Can Tourism Development Help Improve Urban Liveability? An Examination of the Chinese Case

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is really valuable for the paper to showcase that developing urban developing by using and conveying tourism factors as a measurement tool for a national practice in PRC. The story is detailed and impressive with demonstrable suggestions that have broad implications for one of the pilot studies in a state scale elsewhere. However, the paper can hardly be regarded as a formal science research paper due to a lack of substantial elements such as the description of scientific problem (and/or societal- problem based), methodology (only using a reference detecting from SDM) and results in the focal points, the paper actually looks like an execution report for a project with many implementation details.

You may represent your consciousness is the problem in your manuscript.

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how you have phenomenal experiences in your studies in urban liveability . This is in contrast to the "easy problems" of explaining the physical/political systems for tourism that give our international readers the ability to discriminate, integrate information, and so forth.

Your introduction, therefore, is still rather descriptive and redundant, rather than a critical analysis of existing theories. A good introduction clearly sets out what is missing/wrong with the existing theories for the cities, i.e., how and why to proceed EIU’s Liveability Index from a special zone, and why a modification is needed for spatial spillover effects.  If you add urban levels (your topic), as you defined “eastern and central cities than in the western cities,” the categories the authors have proposed are confusing and unclear in your main value in arguments, and sometimes contradictory, since you just used national strategies in your studies from several studies.  They are also debatable.  Clarify how environment, development and sustainability from “tourism development has a positive impact on urban liveability” is achieved from your different from your knowledge because I did not see any mutual interactions among your studies. Did you see any causality? And how to prove? Clarify how subjective knowledge and/or objective knowledge are different from your topic from the obstacles and ways in which you could be overcome, i.e., city sustainability studies.  The methods are very unclear and not nearly enough detail is provided on the methods.  At a minimum, the following questions need to be explained: In which sustainability initiatives was this study conducted in PRC from your regular survey from city levels, and how to convey from the indicators of sustainability for “urban liveability”?  How were samples chosen?  Do you have any plans supported from mutual interactions among society, development and environment, and their implications for sustainable development? How to monitor of the policies for sustainable development? The discussion then needs to critically examine or evaluate the success of your research in improving upon the existing theories from that developing results of acknowledgment of SDGs. I do not detect that you actually do that for your survey in this deeply discussion. Is the argument of your theory on SDGs for urban liveability better that those cited in the introduction?  Therefore, I don't think this paper is appropriate to be published as a research paper in academic journal like Sustainability in its present form without the role of political and economic instruments, given its potential value it could be transferred and considered to be published as shorter informative policy comments in a relevant journal by condensing its length considerably. Therefore, the authors conducted in details a literature review, statistical analysis and non-verification of the results. However, I have the impression that you do not have any selection of some hypotheses was carried out incorrectly, or you do not provide any hypotheses, or even subjectively. My comments concern:

What are your hypotheses represented in your studies, and what is the meaning for your studies in “practice” (your topic) since you did not apply to the “practice studies”?

I did not see any discussion on your finding without any argument, and you did not write any useful limitation for your finding.

Moreover, I saw your finding for the urban liveability is “what types of tourism are represented in your findings, from “ … (t)he eastern and central cities than in the western cities”, but I did not see “why this is represented”, and “how to fix them up in your state systems”? Please define your topic in city levels as the terms as the real meanings. They are quite different definitions in politics, economics, and law studies, and I do not think they are detected that highlight more than one dimension of sustainable development for your presentation.

Overall, the work brings new values. It is true that only the cases of PRC is concerned, but similar studies can also be carried out in other states/countries for the purpose of current studies in the various cities as a comparative analysis. The work was prepared at a high level, although I have an exception to the above hypotheses. I would like the authors to respond to my comments. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Can tourism development help improve urban liveability? An examination of the Chinese case” (Manuscript ID sustainability-1853987). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. Many of your comments have been very good, and I'd be happy to make detailed revisions to the article based on your comments. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked highlight in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer's comments are as flowing (see pdf file: Response to reviewer1):

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

REVIEW STATEMENT

JOURNAL: Sustainability

PAPER TITLE: Can tourism development help improve urban liveability? An examination of the Chinese case

This is an important topic, which certainly has international validity. I felt the paper is somewhat interesting and about a unique case study,

Abstract and Key words: are well presented

 Introduction: the introduction is well presented and detailed

 UNWTO, IMF, SDG, these should explained, what they are standing for

 Literature review: lacks critical thinking

Mechanism analysis and theoretical hypothesis: they well articualted

Model construction, variables and data: they are highly detailed

Empirical results and analysis: results are  is mostly descriptive, more discussion should  be provided

Conclusions and policy implications: they are long, resarcher are adised to summarise this ection by providing two to three points

Figures and tables are well

Summary statement: a very worthy subject. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Can tourism development help improve urban liveability? An examination of the Chinese case” (Manuscript ID sustainability-1853987). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. Many of your comments have been very good, and I'd be happy to make detailed revisions to the article based on your comments. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked highlight in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer's comments are as flowing (see pdf file):

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf