How to Decouple Tourism Growth from Carbon Emissions? A Spatial Correlation Network Analysis in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Sustainability
I have now completed my assessment of the manuscript titled “Spatial correlation network and causes of decoupling between China’s tourism economic growth and carbon emissions”.
Please find my comments which I feel that the authors must address before it can be accepted for publication in the Sustainability Journal:
1. The title should be attractive to the audience.
- The abstract should clearly define the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions.
- The current study lacks in terms of motivation, authors should expand the main goals and objectives of this work to improve on the motivation of the current study. The novelty of this work is not clear.
- I would like to suggest that authors should update the literature part. Specifically, the latest research trends in order to highlight the academic frontier of the research, the references of the recent year need to be included. In this case, the following paper may be helpful:
10.3390/su13041613
10.3389/fenvs.2022.945091
10.1007/s11356-022-22011-1
10.1007/s11356-022-19053-w
- I'll advise authors to separate the "Literature review and Hypothesis development" section into different section.
6. More importantly as per my critical observation, the authors had reported results from the analysis without discussing them in the manuscript. I, therefore, suggest that authors should include the separate presentation of results from the discussions. Both should be in different sub-sections under the title "Results and Discussions. Moreover, the authors are supposed to give the impact mechanism behind the results obtained (that is, detailed economic meaning of their results and implications or, in other words, what might have brought about the results they have obtained). It must be done systematically by comparing them to further studies in the related fields.
7. The policy recommendation is too less. Authors should add more into this section, especially in the aspect of policy framing and implementation.
8. Method seems fine to me.
9. There are several grammatical issues throughout the paper. Please ask a professional copy-editing company for the English editing.
10. Modify the paper based on the journal’s guidelines.
Author Response
I have now completed my assessment of the manuscript titled “Spatial correlation network and causes of decoupling between China’s tourism economic growth and carbon emissions”.
Please find my comments which I feel that the authors must address before it can be accepted for publication in the Sustainability Journal:
Response: Thank you for spending your precious time in reading our paper and providing these constructive suggestions to help us improve the quality of the paper. As you will see, we have tried our best to address those issues. And below are the point-by-point responses.
1. The title should be attractive to the audience.
Response: Thank you for your helpful comment. According to your suggestion, we have changed the title from “Spatial correlation network and causes of decoupling between China’s tourism economic growth and carbon emissions” to “How to decouple tourism growth from carbon emissions? A spatial correlation network analysis in China”.
2. The abstract should clearly define the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions.
Response: Thank you for your useful comment. According to your suggestion, we have revised the abstract by clearly defining the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. Specifically, this research aims to analyze the spatial correlation network of the decoupling between tourism growth and carbon emissions in China’s 31 provinces/cities/districts, so as to promote the overall decoupling through regional cooperation. The research findings indicate potential inter-provincial cooperation in terms of tourism decarbonization and provide a profound reference for the whole sustainable development of China’s tourism industry.
3. The current study lacks in terms of motivation, authors should expand the main goals and objectives of this work to improve on the motivation of the current study. The novelty of this work is not clear.
Response: Thank you for your helpful suggestion. According to your advice, we have revised the introduction part to highlight the motivation and novelty of the manuscript. Theoretically, most of the previous studies have highlighted the spatial differences of the decoupling between tourism development and carbon emissions rather than linkages, which can not depict the spillover mechanism between different regions. Therefore, a spatial correlation perspective and an exploration into the formation forces of this correlation is theoretically meaningful. Practically, The tourism development of Chinese provinces has an obvious Matthew effect, with higher level of economic development leading to higher tourism development level. The imbalance of inter-provincial development in China becomes a hindrance to the sustainable development of tourism. On the contrary, a reasonable spatial network structure promotes the flow of tourism elements including capital, technology, talents, and information in different geographic spaces, thereby strengthening the economic connection, spatial integration and coordinated development of tourist destinations. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to deeply explore the spatial correlation network of China’s provincial tourism and the driving factors behind the network.
4. I would like to suggest that authors should update theliterature part.Specifically, the latest research trends in order to highlight the academic frontier of the research, the references of the recent year need to be included. In this case, the following paper may be helpful:
10.3390/su13041613
10.3389/fenvs.2022.945091
10.1007/s11356-022-22011-1
10.1007/s11356-022-19053-w
Response: Thank you for your recommendation. We have added these four researches as our references.
5. I’ll advise authors to separate the “Literature review and Hypothesis development”section into different section.
Response: Thank you for your your advice. We have separated the “Literature review and Hypothesis development” section into different section.
6. More importantly as per my critical observation, the authors had reported results from the analysis without discussing them in the manuscript. I, therefore, suggest that authors should include the separate presentation of results from the discussions. Both should be in different sub-sections under the title "Results and Discussions. Moreover, the authors are supposed to give the impact mechanism behind the results obtained (that is, detailed economic meaning of their results and implications or, in other words, what might have brought about the results they have obtained). It must be done systematically by comparing them to further studies in the related fields.
