The Role of Sustainable Restaurant Practices in City Branding: The Case of Athens

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

First of all, I pay my respects to your hard work. Thank you for giving me a chance to review.

1.It is judged that this study needs to be revised and supplemented as follows.

2.    3.2 In Food and City Branding, previous studies on the relationship between Food Branding and Environmental Practices, Sustainability Mindfulness, Environmental Friendliness, Food locality and Seasonality are needed.

3.This study is confusing because the hypothesis setting is missing.

4.A description and table of one-sample t-test are needed.

5.The explanation of what hypothesis testing was used in data analysis is omitted. Some readers may wonder that the hypothesis was tested using linear regression analysis without using structural equation model analysis, so explanation is needed.

6.I wonder why EFA excluded food branding.

7.A table of discrimination validity and a detailed description of it are required. In particular, it seems necessary for readers to suggest whether the correlation between variables is significant.

8.In Figure 1, food branding does not have a statistical effect on Environmental Parctices and needs to be corrected.

More importantly, Figure 1 shows the influence of food branding on Environmental Pactices, Sustainability Mindfulness, Enviornmental Friendliness, Food locality and Seasonality. However, in 5.4 sturctural model, the opposite interpretation is made. If so, shouldn't the direction of the arrows be reversed? It is difficult to understand logically.

Finally, you need to highlight more theoretical implications for the results of this study.

Author Response

The authors are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. The present letter is concerning the changes made in our manuscript as a response to the reviewers' comments.

• As far as the comment about the previous studies that are needed between the relationship of Sustainability approach factors and City Food Branding, additional studies were added in chapter 2.3 (lines 205 – 259). To our knowledge this is the first time that those factors are revealed in the literature. Usually all the items we used in our study are included in the broader notion of the restaurant's sustainability approach, which is related to the food and city branding. For this reason, we used previous studies similar to the idea of the factors that were revealed in our analysis.
• In chapter 2.2 (lines 193 – 203), we have added our research questions, and in chapter 2.3 (lines 257 & 258), our hypothesis has been formulated as requested by our reviewers, so our research is not confusing the readers.
• All the above changes led to a revision of the chapters in the theoretical framework of the study so that it is better understood by the readers (lines 25 – 259).
• In chapter 3.3, major changes were made after the valuable comments of reviews. Specifically, in line 293, the principal component analysis was changed to exploratory factor analysis (we used participle axis analysis), and in lines 297 – 302 we mention the reasons we used these methodological steps. Our items for each construct we taken by previous studies. This methodology change result to some modifications on the loading of the items in each factor. No item changed factor (Table 5). City Food Branding construct is a well-defined construct in the literature, and for this reason, we excluded it by the EFA. Our aim was to examine the relationship between the factors that were revealed by the EFA and the well-defined construct of City Food Branding (Hypothesis 1 line 257 - 258).
• Table 3 (line 312) in chapter 4.1 refers to the one-sample t-test (test value = 4) that is requested. The table shows the one-sample t-test results for the three restaurant qualities (interior elements, service quality, and food quality) we examined. One more column was added that shows the significance (sig.) for each item that was emerged from the one-sample t-test results. Lines 314 – 319 describe the findings, and lines 320 – 326 connect our findings with previous studies according to our research questions (lines 193-203).
• In Table 6 (lines 376 – 377) was added the Discriminant Validity Index as requested. In lines 378 – 386, descriptions of the results were added so readers could understand the correlation between variables.
• In Figure 1, arrows were inadvertently drawn incorrectly and corrected. Table 7 was also added and referred to the results of structural model analysis (paths) per factor (lines 402-410).
• Chapter 6 was changed. Lines 493 – 521 refer to our study's theoretical contribution, and lines 522 – 581 refer to our research's practical implication as was requested for rewire

Reviewer 2 Report

My recommendation is that the paper should be accepted with no corrections in the current state. It brings new original ideas and opinions on the topic.

Author Response

The authors are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. 

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review your manuscript “The Role of Sustainable Restaurant Practices in City Branding: The case of Athens”. I think you are studying an important topic, which can help society and food organizations to become more sustainable and resilient after Covid-19 pandemic.

The actual contribution of your paper is very clear, as well as the connection between your data and findings.

Given that the research was carried out in an exceptional historical period for Greece and for the whole world due to pandemics, it would be appropriate to deepen your paper with some comparative data in the same period. For example, it could be useful to provide with a review of international tourism features and in particular in the Mediterranean area (Greece, Italy, Turkey, Spain) during the summer of 2020, with particular reference to the catering and hospitality sector for international tourists, providing an overview of the studies that have already attempted to do the same or similar approach.

Still, considering that your paper  aspires to assess the impact of a policy after the end of pandemics, you should provide a more scrupulous international review of the literature on hospitality management during Covid-19. This perspective might be helpful to better frame the aim of your study.

Author Response

The authors are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. 8 The present letter is concerning the changes made in our manuscript as a response to the 9 reviewers' comments.

 As far as the reviewer’s comment that:  “it would be appropriate to deepen your paper with some comparative data in the same period. For example, it could be useful to provide with a review of international tourism features and in particular in the Mediterranean area (Greece, Italy, Turkey, Spain) during the summer of 2020, with particular reference to the catering and hospitality sector for international tourists, providing an overview of the studies that have already attempted to do the same or similar approach”, we have added an explanatory section in chapter 2.1 (lines 90 –118) as “International tourism data during Covid-19, pandemic” that covers the valuable suggestion the reviewer made. Table 1 explains the effects of the pandemic on four major Mediterranean destinations. Regarding the suggestion that we “should provide a more scrupulous international review of the literature on hospitality management during Covid-19”, the authors added a list of the relevant studies conducted recently (in 2020) presenting focus of research in chapter 2.1 (lines 119 – 145).

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I salute the scholars.

This study has become more valuable than I expected.

I look forward to the next study.

Author Response

Please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf