Sustainable Tourism: The Elephant in the Room

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of sustainability 1308185

 

I am VERY concerned that the paper used human research, but that there is no evidence in the paper that approval has been sought from the ethics review board(s) of the authors’ institutions. I hope that not stating the ethics approval, and citing the protocol number is an oversight by the authors and that they can supply this to the satisfaction of the editor. If not, then the paper has to be regarded as rogue science and needs to be rejected out of hand.

 

I am making the following comments  with the assumption that ethics approval has been obtained.

 

The article is well written and well argued. The discussion is very convincing and compelling.  

 

 

Methodology

Line 235 What is the validity of using paid survey panels? There is quite a bit of literature that discusses the limitations and biases of paid source cohorts like MTurk etc That needs to be discussed/addressed.

 

I am also not sure what the participants had seen, how far they had travelled. Just in Europe? To Africa, Asia. This will affect how people perceive sustainable tourism and their role in this. The authors may want to clarify this a bit better

 

 

The manuscript needs a thorough edit by a native English speaker. It has numerous grammatical infelicities and weird turns of phrase.

 

 

Minor Issues

Line 49 Why is “Elephant in the room” that a strange term. It may be for Germans and Italians but for an English speaking audience it is perfectly fine. I suggest to drop that comment.

 

Line 72–74        Grammar…

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The objective of the work, when describing the theme it presents, is undoubtedly very new. Having the perspective of the tourist to complement the perspective of the provider of tourism services and mix it with sustainability today is fundamental.

In the summary, perhaps the methodology that will be used to analyze the empirical part should be specified, since it is not done. And in the introduction, perhaps the different types of tourism (tourists) should be more contextualized and deepened in the level of studies that they have. In general the literature used is quite powerful. Undoubtedly, they should include a specific section of conclusions, separate it from section (4) Discussion, and include it as a single section, as section (5) conclusions and leave as section (6) the one that already have Limitations. Note that the title of the work in my opinion is great and original.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear colleagues

The article is of real scientific and practical interest, it looks self-sufficient and well substantiated. The only thing I would advise you to do is to add the Conclusion chapter where you can put  certain arguments and reasons from the Discussion chapter. 

Kind regards

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Sustainability 1308185 review 2

 

The authors have responded to and incorporated all concerns that I had bar one:

 

In their response, the authors state that they will provide ethics statement, but that has not yet been provided (should be at the end of the paper a relevant section). This needs to be amended.

 

Line 232 typo “decisionwas”

Author Response

After consultation of the editorial office we added the following two declarations:

Institutional Review Board Statement: not applicable

Informed Consent Statement: Informed consent was obtained

from all subjects involved in the study

We hope, that these information meet the wishes of the reviewer

Thanks again for reviewing our paper.