The Spatial Pattern and Spillover Effect of the Eco-Efficiency of Regional Tourism from the Perspective of Green Development: An Empirical Study in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The original paper entitle:'The spatial pattern and spillover effect of the eco-efficiency of regional tourism from the perspective of green development: An empirical study in China' that aims to highlight the spatial pattern and spillover effect of eco-efficiency of tourism using the spatial autocorrelation model and the spatial econometric model. In this very intresting paper wo problems need to be solved. One is to measure the eco-efficiency of provincial tourism, and the other one is to identify the key factors influencing the eco-efficiency of tourism from the perspective of space, to promote the sustainable development of tourism.
The paper is very well written and logically organized. The methodological analysis is properly done and the results explain very well the work objective. and the conclusions are correctly presented. I find the topic interesting and suggest to accept this paper in its presemnt form.
The only correction I sugget to the authors to make is join the word tour-ism in the 3rd line of the absract
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Many thanks for providing constructive comments and suggestions for the manuscript entitled “The spatial pattern and spillover effect of the eco-efficiency of regional tourism from the perspective of green development: An empirical study in China” (ID: forests-1823957). The authors have studied these comments and suggestions carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly. To facilitate reading and review of reviewers, the revisions have been marked in red. The revisions are listed as follows:
Comment: The only correction I sugget to the authors to make is join the word tour-ism in the 3rd line of the abstract.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for their valuable suggestion. After double check, the authors have found a typo “tour-ism” in the Abstract and corrected it as “tourism”. The revision has been made and marked in red in the 15th line of the revised manuscript.
Please see the attachment.
The above is our revision of the paper. Thank you again for your valuable opinions on our paper, and wish you a smooth work!
All authors
August 12, 2022
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for this research. Is a valuable topic. This paper, needs some refinement as follows:
The need and significance of the research needs to be more clearly articulated in the abstract and introduction.
This paper is missing a literature review. Literature were cited in the introduction but only identifying what studies have been performed to date, no results from those studies were identified.
Lines 38 and 39: attitudes toward consumption are not new; this has not occurred in the “recent years.”
Line 42, 46, 47, et. al. English is awkward. A lot of misplaced articles (i.e., a, the).
Line 51: cannot “capture forestry.” Awkward.
Line 56 et. al.: Need to capitalize pronouns.
Eco-efficiency is described well; yet it is not described in the context of tourism. Also, spatial spillover effect of tourism is not defined.
Line 94 and 95 describe a different study than what is presented. It describes sustainable development as the purpose where tourism eco-efficiency is the purpose.
The social outputs from eco-efficiency of tourism are missing from the Index. Based on the definition of eco-efficiency used in the study (line 56), this should be included or specified why not. In addition, line 202 mentions “society” as an output of tourism eco-efficiency, yet this is not addressed in the index. Also, environmental outputs (desirable) are missing.
Line 256, what is the “advanced level of the world?”
From the way the results are presented, it is not possible to decipher which inputs or outputs are impacting the evaluation results. This should be identifiable and discussed in the findings to be able to identify implications of the research.
I see a lot of math as well as great understanding of formulas and calculation results, but no articulation for how the math addresses the need for the research, the research questions, or implications for application and future research.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Many thanks for providing constructive comments and suggestions for the manuscript entitled “The spatial pattern and spillover effect of the eco-efficiency of regional tourism from the perspective of green development: An empirical study in China” (ID: forests-1823957). The authors have studied these comments and suggestions carefully and revised the manuscript accordingly. To facilitate reading and review of reviewers, the revisions have been marked in red. The revisions are listed as follows:
Comment 1: The need and significance of the research needs to be more clearly articulated in the abstract and introduction.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. The necessity and significance of the research have been teased in the Abstract and Introduction of the revised manuscript and clarified in relevant sections. The revision has been made and marked in red in lines 13 to 15 and lines 51 to 58 of the revised manuscript.
Comment 2: This paper is missing a literature review. Literature were cited in the introduction but only identifying what studies have been performed to date, no results from those studies were identified.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. Before submitting the manuscript to Forests, the authors had carefully studied the submission guidelines and manuscript template. Because the literature review is not organized as a separate section in the template but placed in the Introduction, literature review was not arranged as a sperate section in the original manuscript. In the revised manuscript, the authors not only have arranged literature review as a sperate section (Section 2: Literature review) as suggested by the reviewer, but also enriched the content of literature review. The revision has been made and marked in red in the 59th line of the revised manuscript.
Comment 3: Lines 38 and 39: attitudes toward consumption are not new; this has not occurred in the “recent years”.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. The authors have read the Report on Development Status of China’s Tourism released by relevant governmental departments again and corrected the first sentence in the Introduction on this basis. The revision has been made and marked in red in lines 37 to 38 of the revised manuscript.
Comment 4: Line 42, 46, 47, et. al. English is awkward. A lot of misplaced articles (i.e., a, the).
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. Grammatical mistakes in the 42th, 46th, and 47th lines of the manuscript have been corrected. The authors have read the whole manuscript, checked and corrected grammatical mistakes. The revision has been made and marked in red in the 40th, 41th, 45th, 60th et al. lines of the revised manuscript.
Comment 5: Line 51: cannot “capture forestry.” Awkward.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. The authors have checked sentences in the paragraph and rewritten the sentence. The revision has been made and marked in red in the 49th line the revised manuscript.
Comment 6: Line 56 et. al.: Need to capitalize pronouns.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. The author capitalizes the names of people and other words in the corresponding positions of the paper, and checks and modifies the similar problems in the paper. The revision has been made and marked in red in the 60th line of the revised manuscript.
