern is also supported in the concluding statement that, “the study found that geological disasters, as a type of tourism crisis event, can evoke feelings of tension and anxiety among older adults tourists, leading to fears of losing their lives” (lines 496-7). 

a.         If one removes the  tourism context entirely (rendering tourism redundant), the following statement is equally as true, “the study found that geological disasters can evoke feelings of tension and anxiety among older adults, leading to fears of losing their lives.”

3.         Are tourism crisis events dominated more by geological disasters than social (e.g., covid-19) and/or economic (e.g., GFC)? Please substantiate the basis for your assertion.

4.         Perhaps, what is more interesting is the longer-term effect of a crisis event on tourism behaviors – how long after an earthquake, mass shooting, or tsunami, for example, before visitors return? 

5.         The model fit indices are not particularly strong. For example, the primary indices of a CFA (RMSEA, GFI, AGFI) are generally not considered to be significant. 

6.         Some of the narrative in the Results section is rather unusual. For example, the following text (repeated several times, verbatim), while grammatically correct, does not conform to standard publication reporting. Its almost as if its been generated by AI?

a.         “The structural equation path coefficient analysis actively determines the standardized path coefficient of the impact of tourism crisis events on behavioral intention to be -376 0.324, with p<0.05, signifying a noteworthy negative effect.” More typically, one would write something like, “Hypothesis 4, suggesting a positive relationship between X and Y, was supported (coefficient = X, p<.01).”

7.         A mediation effect occurs when a variable accounts for the relation between a predictor ands criterion. For example, the relationship between values (predictor) and behaviors (criterion) might be mediated by attitudes. To test for a mediating effect, there should be (1) a sig relationship between the criterion and the mediator, (2) a sig relationship between the predictor and the mediator, and (3) when the effect of the mediator is controlled, the relationship between the predictor and the criterion should not be significant (and theoretically equal to zero).  Please demonstrate the mediating effect using results of these three tests.

8.         Response rate is determined by excluding the number of nonrespondents, not simply the number of incomplete surveys.

9.         What is an elderly population and how were they selected from the general population (and sample of respondents).

10.   Tables 2 and 5 are identical.

11.   Misspelling of organism  (line 273)

Comments on the Quality of English Language

As above

Author Response

Thank you so much for reviewing this article despite your busy schedule. Your comments on this research have been extremely helpful to our team, so we sincerely appreciate your support and encouragement for our research work.

The reply to the reviewer's comments is in the submitted attachment, [ Please see the attachment. ]

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The work seems to me to be novel, it introduces well the relevance of the study in Guizhou Province and has a correctly applied method. They take care of details such as even specifying the questionnaire, comply with the minimum items to form a factor (>=3), and report good CFA/SEM statistical parameters. The discussion manages to contrast with previous literature.

Given the above, my comments will only appeal to issues of form:

1. they should not use abbreviations in the abstract (SOR).

2. Take care that the dates of citations and references are the same (e.g., line 120: 2023, and reference 41: 2022).

3. Report characterization of results (4.1) in tabular form (lines 323-334).

4. Add a figure "graph panel" with mediation effects.

Author Response

Thank you so much for reviewing this article despite your busy schedule. Your comments on this research have been extremely helpful to our team, so we sincerely appreciate your support and encouragement for our research work.

The reply to the reviewer's comments is in the submitted attachment, [Please see the attachment. ]

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I ask the author(s) to acknowledge the concerns I raised in the review (specifically #1-4) in the manuscript. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The grammar is adequate

Author Response

Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. We really appreciate all your comments. Because the comments have enabled us to improve our work. Attached to this letter is our response to the reviewers' second round of comments. [Please see the attachment.]

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf