Is Southern Xinjiang Really Unsafe?

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for letting me read this manuscript on perceived safety, destination image and behavioral intentiont to travel to Southern Xinjiang. 

The manuscript is well structured, well written and based on an extensitive international and relevant literature.

Some suggestions to improve the paper:

- consider choosing a more eye-catching title, the title in its current form is too long and repeats the constructs used in the research

- in the introduction on p. 2, l. 15 you state "violent terrorist incidents resulted in the negative growth". How can growth be negative? and it is clear that terrorist incidents are violent, no need to reinforce it. L. 23 you write "However, tourists who actually visited Southern Xinjian..." at this point it is not clear whether you speak about domestic Chinese tourists or foreign tourists. Later, I understand who you speak about, but I would add information also to l. 23.

- the literature review is clear and well constructed, all concepts (perceived safety, image, trust etc.) are explained and hypothesis-formulation is valid.

- methodology: you describe the study area but in this description you repeat the several information. Please revise this part and eliminate repetitions (unique landscape etc. ) you also say that "Southern Xinjiang has always been considered unsafe." By who? Always? later you say that "people are still shocked by safety issues". People are certainly not shocked by "issues", but by past incidents or attacks. What do you mean by being "shocked"?

- questionnaire design: l. 10 you say "The practical situation of Southern Xinjiang...." what do you mean by "practical situation"?

- sampling: the last paragraph starting with "The specific compositions of the samples..." is the textual description of table 1. I suggest eliminating the descriptive part, we can see data in the table.

- discussion and conclusions: in this section you refer to two theories (trust asymmetry theory, attribution theory) but these are not explained in the theoretical background. In the last paragraph of 5.1 you argue that the government should focus on the value of tourism resources and reduce safety slogans. This recalled the example of Egypt in me, Egypt has strongly invested in reinforcing its image among international tourists after the numerous terrorist attacks against tourists. The rebranding strategy based on changing name of the destination to rebuild tourists trust. For about two decades no advertisment used the name "Egypt" but "Sharm-el-Sheik". What are your concrete suggestions to practitioners or decision makers to market Southern Xinjiang? This question is linked to my next query: what do you mean by "adopting effective measures" in the last sentence  in paragraph 5.3?

I hope my suggestions help to improve your work.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable comments! We have carefully studied the comments and tried our best to revise the manuscript. Modifications are marked in blue font. The point to point responds are listed as follows:

Comment 1: The manuscript is well structured, well written and based on an extensive international and relevant literature.

Response: Thank you very much for your appreciation.

Some suggestions to improve the paper:

Comment 2:- consider choosing a more eye-catching title, the title in its current form is too long and repeats the constructs used in the research

Response: We changed the title as “Is Southern Xinjiang Really Unsafe?”

Comment 3:- in the introduction on p. 2, l. 15 you state "violent terrorist incidents resulted in the negative growth". How can growth be negative? and it is clear that terrorist incidents are violent, no need to reinforce it. L. 23 you write "However, tourists who actually visited Southern Xinjian..." at this point it is not clear whether you speak about domestic Chinese tourists or foreign tourists. Later, I understand who you speak about, but I would add information also to l. 23.

Response: we used the word “decline” to substitute “negative growth” and deleted the word “violent” to avoid ambiguity. Meanwhile, we revised the sentence “However, tourists who actually visited Southern Xinjian..."”  as  “However, tourists from other regions of China who actually visited Southern Xinjiang give a generally positive evaluation of its safety”.

Comment 4:- the literature review is clear and well constructed, all concepts (perceived safety, image, trust etc.) are explained and hypothesis-formulation is valid.

Response: Thank you very much for your appreciation.

Comment 5:- methodology: you describe the study area but in this description you repeat the several information. Please revise this part and eliminate repetitions (unique landscape etc. ) you also say that "Southern Xinjiang has always been considered unsafe." By who? Always? later you say that "people are still shocked by safety issues". People are certainly not shocked by "issues", but by past incidents or attacks. What do you mean by being "shocked"?

Response: we deleted several repetitive sentences. Meanwhile, we changed the following sentence as “Southern Xinjiang has always been considered unsafe by tourists from other regions of China.” Additionally, we changed the sentence "people are still shocked by safety issues" as "people from other regions are still worried about the safety situation in Southern Xinjiang."

Comment 6:- questionnaire design: l. 10 you say "The practical situation of Southern Xinjiang...." what do you mean by "practical situation"?

Response: there are two sentence including “practical situation”. We change the first sentence as “the questionnaire was modified according to their feedback ”. We want to use the second “practical situation” to express “the real safety situation”. To be more accurate, we changed the sentence as “The real safety situation of Southern Xinjiang was preliminarily determined.”

Comment 7:-- sampling: the last paragraph starting with "The specific compositions of the samples..." is the textual description of table 1. I suggest eliminating the descriptive part, we can see data in the table.

Response: we deleted the description part.

Comment 8:-- discussion and conclusions: in this section you refer to two theories (trust asymmetry theory, attribution theory) but these are not explained in the theoretical background. In the last paragraph of 5.1 you argue that the government should focus on the value of tourism resources and reduce safety slogans. This recalled the example of Egypt in me, Egypt has strongly invested in reinforcing its image among international tourists after the numerous terrorist attacks against tourists. The rebranding strategy based on changing name of the destination to rebuild tourists trust. For about two decades no advertisment used the name "Egypt" but "Sharm-el-Sheik". What are your concrete suggestions to practitioners or decision makers to market Southern Xinjiang? This question is linked to my next query: what do you mean by "adopting effective measures" in the last sentence in paragraph 5.3?

Response: we did not know the two theories when we proposed hypotheses. We tried to use the two theories (trust asymmetry theory, attribution theory) to explain the paradox of safety perception which is contradictory with previous theories. Hence, we think it may be not necessary to explain the two theories in the theoretical background. We will supplement it if you think it matters. Additionally, several suggestions were supplemented in the section 6.3.

Comment 9:-I hope my suggestions help to improve your work.

Response: Thank you again for your enlightening suggestions!

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity of reviewing this article. It approaches a topic of interest and the article is well organized and well written. I have 2 suggestions to improve the quality and readability of the article. First, authors could consider to choose a title which be more suggestive and maybe shorter. Second, I suggest to split the Discussions and Conclusion part into 2 separate sections, and the final part should include Conclusions and implications, Both theoretical and practical implications, as well as limitations of the study and further research should be included. Good luck!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable comments! We have carefully studied the comments and tried our best to revise the manuscript. Modifications are marked in blue font. The point to point responds are listed as follows:

Comment 1: Thank you for the opportunity of reviewing this article. It approaches a topic of interest and the article is well organized and well written.

Response: Thank you very much for your appreciation.

Comment 2: I have 2 suggestions to improve the quality and readability of the article. First, authors could consider to choose a title which be more suggestive and maybe shorter.

Response: We changed the title as “Is Southern Xinjiang Really Unsafe?”

 Comment 3: Second, I suggest to split the Discussions and Conclusion part into 2 separate sections, and the final part should include Conclusions and implications. Both theoretical and practical implications, as well as limitations of the study and further research should be included. Good luck!

Response: we added all these parts in this paper. Thank you again for your enlightening suggestions!