Pinpointing the Barriers to Recycling at Destination
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the paper is very well chosen and important for researchers and practitioners in the field of tourism. review of the literature is well presented and the hypotheses are properly grounded in theory. The research conducted can be useful source of insights on the topic and have important implications for practitioners and researchers in the field.
That being said, there are some minor suggestions regarding theoretical part of the paper, but also much more important and severe issues regarding the methodology, methods and presentation of research results, that need to be addressed by the authors in order to ensure the scientific soundness and clarity. The issues and suggestions will be presented in the order they appear in the manuscript:
- authors should reconsider the use of term visitor and perhaps replace it with the term tourist throughout the text, especially because they were actually surveying tourists in Gran Canaria (those who stay one or more nights in accomodation) and not visitors
- In hypothesis H3c it is not completely clear and understandable what authors mean by the term "accommodation branch type"
- in section 2. Materials and Methods, authors should provide more information on the location/destination where empirical research was conducted. Is it more urban or rural destination? What type of accommodation facilities prevail in that area, what are the main attractions/motives for visiting particular destination, is it more seasonal or year-round destination, etc. Also, the average year number of arrivals and overnights would also be helpful in gaining the insight into the destination profile and also might be useful for future comparisons.
- every serious presentation of results of empirical research that was conducted using surveys, starts with the presentation of socio-demographic profile of the respondents. It has to be added in this paper as well.
- In presenting results of the exploratory factor analysis, values of communalities for each statement should also be added in the table
- VERY IMPORTANT: when ANOVA test reveals statistically significant difference, it should be accompanied with post hoc test. Post hoc tests reveal where identified differences lie (between which groups), and only after those tests adequate scientific conclusions and decision on hypothesis can be made
- Also, when conducting ANOVA on age groups, appartment organisation and appartment location, it is unclear how those groups are formed, but adequate table of socio-demographic profile of respondents at the beginning of the Results would solve that problem.
Finally, it is important to emphasise that the proper procedure of ANOVA should be respected in order for this paper to satisfy scientific standards of quality international scientific journal like Sustainability, and most of the conclusions related to the hypothesis that are being verified/declined based on ANOVA results will probably also have to be adequately adapted in order to give more clear and structured information based on the results.
Author Response
Dear Editor,
We thank the two reviewers for their constructive and critical comments to enhance the quality of the manuscript. Their comments have helped improve the quality of the paper significantly. I hope I addressed the reviewers’ concerns and incorporated their suggestions into our revision satisfactorily. Our detailed responses to each reviewer are provided below. These changes are also highlighted in the manuscript in yellow text.
Response to reviewer 1
Firstly, we would like to thank for your review and comments and for considering that we deal with an interesting topic, can be a source of insight and have important implications. We also feel grateful for stating that the review of the literature is well presented and the hypotheses are grounded. Last and not least, we would like to express our gratitude for the opportunity to revise the paper following the pointers given to us. Please find our response to the comments in the table below.
