Influence of Social Capital, Social Motivation and Functional Competencies of Entrepreneurs on Agritourism Business: Rural Lodges
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I suggest deleting the phrase from "Conclusions": "Given the originality of the research study, this paper is one of the innovative studies that can serve as a benchmark for the future work of academics and researchers",and replacing it with (example: this paper is one among the studies that can serve as a benchmark for the future activity of researchersin the field).
Also, I consider that the part of entrepreneurship in agritourism (as management) and the relationship between entrepreneurship (as a business, as a financial motivation) and social entrepreneurship should also be briefly described.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Madam/ Sir,
Thank you to the reviewers who consulted my work and added remarks that are all beneficial to approve the article.
We have taken into consideration all the remarks of the three reviewers, and we have made the necessary changes.
For reviewer 1, we replaced the "Given the originality of the research study, this paper is one of the innovative studies that can serve as a benchmark for the future work of academics and researchers" by your suggestion, and we improved the relationship between social motivation and social entrepreneurship.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript is well conceptualized, written, and presented. My only concern is the sample size which was discussed as a limitation. I'd the authors to cite previous studies on the comparison between covariance-based SEM and PLS SEM to support the use of PLS SEM for a small sample size of 100. Please refer to the special issue: partial least squares (PLS) in hospitality and tourism research (see the link: https://www.emerald.com/insight/publication/issn/1757-9880/vol/9/iss/3),
the following article may also interest you:
Kock, N., & Hadaya, P. (2018). Minimum sample size estimation in PLS‐SEM: The inverse square root and gamma‐exponential methods. Information Systems Journal, 28(1), 227–261.
Another concern is the check of the data distribution. Although PLS is lenient on normality of the data, information on kurtosis and skewness of individual items is needed.
Author Response
Dear Madam/ Sir,
Thank you to the reviewers who consulted my work and added remarks that are all beneficial to approve the article.
We have taken into consideration all the remarks of the three reviewers, and we have made the necessary changes.
For reviewer 2, we added a paragraph to explain the difference between covariance-based SEM and PLS-SEM to support the size of our sample and to improve our choice for the PLS-SEM based on the articles that you suggest for us. Also, we changed the limitations by another paragraph to clarify better. We added a table to show the items used in our study and another to show the distribution. we modified the references.
Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper presents an interesting topic, however there are some issues that should be improved.
First, the abstract should be revised. The sentences “The results showed positive and direct effects concerning the two variables namely: the social capital and functional competencies on the participation in the development of a business in agritourism. Additionally, the results showed a strong and positive effect of social capital on functional competencies” sound a bit repetitive, they should be clarified.
As for the hypotheses development, hypotheses 3 and 4 need further justification.
Regarding the measurement model, following table 4, the discriminant validity is not verified. This point needs to be explained.
Regarding the results, some results are shown that are neither explained nor justified. For example, hypothesis 4 is rejected, but this fact is not consistently taken into account; see, for example page 22, the authors state “They could also stimulate their social motivations…”, why is this important if the hypothesis 4 has been rejected?
Another example: it is said “capital social structural negatively affects the functional competences” (p. 20), but this fact is hardly explained in the Discussion section. Along the same lines, the pandemic situation is mentioned in several places in the Discussion section, but it is hardly linked to the results.
The sentence “Our observations show that people from the agricultural world rarely think in terms of tourism product and that people from the tourism world often ignore agricultural wealth.” (p. 23) does not come from the analysis. It should be clarified.
Regarding the conclusions, the sample and the methodology should be eliminated from this section.
Finally, the writing should be revised. There are references to a “doctoral study” in various places and some sentences need to be clarified, for example, on page 5 the authors say “an analysis of students founded in Krakow showed that risk attitudes and academic studies in business / non-business generally influence entrepreneurial intentions.” and the expression “capital social structural” appears on page 20. Along this lines, regarding section 5.1, the explanation about the sample should be improved; the sentence “Women are less expected to participate in active leisure than men because it requires a lot of money and effort” sounds a bit strange and biased, it seems more an opinion than a scientifically proven fact; the authors should explain the idea better.
Author Response
Dear Madam/ Sir,
Thank you to the reviewers who consulted my work and added remarks that are all beneficial to approve the article.
We have taken into consideration all the remarks of the three reviewers, and we have made the necessary changes.
For reviewer 3, we modified the abstract based your remarks. We improved the two hypotheses 3 and 4. We added a paragraph to explain the part of discriminant validity. Also, we explained more the results of the hypotheses. We explain more the relationship between our results and COVI- 19. We modified the limitations to eliminate the part of the sample and methodology and replaced it with another paragraph more related. We modified the paragraph related to the result of the sample. We modified our writing to eliminate the same faults.
Thank you.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have improved the paper. However, I write down some aspects pending review.
The H3 formulation should be revised, the current formulation does not reflect what is indicated in Figure 1.
On page 8, the paragraph “Hence, the following hypothesis is proposed to verify the mediating role of social motivation between social capital and the participation in the development of business in agritourism:” is repeated. On the same page, the expression “capital social” should be corrected.
The beginning of the Conclusions section should be revised.
Regarding the results, some results should be revised. Hypothesis 4 is rejected, but the authors state: “Indeed, the results relating to the effect of social capital on entrepreneurs in the agritourism sector, underline the importance of the structural, relational and cognitive links that these entrepreneurs must favor in the development of their business which facilitate certain stages in order to improve the progression of their functional competencies.” If the hypothesis is rejected, why should the variable be important?
Author Response
Dear Madam/ Sir,
We have taken into consideration all the remarks of the reviewer, and we have made the necessary changes.
We changed the paragraph concerning Hypothesis 3. We deleted the repetitive paragraph, and we corrected the word “social capital”. Also, we deleted the first paragraph in the conclusions section, and we made some modifications to the next paragraph in the same section. We deleted the paragraph related to hypothesis 4, the variable is not important.
Thank you.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
