The Impact of Airport Physical Environment on Perceived Safety and Domestic Travel Intention of Chinese Passengers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediating Role of Passenger Satisfaction
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I have carefully reviewed the paper entitled "The impact of airport physical environment on perceived safety and domestic travel intention of Chinese passengers during COVID-19: the mediating role of passenger satisfaction”. To start with, I am satisfied that the manuscript contains original material and has the potential to make an interesting contribution in the field. However, before I recommend its publication, the authors should carry out the following minor revisions:
1) The manuscript contains a number of grammatical/syntax errors and I encourage the authors to seek help from a native English speaker to eliminate such mistakes. Also, other small mistakes should be corrected, for example,
In line 364, authors should add ref (Field,2009) to References.
In line 365 delete “Combined reliability” and use only CR abbreviation.
Write References 22 & 62 correctly.
2) The novelty of the manuscript should be highlighted better. What are the key new insights that this paper reports? Likewise, the abstract and conclusions section should be improved.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Here are my comments and observations.
- in line 283 you have a word: "pritical" which I do not understand;
- I appreciate the content of the References list (with 67 titles), which substantially covers the ideas expressed in the Literature review area, but still I can help and recommend a title: Lin, H.-F. (2021), "The mediating role of passenger satisfaction on the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions of low-cost carriers", The TQM Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-06-2021-0187 (this can be a help in terms of your survey items and research variables);
- related to the approach used I have the following comment: In fact, wasn't it necessary to include the mediation model as an integral part of the conceptual model? By reporting, the conceptual model corresponds to the structural model. Figure 2, which defines the construction of the conceptual model, shows practically the path analysis by PLS.
- how were established the items defined in the measurement model? Based on ......?
- I would like to understand better the usefulness of your research; for instance, how are helped the readers in terms of paper findings?
- another issue is related to the paper limitations; I would like to know, besides any other things how/why your study could be considered as relevant if you analysed the case of passengers for domestic flights?
- in addition to the small number of respondents in the sample, consider that taking a list of friends from WeChat, who in turn, turned to another list of friends makes the proposed sample relevant (so without any objective argument for selecting respondents, without anything transmitted randomly to people using various other sources, such as travel companies etc.)?
- also from a conceptual point of view, would you consider adding new hypotheses in the research (taking into account the results obtained and the proposed future directions)?
- Last but not least, I appreciate the authors' concern in providing ideas or elements based on research, but I ask the authors to mention in the Conclusion more clearly and more deeply what is the actual contribution of the authors and what would be the component innovation brought by the study?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is well-structured with a timely subject affecting global transport economics. The methodology is structured with rational hypotheses. Some comments are given to the authors for further amendments.
- The sample is rather small, as also acknowledged by the authors at the discussion and conclusions. However, they have also emphasized on domestic flights. How about international flights and transit flights (either for domestic destinations or not) that might require passengers to spend much more time within the airport facilities. Please make some relevant discussion.
- In respect to the modeling assumptions and sample passengers, the reviewer argues that the authors should do better in explaining the profile of the participants. What is the main aim of the travelling and what is the sensitivity on the pandemic conditions. I would also suggest adding a flowchart in order for the methodology to better communicated.
- The authors are asked to elaborate further on the modeling process in terms of fit and accuracy/validation. In lines 392-393, it is stated that RMS was used to assess the model fit, whereas R2 is more suitable for that (RMS is used to assess model accuracy). Please explain.
- Improve the fonts in Figures 1 and 2.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Your comments are unsatisfactory, treated superficially and without substance from two points of view:
- considering your changes or additions;
- in terms of your responses that are made to my comments; I don't want answers to satisfy my personal ego, I am asking you in order to include your responses in the paper (I don't want to explain me something...!!!)
For instance, to point 2 your response is that my recommendation is that helps!? I can't understand how? My recommendation is related to a very new (updated) article which is related to your topic. To ignore to say anything about this is similar with deny my comments. I do not want you to agree with me, I ask for a critique of this paper or a point of view.
Something similar is with the point 6 and your response. For example you stated in the last idea: We plan to study on internal flights in futur work, and the related discussion is in Conclusion. I am sorry, but I don't understand this?!