Response: Thank you for your helpful suggestion. According to your advice, we have changed the title of the fifth part from “Conclusions and policy implications” to “conclusions and discussions”. In the discussion section, we have explained the impact mechanism behind the results obtained and compared the results to previous studies.
7. The policy recommendation is too less. Authors should add more into this section, especially in the aspect of policy framing and implementation.
Response: Thank you for your useful comment. We have enriched the policy implication part by adding more contents about policy framing and implementation.
8. Method seems fine to me.
Response: Thank you for your confirmation of our study.
9. There are several grammatical issues throughout the paper. Please ask a professional copy-editing company for the English editing.
Response: Thank you for your useful comment. According to your suggestion, we have firstly checked the manuscript word by word to correct the typo and grammatical errors. In addition, we have asked a professional copy-editing company and an English-speaking collaborator to revise the English expression of the manuscript.
10. Modify the paper based on the journal’s guidelines.
Response: Thank you for your kind reminder, we have modified the manuscript according to the journal’s guidelines.
Reviewer 2 Report
Kind,
I think that your work is very good, but I think that it would be appropriate to make some changes in the conclusions section , making the part on the political implications richer. In addition, despite the tables are very clear, I think that it would be appropriate to ensure their pagination on a single page to make better reading rows-columns. The abstract is a good summary of the work done and the scientific literature is relevant, although many of the articles you mentioned are not recently published.
I think slight changes are necessary in the "conclusions" section, the analysis is consistent and correct.
My best regards
Author Response
1. I think that your work is very good, but I think that it would be appropriate to make some changes in the conclusions section, making the part on the political implications richer.
Response: Thank you for your confirmation of our study and your precious suggestions to help us improve the quality of our work. According to your advice, we have revised the conclusion section by adding more contents about policy framing and implementation.
2. In addition, despite the tables are very clear, I think that it would be appropriate to ensure their pagination on a single page to make better reading rows-columns.
Response: Thank you for the reminder. According to your suggestion, we have put all the tables and figures on a single page.
3. The abstract is a good summary of the work done and the scientific literature is relevant, although many of the articles you mentioned are not recently published.
Response: Thank you for your confirmation of our work. To further improve the quality of the literature review, we have added recently-published papers as our references.
4. I think slight changes are necessary in the“conclusions” section, the analysis is consistent and correct.
Response: Thank you for the helpful suggestion again, we have revised the conclusion part according to your advice.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors
The paper is well structured.
The author correctly used the existing literature and demonstrated the ability to use the methods.
Results are clearly presented.
Additionally, the introduction is brief and the author could expand the part with their choices and implications of their research
I would also suggest to the author to include :
-the limitations of the study, comparison of empirical results with previous studies
Author Response
1. The paper is well structured.The author correctly used the existing literature and demonstrated the ability to use the methods. Results are clearly presented.
Response: Thank you for your confirmation of our work.
2. Additionally, the introduction is brief and the author could expand the part with their choices and implications of their research
Response: Thank you for your useful advice. According to your suggestion, we have enriched the introduction part by adding more recently-published papers and further clarifying the motivation and novelty of the study.
3. I would also suggest to the author to includethe limitations of the study, comparison of empirical results with previous studies
Response: Thank you for your helpful suggestion. According to your advice, we have included the limitations of the study in 5.3 Policy implications and research limitations part, and comparison of empirical results with previous studies in 5.2 Discussions part.
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments of the reviewer:
1) The missing data are filled by the mean method and the trend (rows 149-150) - which data have the authors calculated themselves? Why did they choose this method? How could these calculations affect the results?
2) A potential researcher outside of China does not know which provinces are included in the East, West, etc. regions. Please complete this.
3) The arrows in figure 2 are not visible
Author Response
1. The missing data are filled by the mean method and the trend (rows 149-150) - which data have the authors calculated themselves? Why did they choose this method? How could these calculations affect the results?
Response: Sorry for the confusion. When calculating carbon emissions, the number of people participating in tourism activities in a small number of regions is missing, which is made up by the trend average method. This method fills in the missing values by moving average, which not only considers the actual moving average, but also the moving average of the trend value, thereby obtaining a more stable trend sequence than the random sequence and minimizing the error of the estimated value. We have also added this explanation to the manuscript.
2. A potential researcher outside of China does not know which provinces are included in the East, West, etc. regions.Please complete this.
Response: Thank you for the reminder. According to the National Development and Reform Commission, this paper divides China’s 31 provinces into three regions: east, middle and west. The east includes 11 provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Liaoning, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong and Hainan; the middle includes 10 provinces of Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Guangxi; the western part includes 9 provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Qinghai. We have also added this explanation to the manuscript.
3. The arrows in figure 2 are not visible
Response: Thank you for your reminder. We have revised figure 2 by highlighting both arrows and characters.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Perfect