Comment 7: Eco-efficiency is described well; yet it is not described in the context of tourism. Also, spatial spillover effect of tourism is not defined.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. The authors have supplemented the description of the eco-efficiency of tourism in lines 63 to 76 of the revised manuscript, as marked in red. To be specific, existing relevant research on eco-efficiency of various industries (e.g. tourism and industry) uses basic ideas and methods that inherit the theory and technology of the traditional natural eco-efficiency. In research on the eco-efficiency of tourism, scholars not only need to consider the economic and social benefits of tourism, but also should take the environmental influences (environmental benefits) of tourism into account. Therefore, the smaller the environmental influences of tourism are, the higher the eco-efficiency of tourism under fixed economic and social benefits of tourism. Therefore, the eco-efficiency of tourism can be used as a strategic tool for evaluating sustainable development of regional tourism.
In addition, the authors have supplemented the definition for the spatial spillover effect of eco-efficiency of tourism in lines 213 to 220 of the revised manuscript, as marked in red. The spatial spillover effect means that the economic and social activities in a certain area exert the externality effect on the same economic and social activities in surrounding areas. The externality effect can drive improvement of the production and technological levels in adjacent areas, thus constantly strengthening the clustering process. The research uses the spatial econometric model to discuss the spatial spillover effect of the eco-efficiency of provincial tourism in China.
Comment 8: Line 94 and 95 describe a different study than what is presented. It describes sustainable development as the purpose where tourism eco-efficiency is the purpose.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. In view of this suggestion, the authors have re-summarized existing relevant studies in the literature review and carefully corrected sentences. The revision has been made and marked in red in lines 124 to 129 of the revised manuscript.
Comment 9: The social outputs from eco-efficiency of tourism are missing from the Index. Based on the definition of eco-efficiency used in the study (line 56), this should be included or specified why not. In addition, line 202 mentions “society” as an output of tourism eco-efficiency, yet this is not addressed in the index. Also, environmental outputs (desirable) are missing.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. The following has been provided in the literature review: for the eco-efficiency of tourism, not only the economic and social benefits of tourism but also environmental influences (ecological benefits) need to be considered. Therefore, three dimensions (economy, society, and ecological environment) are taken into account when selecting the evaluation index system for eco-efficiency of tourism. For desirable outputs, tourism is a special service industry that has recreational functions to promote cultural exchange and relieve life pressure, the implementation degree of which can be directly reflected by the number of tourist arrivals. Therefore, the number of tourist arrivals is selected to measure the social benefit of tourism on the basis of referring to previous relevant research [1]. For the environmental outputs, the tourism development may increase the load on regional ecological environment and exert adverse effects, and key evaluation indicators are generally chosen when assessing the performance. In addition, existing relevant research also shows that the CO2 emission of tourism can effectively measure the influences of tourism on the regional ecological environment [2]. Therefore, the research selects the CO2 emission of tourism as the undesirable output to characterize influences of tourism on regional ecological environment. The revision has been made and marked in red in lines 256 to 263 of the revised manuscript.
Comment 10: Line 256, what is the “advanced level of the world?”
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. The “world advanced level” was an inappropriate expression. Here, what the authors intended to express is: in the nationwide, the average annual eco-efficiency of tourism fluctuates around 0.534, not reaching EDA efficient. The revision has been made and marked in red in lines 320 to 322 of the revised manuscript.
Comment 11: From the way the results are presented, it is not possible to decipher which inputs or outputs are impacting the evaluation results. This should be identifiable and discussed in the findings to be able to identify implications of the research.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. The author has tested the correlation between input and output in section 3.4.1 of the revised manuscript, and discussed the impact of input and output on the evaluation results in section 4.1.2 of the revised manuscript. The revision has been made and marked in red in lines 277 to 290 and lines 335 to 366 of the revised manuscript.
Comment 12: I see a lot of math as well as great understanding of formulas and calculation results, but no articulation for how the math addresses the need for the research, the research questions, or implications for application and future research.
Revision: Thanks to the reviewer for this valuable suggestion. Evaluating the eco-efficiency of regional tourism is not only of theoretical significance but also of practical significance. To be specific, tourism including the forest tourism and urban tourism in various countries in the world including China has upgraded from the previous extensive development to the lean, high-quality development stage. Therefore, either matter local governments or management companies of tourist attractions urgently hope to dynamically master the development efficiency and eco-efficiency of regional tourism. To this end, scholars from various countries have carried out a slew of fruitful studies on the problem [1-4]. As mentioned by the reviewer, the research uses numerous mathematical models to carry out relevant work. This aims to solve the limitation that previous research is only limited to qualitative analysis (questionnaires for instance) while fails to deeply reveal what are key influencing factors for eco-efficiency of tourism. For this purpose, the research combines advanced analysis methods including DEA, Moran’s index, spatial Dubin model (SDM), and correlation analysis. This also explains why the authors use numerous mathematical formulas. Many thanks for the valuable suggestions of the reviewer. The authors have added some sentences in paragraphs with mathematical formulas to explain why these mathematical models are adopted.
[1] Yin P, Chu J, Wu J, et al. A DEA-based two-stage network approach for hotel performance analysis: An internal cooperation perspective[J]. Omega, 2020, 93: 102035.
[2] Ning Y, Liu Z, Ning Z, et al. Measuring eco-efficiency of state-owned forestry enterprises in northeast China[J]. Forests, 2018, 9(8): 455.
[3] Lado-Sestayo R, Fernández-Castro Á S. The impact of tourist destination on hotel efficiency: A data envelopment analysis approach[J]. European Journal of Operational Research, 2019, 272(2): 674-686.
Please see the attachment.
The above is our revision of the paper. Thank you again for your valuable opinions on our paper, and wish you a smooth work!
All authors
August 12, 2022
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Deeply value the edits made to this paper. You have developed a robust stream of work.
