Willingness to Pay for Sustainable Destinations: A Structural Approach

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Willingness to pay for sustainable destinations: A structural approach

 

The topic is interesting, the theoretical framework is well founded, the sample is considerable, and the analysis methodology seems consistent, but there are numerous researchers who have studied the issue of willingness to pay for sustainable destinations and have used structural equations to test the hypotheses. So, it is necessary to demonstrate to the editors, reviewers, and readers of a specialised journal, like Sustainability, what is the contribution of this article to the body of knowledge in the area of sustainable tourism.

 

Keywords: Three to ten pertinent keywords need to be added after the abstract. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.

To increase the visibility of the article through bibliographic search engines, you could add other more specific keywords such as: Triple bottom line; Portuguese tourists.

 

Theoretical background

 

The World Tourism Organization (2002) [2] defines sustainable tourism as ...

 

The WTO has a more comprehensive and up-to-date definition of sustainable tourism, which can be expressed simply as: “Tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities”. This simple definition better fits the “triple bottom line”. Please see:

 

UNEP & WTO (2005). Making tourism more sustainable: A guide for policy makers. Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme

 

The definition of ecotourism, a key concept of the research, is missing. Please see:

 

UNWTO (2019). UNWTO tourism definitions. Madrid: World Tourism Organization. doi: https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284420858

 

Discussion and Conclusion

 

Given the abundance of literature on WTP for sustainability through structural equations, it is necessary to separate de discussion from the conclusion, to dedicate a section to the Discussion of the own findings in comparison with the results of other similar investigations.

 

Concluding remarks section should have subsections such as Theoretical Implications, Practical or Managerial Implications, Limitations, and Future Work.

 

Minor changes

 

Please check the use of capital letters in the subsection titles (Sustainability template).

 

It is necessary to review the spelling of the text. There are typos like:

 

destiantions’

 

Environmental Beliefs  vs.  Environmental beliefs

 

nature. The

 

Reference list:

 

Please check the references (MDPI style). For example:

 

Ref. 31. Tour. Manag. Perspect.: italics?

Ref. 24. DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2017.1301721: link?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents a further contribution to sustainable tourism scholarship utilising an already well-trodden methodological path. The work is competently done. Although the contextualisation is not as strong as it should be, especially given the relatively narrow focus the authors argue for. Indeed, more recent scholarship deliberately focuses on the need for broader sets of indicators in light of the SDGs. See

Rasoolimanesh et al. (2020). A systematic scoping review of sustainable tourism indicators in relation to the sustainable development goals. Journal of Sustainable Tourism

or the recent work of Kim and coauthors who has applied SDG characteristics to their analysis of various tourism factors, e.g. Kim, M. J. et al. (2021). Traveler biosecurity behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: Effects of intervention, resilience, and sustainable development goals. Journal of Travel Research, 00472875211034582.

However, apart from these issues - which should be highlighted more, the work is competent although I suggest that more caveats be applied with respect to its contribution.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Willingness to pay for sustainable destinations: A structural approach

The authors have successfully addressed my concerns and the article has improved significantly. 

Good luck!