Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Tourist Risk Perceptions—The Case Study of Porto

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Very interesting topic and well-structured paper.

My main comment has to do with the academic soundness of the research, mainly due to difficulties in the formation of the sample and the analysis performed (mainly descriptive plus correlations), presenting the point of view of those who decided to visit Porto in the pandemic. Probably the answer would be different if the researchers could approach some others that canceled their travel due to the COVID-19 situation. However, it is an interesting crucial issue for sustainable growth.

Some comments that could be useful for improvement. A segregation of the answers relative to the age of the respondents, or the place they came from could be useful, to identify possible differences between tourists and different "philosophy" relative to covid-19.

Few research questions could enhance the value of the research

Lines 465-466: The difference in the places the tourists visit, could not be justified as the groups of tourists are different between 2019 and 2020, (country, educational level etc.). That could be indeed an indication, however, such issues should be added to the limitations section (along with some that are mentioned in the “Discussion” section).

In my opinion, the “Discussion” section should be reconsidered, to make more clear the connection between the findings of the research, and the propositions. It is not clear for example that less concentrated areas could increase the number of tourists in an area. A more straightforward connection between the questions of the research and the propositions’ of the authors, should be presented.

The number of questionnaires referred to the abstract is 416, however, in the text is 417. (207+210)

The paper includes too many maps and pictures. (especially between p.8 and p.11). Even though they are useful for the apresentation of the paper, some of them could be omitted or accompanied by  more references from researches that have found similar/different findings in other countries, cities etc.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and recommendations. Our paper benefited a lot from those comments. According, we made some updates.

Please see the attachment.
The table shows the comments and changes made.
In the paper, the modifications are highlighted with the change control and yellow.

Best regards,
The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper examines the perceptions and behaviors of tourists
before and during COVID-19 in the municipality of Porto. Similar studies have not been presented in the literature yet. The geographical perspective of changes in the behavior of domestic and foreign tourists is interesting, taking into account the element of travel risk during a pandemic. It should be emphasized that the research results are well presented using photographic and cartographic illustrations.

However, I suggest the authors separate the Discussion and Conclusion sections, in the latter there are conclusions for DMO concerning tourism management in the post-Covid period.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and recommendations. Our paper benefited a lot from those comments. According, we made some updates.

Please see the attachment.
The table shows the comments and changes made.
In the paper, the modifications are highlighted with the change control and yellow.

Best regards,
The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Interesting article. Interesting results on the effect of the Covid 19 pandemic on tourist behavior.
It is suggested that the text of the article be supplemented with basic statistics on the tourist traffic in Porto during the pre-pandemic period and during the pandemic, in terms of the number of domestic and foreign tourists, and basic data on the structure of origin of tourists coming to Porto or, if no such data are available, the same statistics for the whole teritory of Portugal before and after Covid 19

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and recommendations. Our paper benefited a lot from those comments. According, we made some updates.

Please see the attachment.
The table shows the comments and changes made.
In the paper, the modifications are highlighted with the change control and yellow.

Best regards,
The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper faces an interesting issue: how tourism activity has been impacted by COVID-19 pandemic. The city of Porto is the case of study. The authors compared the socio-demographic profile of people visiting the city in summer 2019 ("normal" summer) and 2020 (the first pandemic summer) and analyzed the answers given by the respondents in 2020 to a questionnaire about tourism risk perception. The topic is relevant. Nevertheless, I have several concerns about how the paper is addressed. My recommendation is "Reconsider after major revision".

1. Objectives/Sections 1-2/ Title.

The objectives are too many general (lines 70-72). They do not match with a key element in the research: the risk perception of tourists. The authors wrote a whole section (section 2) about this issue. I suggest to join the sections 1 and 2 (they are very brief) in order to build a new and more complete Introduction section. The text of section 2 can be located after the line 67. The new introduction section would end with the objectives (rewritten), the importance of the research (last paragraph of the section 2) and how the paper is organized. Related to the previous comments, I consider the title of the paper should be modified.

2. Methods - Sample.

The paper analyzes the answers obtained from 417 surveys, 207 in 2019 and 210 in 2020. They were collected in only 4 days (2 in July and 2 in August) in 2019 and 5 days (1 in July and 4 in August) in 2020. The authors have to justify these few days are representative of the whole summer. Another option is to indicate it (Discussion and Conclusions section) as a limitation.

