Exploring the Discrepancy between Projected and Perceived Destination Images: A Cross-Cultural and Sustainable Analysis Using LDA Modeling
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Editor,
Thank you very much for giving me the time to review this interesting paper. The research shows mismatches between how destinations are promoted and how tourists view them. Understanding these gaps can help destination marketers improve their promotional strategies to attract visitors and highlight aspects that appeal to tourists' perceptions and experiences. The findings also suggest the need for marketers to tailor their promotions to different cultural groups in culturally appropriate ways.
I found that the paper has its insights and novelty. However, authors should consider the following points:
Abstract: you should define in a statement the difference between the projected and perceived images before going through the other parts of the abstract.
Introduction: The authors mentioned this generally but did not give concrete examples of how DMOs could use these insights. Providing 1-2 specific tactics or approaches would make the argument more concrete and compelling. Please, provide more specific examples of how analyzing projected vs. perceived images can inform marketing strategies.
The authors mention that most prior work has focused on visual representations but does not discuss any limitations of those approaches. Contrasting the proposed natural language processing analysis with the limitations of existing methods would strengthen the case for this study's approach. Please think about this part.
The author briefly notes that most prior cross-cultural studies have compared countries rather than languages. However, articulating in more detail how analyzing Chinese vs. English specifically can provide new insights into cultural differences would bolster the argument. The author could spell out specific hypotheses regarding which cultural dimensions differ most prominently between the Chinese and English texts. How do you evaluate the Expansion of the unique value of analyzing Chinese vs. English texts?
The literature review is well-written; however, in this part (2.2), I recommend providing evidence for or against Hofstede's cultural theory in tourism and destination image research. The author mentions that Hofstede's theory is frequently used but does not discuss whether prior research supports its validity in this context. Discussing the relevant existing evidence could strengthen the study's rationale for investigating Hofstede's theory in relation to projected and perceived destination images.
Moreover, the literature review ends without articulating specific hypotheses or research questions about cultural differences. Including propositions focused on language-based cultural differences in projected vs. perceived images between Chinese and English speakers would provide a more complete framework for the study.
Methodology and data collection are well-established.
Results provide strong evidence that this article has potential practical implications. However, I am curious “if applicable” to add a figure related to the projected image for Chinese and English contexts, like Figure 5 “just if applicable”.
Discussion and conclusion: I prefer to write the managerial implication part in a way to show how different contexts (Chinese and English) could benefit both projected and perceived. In other words, try to give real examples in addition to your write-up.
Overall, this paper has strong potential to get published; I support publication after revising my minor correction above.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to review this manuscript entitled, “Exploring the discrepancy between projected and perceived destination images: A cross-cultural and sustainable analysis using LDA modeling.”
Overall, this manuscript makes efforts to identify the underlying topics of the large volume of data written in two languages (Chinese vs English). I found interesting results and the manuscript is well written, however, I have some suggestions for improving the manuscript.
1. Keyword
I would like to suggest that the authors carefully select the most important keywords and present them.
2. Abstract
The findings are relatively not clear. These following sentences need to be revised to present more clear implications of this study.
For example “Most of the differences in perceived image topics between Chinese and English can be 25 explained by Hofstede's cultural dimension theory, but some of the dimensions cannot be explained. 26 The research in this paper can provide a reference for the promotion of tourism cities, and tourism 27 destination organizations should not only focus on sustainable promotion, but also attract domestic 28 and foreign tourists through differentiated promotion.”
3. Introduction
The purpose of this study need to choose words carefully.
LDA may not ‘generate’ destination image.
4. Literature review
In the samples paper of table 1 on pages 4-7, the projected image attributes and perceived image attributes are too similar or the same. Because the literature review on pages 3-4 explains the discrepancy between projected and perceived images, the table may need to present the discrepancy between projected and perceived images.
5. Method
In figure 1 (research flow), presenting data collection of the projected and perceived destination posts in detail would increase the understanding of the raw dataset (projected vs perceived in Chinese and English). Moreover, the specific number of posts and texts can be helpful to see the collected data set.
6. Bias and validation
Do you have any efforts to reduce the bias and increase the validation of the data collection and data analysis?
7. Analysis
Please describe all analyses you used. Do you use TF-IDF?
8. Results
The title of the tables 4 and 5 should be checked and revised.
9. Results
Because the LDA conducted four times separately, how Figures 3, 4, and 5 are made?
Do you find topics from LDA separately four times in Figure 1?
The results are somewhat confusing, and the comparisons of the results and the matching topics of the separated results are also confusing.
10. Results
If there are four LDA results, how the figures are combined and compare the proportion of the identified topics?
11. Discussion
The explanation of this discussion is not clear. What are the main implications related to Hofstede cultural theory? What are some attributes cannot be explained?
“The findings of this study reveal that there are notable differences in both projected 801 and perceived images between Chinese and English in cross-cultural situations. While 802 most of the differences in perceived image topics between Chinese and English can be 803 explained by Hofstede's cultural attribute theory, some attributes cannot be explained. 804 Thus, this study contributes to the knowledge of Hofstede cultural theory aspects of tour- 805 ism and hospitality and expands the understanding of destination image perceptions of 806 Chinese and English-speaking tourists.”
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for revision of the manuscript based on the comments. I appreciate with your responses as well.
I have two points
1. citation in the contents of the manuscript
I would like to point out that it is important to verify and format the references in the ACS style for the contents of the manuscript.
2. Figure 1
all important analysis and pre-processing and data analysis should be cleared presented in the figure 1.
TF-IDF and LDA are different but the explanation is not clear on the page 16.
Author Response
Point 1. citation in the contents of the manuscript
I would like to point out that it is important to verify and format the references in the ACS style for the contents of the manuscript.
Response 1:
Thank you for pointing out the importance of formatting the references in the ACS style for the manuscript. We have reviewed and corrected all references to adhere to the ACS style guidelines.
Point 2. Figure 1
all important analysis and pre-processing and data analysis should be cleared presented in the figure 1.
TF-IDF and LDA are different but the explanation is not clear on the page 16.
Response 2:
Thank you for bringing up the need to clearly present all important analysis and preprocessing steps in Figure 1 of the manuscript. We have made the necessary modifications to the figure to include all the analysis methods used. Additionally, we have repositioned section 3.6 to section 3.4 and provided a more detailed description of the TF-IDF model and count vectorizer model.