At point 7 I maintain my point of view related to the sampling procedure. What you revised still include a note of subjectivity by using list of friends from WeChat (your sample is composed by friends, then friends of your friends and so on...).
To be honest, some of your findings I consider it as being obvious. I am not sure how these results are underline something new, innovative or not revealed till now.
Even though your references list has now 69 titles, there is no highlighting (in a different color) including the new numbering of the titles (of course including the new ones).
There are still spelling errors ...
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1: In line 283 you have a word: "pritical" which I do not understand;
Response 1: It was a spelling mistake. We have corrected it: “Satisfaction not only plays a critical role in travel intention”
Point 2: I appreciate the content of the References list (with 67 titles), which substantially covers the ideas expressed in the Literature review area, but still I can help and recommend a title: Lin, H.-F. (2021), "The mediating role of passenger satisfaction on the relationship between service quality and behavioral intentions of low-cost carriers", The TQM Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-06-2021-0187 (this can be a help in terms of your survey items and research variables);
For instance, to point 2 your response is that my recommendation is that helps!? I can't understand how? My recommendation is related to a very new (updated) article which is related to your topic. To ignore to say anything about this is similar with deny my comments. I do not want you to agree with me, I ask for a critique of this paper or a point of view.
Response 2（updated）: Learning from this study, we added 4.4. Multiple group analysis in the manuscript. Of course, this article was added in the References list.
In regard to frequency of air travel, the respondents were divided into low-experience passengers and high-experience passengers using median split analysis [59, 60]. Passengers who did air travel 1-2 times a year are considered to be low-experience passenger while passengers who take travels 3 or more times a year are considered as high-experience passenger. As for purpose of air travel, respondents were provided with four choices as follows: business trip, vacation, personal or family affairs, student or school related. Passengers falling into the first category are business passengers while passengers falling into the other three categories are considered to be non-business or leisure passengers [61].
After establishing the measurement invariance, the PLS-MGA was used to compare the differences between the two groups [70]. Low-experience group and high-experience group were divided by median split analysis. Table 6 reveals significant differences in the path from facility functionality to perceived safety. Per-ceived safety in low-experience group, not in high-experience group, is positively affected by facility functionality (β = 0.425, p < 0.001). Except for this relationship, all the hypothesized paths show no differences between two groups. The PLS-MGA was also used to identify differences between business passengers and leisure passengers. As shown in table 7, there is no significant difference in the hypothesized relationship between the two groups.
Point 3: Related to the approach used I have the following comment: In fact, wasn't it necessary to include the mediation model as an integral part of the conceptual model? By reporting, the conceptual model corresponds to the structural model. Figure 2, which defines the construction of the conceptual model, shows practically the path analysis by PLS.
Response 3: Thank you for your suggestion. We added the mediation model into the conceptual model, please refer to Figure1.
Point 4: How were established the items defined in the measurement model? Based on ......?
Response 4: The items of the measurement model are based on our work in Literature review and hypotheses development. We sorted out articles in the field of airport physical environment in chronological order, taking the COVID-19 pandemic into account. In this way, we believe the items in the measurement model are representative.
Point 5: I would like to understand better the usefulness of your research; for instance, how are helped the readers in terms of paper findings?
Response 5: We did some revisions in Discussion and Conclusion to highlight the usefulness of this study. And the usefulness of this study was mainly introduced in Theoretical Implications and Practical Implications.
Point 6: Another issue is related to the paper limitations; I would like to know, besides any other things how/why your study could be considered as relevant if you analysed the case of passengers for domestic flights?
For example you stated in the last idea: We plan to study on internal flights in futur work, and the related discussion is in Conclusion. I am sorry, but I don't understand this?
Response 6 (updated): This is a spelling error. It should be “international flights”
As we mentioned in Introduction, we believe that government policies and travel restrictions have different impact on domestic travelers and international travelers during the COVID-19 because China built strict border control regulations and isolation period standards for overseas passengers entering the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Compared to international travel, it’s relatively easier for domestic domestic passengers to make a fly by undergoing temperature check, disinfection and showing health code before boarding. Therefore, this study focuses on Chinese travelers’ domestic travel intention. We plan to study on international flights in future work, and the related discussion is in Conclusion.