Lines 203-204. The authors indicate "the sample size was related to the following factors: (i) the number of visitors/guests...". Can you give additional information about the confidence level, and the error margin chosen to decide the number of respondents required?

Does the profile of the respondents (age, sex and origin) represent the profile of the visitors? In this sense, the authors should include relevant information about Porto (Study area): economic importance of tourism in terms of GDP, incomes or job; but also about to the profile of the tourists visiting the city in summer. May be the information provided by the references 72, 73 and 74 should be mentioned here to reinforce what you say in the lines 259-261.

3. Results

3.1 Table 1.

Variable "Duration of visit". Does "1 day mean" no overnight? In that case, people answering "1 day" are not tourists. They are visitors.

Variable "Travel group size". The third option (Between 2-3 people-including respondent) also includes the second option (With 1 person).

Variables "Duration of visit" and "Travel group size. I would like to know the criterion to decide the thresholds. They are not homogeneous. How the possible answers are organized influence in the results.

Variable "country of residence". I am not sure if it is suitable to apply the Chi-squared test when there is a 0. I suggest joining some continents.

Variable "Education". The three first options should standardized (primary school, high school, etc.)

How the variables "group size" and "country of residence" are managed is crucial, because they are the only two showing differences statistically significant between the two samples. The authors used these differences to justify the impact of COVID-19 (lines 276-290).

3.2 Geographic context

The title of section 5.2 can be improved in order to make clearer what it is going to talk about: origin vs places visited (Porto and others)

- Regarding to the origin of the visitors:

Lines 296-300. I suggest giving information about the changes in the distribution at the national level.

Figure 3 shows the origin of the visitors at national and municipality level, but I have not read in the Methods section that visitors were asked about their municipality.

I recommend including an indicator taking into account the distance from the place of origin and Porto using three o four thresholds. It will allow comparing the differences in the distribution in 2019 and 2020.

I also recommend crossing country of origin with: (i) age; (2) duration of visit. It will allow making a stronger analysis.

- Regarding to the places visited.

Lines 353-354. You have to give more information about this statement (lockdown, mobility restrictions) in Portugal in the area of the study section.

I recommend crossing the number of places visited in Portugal with (at least) country of origin and duration of the visit in order to make a stronger analysis.

Lines 355-359. I suppose you are depicting a general and common pattern in both maps. Does it? If the answer is "yes", then what are you referring to when in line 393 you say: "...part of this trend..."? What trend? And, the point (ii) in lines 394-395 makes reference to the situation in 2020. So, it will be necessary to differentiate more clearly when you describe general patterns and when you compare the differences attributed to COVID-19.

Figure 4 and Figure 5 are not referred in the text. Figure 5 is not relevant. You can give the information in a short paragraph highlighting AMP, Cavado and Algarve. The change is minimum in the rest of areas.

Lines 532-533. "...significant differences are found both regarding the sociodemographic characteristics, and the respondent's interest in visiting other geographical areas." How is this statement sustained?

3.3 Risk perception

When you write “risk perception”, are you referring to the risk of contagion? If the answer is “Yes”, you should indicate the first time it is used. In this sense, R11 did not interpellate to this kind of risk. It is the only question in which the mean value was below 3.

Likert scale: I am not sure that the qualitative to the numbers 1-5 varies from very poor to very good. Whether the question is about the risk perceptions, maybe the qualitative has to run from very low to very high (?).

Have you used the value 0 (“don’t know”) to calculate the mean value and the SD?

Lines 550-551. Four or five of the eleven variables?

Table 3. Are Portuguese people included in European people when comparing European vs. non-European people?

I suggest comparing Portuguese peoples with Spanish people in order to know the mean value (Figure 9) but also the questions with differences statistically significant. It will allow sustaining the statement in lines 599-601.

Figure 8. I consider this figure is not relevant because some continents have a small representation (absolute numbers) in 2020.

Lines 605-614 and Table 4. How do you interpret that the values given by those visitors considering the destination (Porto or the whole country) COVID-free to the questions are between 3 and 4? I should be expected values over 4, at least.

4. Discussion and Conclusions

This section should be rewritten taking into account the changes introduced by my previous comments and indications. At the same time, the limitations have to be incorporated in the text. The present version of the manuscript has the tile “Future research directions and limitations”, but they are not shown in the text.

