Past Experience, Motivation, Attitude, and Satisfaction: A Comparison between Locals and Tourists for Taihu Lake International Cherry Blossom Festival

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Assessing tourists and local’s experiences in cherry blossom festivals is meaningful.

1. This article has too many research questions. A typical journal article needs to be focused. It sets three research aims to examine:

1) the similarities and differences in motivations, attitudes, past experience, satisfaction, loyalty and WTP between local residents and tourists using t-tests;

2) the interrelationships between these variables using structural equation modeling (SEM);

3) the stated motivations and benefits using a qualitative analysis.

Please remove the qualitative analysis of motivation and benefits, as it is not necessary for the full picture. Or please reconstruct the paper, and put the qualitative analysis before the quantitative work. The qualitative work helps the researchers to better understand the contextual issues.

2. Please presents the conceptual model of paper, clearly marking the hypotheses and variables in the figure.

3. All the hypotheses should be fully presented.

4. The article asserts that it is one of first articles to analyze the differences between local and non-local tourists. Please justify why it is necessary to benchmark the two groups. Li and Wu’s work (2019) offers an example.

5. In the conclusion and discussion section, a better connection with previous research should be built, rather than sampling repeating your findings.

7. It is inappropriate to disclose the authors information in the literature.

References:

Li, Q., & Wu, M.-Y., (2019). Rationality or morality? A comparative study of pro-environmental intentions of local and nonlocal visitors in nature-based destinations. Journal of Destination Marketing and Management .11, 130-139.

Author Response

Assessing tourists and local’s experiences in cherry blossom festivals is meaningful.

Thanks for your positive comments

1. This article has too many research questions. A typical journal article needs to be focused. It sets three research aims to examine:

1) the similarities and differences in motivations, attitudes, past experience, satisfaction, loyalty and WTP between local residents and tourists using t-tests;

2) the interrelationships between these variables using structural equation modeling (SEM);

3) the stated motivations and benefits using a qualitative analysis.

Please remove the qualitative analysis of motivation and benefits, as it is not necessary for the full picture. Or please reconstruct the paper, and put the qualitative analysis before the quantitative work. The qualitative work helps the researchers to better understand the contextual issues.

Thanks for your insightful and helpful comments and suggestions. We followed your suggestion by putting the qualitative analysis before the quantitative work. Keeping this section of work will allow the reader to know more about motivations and benefits associated with the festival. Moreover, the development of two full measurement scales, one for motivation and one for benefit, can be used in future research. While the three research aims can stand alone, they complement with each other to form a whole picture of people’s attitudes and perceptions of the festival in the city.  

2. Please presents the conceptual model of paper, clearly marking the hypotheses and variables in the figure.

Good call, thanks. We added a conceptual SEM model (see figure 2 in this revision)

3. All the hypotheses should be fully presented.

These hypotheses have been fully presented in Table 8, thanks.

4. The article asserts that it is one of first articles to analyze the differences between local and non-local tourists. Please justify why it is necessary to benchmark the two groups. Li and Wu’s work (2019) offers an example.

We felt that research on festivals in general and cherry blossom festivals in particular that compared locals with tourists are rare [6-8], and locals may perceive the festival differently from tourists as they have exhibited in other tourism-related studies [10-12]. Thanks for the info on Li and Wu’s work, which inspired us to think more about locals and tourists from a theoretical perspective. We have cited Li and Wu’s work, that is [11].

5. In the conclusion and discussion section, a better connection with previous research should be built, rather than sampling repeating your findings.

We made discussions based on previous findings and also added findings from Li and Wu. It is hard to find relevant studies in the literature given the lack of studies on cherry blossoms. We did not change too much at the conclusions section, excepting the following being added:

It is our hope to “cast a brick to attract jade” so that more studies would be conducted of cherry blossoms in the context of China and other parts of the world. For example, a cross-cultural comparison study may be conducted of the two festivals: the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. and the TLICFB because the two festivals share something in common (i.e., a cultural linkage to Japan, each being one of most popular festivals in the world, lots of opportunities to experience various cultural and recreational activities besides viewing the cherry blossoms), but in different cultural contexts.  

7. It is inappropriate to disclose the authors information in the literature.

We deleted this. Thanks.

References: 

Li, Q., & Wu, M.-Y., (2019). Rationality or morality? A comparative study of pro-environmental intentions of local and nonlocal visitors in nature-based destinations. Journal of Destination Marketing and Management .11, 130-139.

Thank you once again for your help!

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors and editor,

Thank you for the opportunity to review the paper entitled ,, Past experience, motivation, attitude, and satisfaction: A comparison between locals and tourists for Taihu lake international cherry blossom festival``. The paper contains a rich amount of data based on a large data collection.

In the Material and method section, justify the choice of the community surveyed.

Is Wuxi City, a specific community? Can the results be applied to other regions?

Finally, more information on the scientific utility of the research could be included.

I found some typos and grammatical errors. English editing is necessary.

Best regards.

Author Response

Thank you for the opportunity to review the paper entitled ,, Past experience, motivation, attitude, and satisfaction: A comparison between locals and tourists for Taihu lake international cherry blossom festival``. The paper contains a rich amount of data based on a large data collection.

In the Material and method section, justify the choice of the community surveyed.

TLICBF was chosen as the study area for this research for three reasons. First, it is the largest and most popular floral festival of its kind in China, and also one of three top locations to view cherry blossoms in the world. Second, as with the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C., TLICBF also has its root in Japan or in other words, the festival has an international connotation even it is held in a China city. Third, the festival offers different cultural and recreational activities more than just viewing cherry blossoms. This diversity of activities makes it meaningful to examine motivations, benefits and other variables in SEMs.

Is Wuxi City, a specific community? Can the results be applied to other regions?

We added one research limitation toward end of this manuscript as follows:

Third, the generalizability of this study's findings may be limited and may not be applicable to other cities in China or other types of festivals because this study was carried out in only a single city in the country.  

Finally, more information on the scientific utility of the research could be included.

We added more in the conclusion section:

It is our hope to “cast a brick to attract jade” so that more studies would be conducted of cherry blossoms in the context of China and other parts of the world. For example, a cross-cultural comparison study may be conducted of the two festivals: the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington D.C. and the TLICFB because the two festivals share something in common (i.e., a cultural linkage to Japan, each being one of most popular festivals in the world, lots of opportunities to experience various cultural and recreational activities besides viewing the cherry blossoms), but in different cultural contexts. 

I found some typos and grammatical errors. English editing is necessary.

We have corrected those typos and grammatical errors. We will continue to improve when it is time for proofreading.

Best regards.

Thank you very much for your positive and insightful comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc