Tourists’ Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Biodiversity, Concession Activity and Recreational Management in Wuyishan National Park in China: A Choice Experiment Method
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors
I find your manuscript interesting and of high interest for scientific society, still there are some things that must be improved.
Abstract. You should mentioned comparison of models used in your paper, it is interested part of your work and should find the place there.
One important part, you should explain term "construction of national park" or find more appropriate term as this is not clear what is to construct.
Part 2. Literature review and hypotheses are bit long and lately you never mention the hypotheses so this should be in line with the results or left out. And those hypotheses are not new, and have been tested by other authors. Maybe is better to focused on those parts of your work which are original.
2. Research Method should consist part which will explain used methods and later constructed models. What is they purpose etc.
Term political dimension is also not very clear, consider use policy dimension in stead throughout the paper.
Table 2. Knowledge about the park - consider change of 1-Not know with not aware ; 2-much less known with of slightly aware; 3-less known with moderately aware; 4-known with aware and 5 with very familiar. And be consistent with those chosen terms in whole manuscript.
For example lines 467-469 - should be consisted with table 2.s
Line 671 - consider change tourist samples with tourist sample size
5. Conclusion and suggestions
As you in result parts comment all the results I would recommend to skip second paragraph in part 5 as this is repetition of already presented results. Other part can remain the same.
I hope that you will find this comments useful.
Kind regards
Comments on the Quality of English Language
I can not comment on the language but some terms should be changed to improve manuscript.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper aims to explore tourists' preference for different recreational attributes in national parks and the sources of heterogeneity in preference, based on a discrete choice experiment method and a mixed logit model, estimating tourists' willingness to pay for each attribute. Despite its interesting methodology and practical implications, there are several issues which need to be addressed, in order to make it suitable for publication:
1. Authors should shortly mention the implications of their study within the abstract.
2. In the introduction, the authors mention ecological tourism without previously defining this form of tourism.
3. On line 81 the authors have used an unnecessary cap lock “In”.
4. The gap in the specific literature was not identified in the introduction. Moreover, the objectives of this study should be highlighted in the first section of the paper.
5. In line 162, the authors mention the existing literature without citing the specific references.
6. In section 3.1., the authors mention Lancaster without citing this scholar (lines 261-262).
7. It would be necessary to include a graphical representation of the empirical model.
8. The hypotheses have not been tested, the reader cannot find out whether they were confirmed or not, based on data analysis and processing.
9. The discussion of the main outcomes needs to be improved, and maybe included in a separate section.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
English needs to be revised. There are many unusual or incomprehensible terms in the text. It looks like it was an automatic translation with an incomplete edition.
The manuscript can be an interesting addition to the journal if it reaches out to an international audience. Although a literature review is included, the results and conclusions should be discussed considering the experiences around the world otherwise this study has a limited interest. In short, why an international reader will want to read this study is they cannot correlate to its findings?
In general, the manuscript is very wordy and should be reduced considerably. As an example, Introduction and Literature review should be combined. It is a standard practice to include the essential literature right in the first paragraphs of the Introduction after which authors present their case. The current Introduction could be reduced to one paragraph mentioning the need to understand users’ willingness to pay for entrance fees in face of a new protected area system in China. The long list of government reports and council statements do not add to the understanding of the topic and make the reading flow tedious. Policies should be cited (and legislation referenced) but references to political statements, political parties and not science-focused sentences should be removed.
Conclusions should discuss the lessons learned in relation to a broader discussion. What this study can contribute to the field? What people around the world can learn from this study?
Currency should be accompanied by a international equivalent such as US$ or EU$.
Include full descriptions for tables and figures, e.g. table 5: it does not say that there are attributes in the table, their types; does not say what CLM, MLM, N, ASC etc mean.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
English must be revised as it seems that an automatic translation was used.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper is improved and can be considered for publication.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAuthors did a good job improving the manuscript based on reviewers' suggestions.
Please check English as the text included has some minor errors.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMinor errors should be fixed.