5. Minor revision

Lines 41-48. The authors refer to the information in these lines as "economic terms". Then, the information would have to start with economic data (i.e., GDP) and then linking it with the drop in tourist’s arrivals.

Line 53. "This trend contradicts the results...". What are you referring to? The reduction in global travel or the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases? I am not sure if the former is a trend. It seems an abrupt drop of visitors. I suggest revising the use of the verb "contradict" in that context.

Line 70. Homogenize the use of English words when you translated the name of the Avenue/Square. There is one in Portuguese and other in English language. You did not translate the words in lines 155-156.

Line 138. Material and Methods section should be section 3 in the original manuscript. Make the necessary modifications taking into account my previous comments.

Lines 139-141. I suggest deleting this paragraph. This information has to be in the "Sample" section.

Figure 1. I consider Figures 1A, B, C and E are not relevant. You should incorporate a map showing where Porto is located in the context of the whole country, together with Figure 1D, F-K.

Lines 155-160. I suggest moving the last paragraph of "Study area" section to the "Survey application" section.

"Questionnaire design" section should shown explicitly the socio-demographic information required to the respondents and, especially, the questions about the risk perception. It will allow understanding more clearly the structure in four sections indicated by the authors on line 168.

Lines 172-173. "The initial questionnaire was designed in April 2019." Which was the purpose of that questionnaire? Which kind of changes did you make? This information (yellow text?) has to be rewritten in order to a better understanding.

Lines 178-185. Here you introduce the Group D of questions (COVID-19) but I have not clear information about Groups A, B and C. Please, revise how the information of this sub-section is shown.

Line 194. In which countries people 15 years old are considered to be in a potentially active age?

"Survey application section". I suggest changing the structure. First the general questions regarding the procedures, time needed, etc. Then when the pre-test was conducted (pilot) and finally the information about when the survey was carried out.

Table 1. I suggest changing the order of the variables. First, the ones regarding the respondents (gender, age, origin, and education level) and secondly, the ones regarding the party (trip planning, duration of visit, and group size).

Lines 265-266. The information in the first sentence has to be moved to the Methods section.

Line 266. "The age varied". I suggest: "The distribution of visitors according to the age varied..." Or something similar. The age did not vary.

Lines 276. "Most of the respondents reported a healthy clinical status (74.1%)". Where is the information about this question?

I cannot read the caption for the Figure 3.

Figure 6. Caption: "by Porto respondents". It seems the respondents are from Porto. We know that the respondents were interviewed in Porto.

Figure 6. How did you decide the thresholds? 100% of the respondents visited Porto. Is there any other municipality achieving the 100%? The last threshold includes from 50.1 to 100%.

Figure 6. I am not sure if the statement in lines 397-400 is sustained by looking at Figure 6.

Figure 7. I do not understand in which way Figure 7a includes information for 2019 and 2020. What does it mean, for example, when in a place the number is 100%?

Figure 7. In a similar way, I have problem to understand Figure 7b. In the legend, there are two columns (blue and yellow) with the number 49(%?). And in the map, there are columns twice higher than the shown in the legend. Please, clarify. At the same time, I suggest substituting the arrow for the difference in relative numbers (you can maintain the color).

I have not read in the text the visitors surveyed were asked about the places they visited.

Table 6. All the significant differences have a p<0.05. Delete information about **p<0.01 and ***p<0.001 below the table.

Line 660: “…these changes in the visiting capacity…”. What capacity are you talking about?

Lines 667-669. You are introducing a relevant issue (use of public transport). Nevertheless, you have to improve the way it is linked with the topic of the paper.

I suggest incorporating the next references:

Brouder, P. Reset redux: Possible evolutionary pathways towards the transformation of tourism in a COVID-19 world. Tour. Geogr.2020,22, 484–490.

Romagosa, F. The COVID-19 crisis: Opportunities for sustainable and proximity tourism. Tour. Geogr.2020,22, 690–694.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and recommendations. Our paper benefited a lot from those comments. According, we made some updates.

Please see the attachment.
The table shows the comments and changes made.
In the paper, the modifications are highlighted with the change control and yellow.

Best regards,
The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

The answers given by the authors are appropriated. My only suggestion is about the title. Now, it focuses on one of the objectives of the paper (risk perception). I mentioned in my first review that this objective had to be taken into account in the title, but without forgetting the other objective. A new review will not be necessary. I will accept the paper in present form.