Point 7: In addition to the small number of respondents in the sample, consider that taking a list of friends from WeChat, who in turn, turned to another list of friends makes the proposed sample relevant (so without any objective argument for selecting respondents, without anything transmitted randomly to people using various other sources, such as travel companies etc.)?
At point 7 I maintain my point of view related to the sampling procedure. What you revised still include a note of subjectivity by using list of friends from WeChat (your sample is composed by friends, then friends of your friends and so on...).
Response 7 (updated): We admit that the biggest disadvantage of snowball sampling is that the survey object is limited to a group of people with similar thinking attributes, which may cause underrepresentation problems. Therefore, we distributed questionnaires to 200+ respondents who were randomly selected from a online survey firm’s database to revalidate the result. We received 135 valid questionnaires and the new data produced similar results. A total of 398 valid questionnaires (including 263 old questionnaires and 135 new queationnaires) were used for the analysis. Correspondingly, 3.3 .Data collection has been revised as follow.
We collected the data through various channels such as e-mail, WeChat, WeiBo, and other applications of smartphones from October, 2021 to April, 2022. The contact information of respondents was obtained from the social platform and the online survey firm’s database. Over 200 respondents were found in WeChat with snowball method. The snowball method has the advantage of gathering data from a hidden population [58]. In addition, more than 200 respondents were randomly selected from online survey firm’s database, and the respondents were asked to click the URL of the survey questionnaire included in the survey invitation e-mail . All the respondents were asked to evaluate a domestic airport they visited recently. The names of airports the respondents visited and the timetables were also confirmed in the questionnaire to ensure data reliablility. Respondents would be paid for completing the questionnaire.
Point 8: Also from a conceptual point of view, would you consider adding new hypotheses in the research (taking into account the results obtained and the proposed future directions)?
Response 8 (updated): We added multiple group analysis, but the results didn’t show too much differences between groups. So, we consider it to be a supplementary analysis other than a new hypotheses. New hypotheses are under consideration, which relates to differences between domestic and international flights, direct and transfer flights.
Point 9: Last but not least, I appreciate the authors' concern in providing ideas or elements based on research, but I ask the authors to mention in the Conclusion more clearly and more deeply what is the actual contribution of the authors and what would be the component innovation brought by the study?
To be honest, some of your findings I consider it as being obvious. I am not sure how these results are underline something new, innovative or not revealed till now.
Response 9 (updated): We realized that these conclusions may not have been expressed clearly enough in previous manuscripts. We have made improvements to the manuscript, especially in 5.2 Theoretical implications, to more clearly illustrate the contributions and innovations of the conclusions.
- Most previous studies only investigated the effect of physical environment on satisfaction or loyalty and ignored the effect on perceived safety [25, 56]. Thus, this study examines the antecedents and consequences of passengers’ perceived safety in the context of COVID-19.
- Although the some relationships (such as physical environment and passenger satisfaction) have been examined [7, 10, 52], it’s the first time to build a model c overing the influencing mechanisms between airport physical environment, perceived safety, passenger satisfaction, and travel intent in the context of COVID-19.
- Few studies have paid attention to the airports’ physical environment or passengers’ perception under emergency situations such as COVID-19. Different from previous conclusions in study without the context of COVID-19 [10, 12], the study verifies that facility aesthetics does not have significant effect on perceived safety or satiafaction during COVID-19.
- Multi-roup analysis about traveler experience and purpose of travel was added.
Point 10: Even though your references list has now 69 titles, there is no highlighting (in a different color) including the new numbering of the titles (of course including the new ones).
Response 10: Reference: 58, 59, 60, 61, 66, 69, 70 were added.
Point 11: Spelling errors
Response 11: The manuscript has been double-checked. Spelling and grammar mistakes have been fixed.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
I declare the revised version of your paper as satisfactory. Still you need to check the spelling in the last part of the article. Also, respect the formally names for the paper sections, recommended in the Instructions for Authors (for instance, References instead of Uncategorized References). In the same time you have to add the sections: Funding, Acknowledgments (if is the case), Author Contributions, Data Availability Statement, Conflicts of Interest.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