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COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR AUTHORS |
RESPONSE |
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authors should reconsider the use of term visitor and perhaps replace it with the term tourist throughout the text, especially because they were surveying tourists in Gran Canaria (those who stay one or more nights in accommodation) and not visitors |
Thank you. In the revised version the term visitor is replaced by the term tourist |
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In hypothesis H3c it is not completely clear and understandable what authors mean by the term "accommodation branch type" |
You are right, it was not clear. “Accommodation branch type” has been replaced by “accommodation brand type” to distinguish between independent versus chain brand accommodation. |
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in section 2. Materials and Methods, authors should provide more information on the location/destination where empirical research was conducted. Is it more urban or rural destination? What type of accommodation facilities prevail in that area, what are the main attractions/motives for visiting particular destination, is it more seasonal or year-round destination, etc. Also, the average year number of arrivals and overnights would also be helpful in gaining the insight into the destination profile and also might be useful for future comparisons. |
To clarify the context of the survey, we have provided the reader with more information about the destination as regards tourists, accommodation, motive and attraction and so on. In this sense, the Materials and Methods section, in the revised version, already includes more information about this particular destination. As a consequence, we have added new bibliographical references. |
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every serious presentation of results of empirical research that was conducted using surveys, starts with the presentation of socio-demographic profile of the respondents. It has to be added in this paper as well. |
A detailed description of the profile of the respondents has been added in table 1 in the method section. In this way, it is much better presented. |
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In presenting results of the exploratory factor analysis, values of communalities for each statement should also be added in the table |
The values have been added. In this way, it is more transparent. |
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VERY IMPORTANT: when ANOVA test reveals statistically significant difference, it should be accompanied with post hoc test. Post hoc tests reveal where identified differences lie (between which groups), and only after those tests adequate scientific conclusions and decision on hypothesis can be made |
Thank you for this point. The post hoc tests have been performed and it is laid out in tables 4, 5 & 7 because, for these cases, Tukey tests were significant. Table 6 does not show it because Tukey test was not significant. |
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Also, when conducting ANOVA on age groups, apartment organisation and apartment location, it is unclear how those groups are formed, but adequate table of socio-demographic profile of respondents at the beginning of the Results would solve that problem. |
This table has been placed in the methods section so that it is more clear how these groups are formed. |
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Finally, it is important to emphasise that the proper procedure of ANOVA should be respected in order for this paper to satisfy scientific standards of quality international scientific journal like Sustainability, and most of the conclusions related to the hypothesis that are being verified/declined based on ANOVA results will probably also have to be adequately adapted in order to give more clear and structured information based on the results. |
Thank you. The procedure of Anova has been strengthened by checking the normality and homoscedasticity of all the populations. As there is not normality at the independent group’s level, it has been acknowledged as a limitation at the end of the paper. It is worth recognising, that the groups' sizes of the independent variables are not similar either since we gave more credit to keep the same size proportionality to the target population whose distribution is dissimilar depending on the education group level, age cohort and so forth. In addition, several post hoc analyses consisting of Tukey tests have been included and commented in the analysis of the results section. In this way, the contrasting exercise of the hypotheses is more rigorous. Finally, we have deleted the tables whose “f” were not significant in order to make space for the post hoc tests. |
Finally, although we are not English native speaker, we have attempted to improve the writing by performing a new proofreading.
Thank you for your time and review
Best wishes
Reviewer 2 Report
The proposal to pay attention to the topic of pinpointing the barriers to recycling at destination is original - there are not so many studies about this issue. That is why it should be interested to the readers. In my opinion, this study has important issues regarding the barriers to recycling at destination in Gran Canaria.
The approach is adequate. The research methods are correct when combining quantitative part and qualitative part. The process has been correct, both in the data collection phase and in the analysis.
In my opinion the paper could be improved a bit in the secton 3- Results. The research design is appropriate. Also, the methods are adequately described. However, the results have been presented too extensively (many tables). It will be perfect to shorten this part.
Author Response
Dear Editor,
We thank the two reviewers for their constructive and critical comments to enhance the quality of the manuscript. Their comments have helped improve the quality of the paper significantly. I hope I addressed the reviewers’ concerns and incorporated their suggestions into our revision satisfactorily. Our detailed responses to each reviewer are provided below. These changes are also highlighted in the manuscript in yellow text.
Response to reviewer 2
We would like to thank for your review and your comments. Thank you so much for considering that the topic is original and can be of interest for the readers. We are happy to know that you think that the approach is adequate, the methods and process are correct and the analysis of the research design is appropriate. Finally, we feel grateful for suggesting that we should shorten the part consisting of too many tables. For this reason, we have eliminated the tables without statistically significant results. Moreover, we have taken out some data information from the other tables if those extracted data were not significant. In this way, now it is more efficient and clear.
Thank you for your time and review
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is significantly improved in terms of previously detected methodological concerns.
