Elements of Food Service Design for Low-Carbon Tourism-Based on Dine-In Tourist Behavior and Attitudes in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
Dear Authors,
As I previously stated, I found your research well conducted and well communicated. Although I made few suggestions to the previous version (which I am pleased were accepted), I recognize that the article has been greatly improved by the inclusion of the other reviewers' suggestions.
Kind regards,
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
I would like to express my sincere gratitude for taking the time to review our research article once again and for your kind words of encouragement. We are delighted to hear that our research has met with your approval.
I would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for your support and guidance throughout the entire review process.
Thank you once again for your time and efforts.
Best regards
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The overall quality of the manuscript has been improved a lot, which shows authors' effort to enhance the academic performance of their study. There are two minor issues which need to consider:
1.Figure 1 shows the six elements of tourism, which lacks any innovative point.
2.The second issue is that the title cannot reflect the focus of the research samples, the dine-in tourists. If tourists are drive-in consumers, the research problem cannot be answered. Thus, it is better to narrow the research scope down to the particular type of tourists.
3.Grounded theory is mainly used to construct theory. Thus, it is better to sum up the findings to propose a framework or model about low-carbon food consumption among tourists. At least, you should name the framework or the model.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Your suggestions have greatly improved the quality of our manuscript, and we have made the necessary changes according to your advice. Please see the attachment.
We hope that our revised manuscript meets your expectations and standards, and we look forward to receiving your approval .
Best regards
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Dear authors.
The article gives an insight into the tourism sector, especially low-carbon tourism. The authors work a lot of effort into giving their best in presenting the paper. However, the authors need to add some implications of the study, both practical and theoretical in the paper.
Best regards.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Your suggestions have greatly improved the quality of our manuscript, and we have made the necessary changes according to your advice. Please see the attachment.
We hope that our revised manuscript meets your expectations and standards, and we look forward to receiving your approval .
Best regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)
Dear authors,
Thank you for giving yourself to such interesting questions: What are the causes of high-carbon food actions in core users?; What are the core users' requirements for low-carbon services for tourism food? I strongly believe this current study is essential. For this, thank you.
l Introduction
The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. The gap to be covered should be faced. And the novelty of the approach, be stressed.
l Literature Review
Overall, the literature review is fine, but it is necessary to provide wider range of lit review focused on studies related to low-carbon-tourism food. The below references might be helpful:
ü Hwang, J., Lee, K.-W. Kim, D. & Kim, I. (2020). Robotic Restaurant Marketing Strategies in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Focusing on Perceived Innovativeness. Sustainability, 12, 9165, 1-18.
ü Hwang, J., Lee, J. S., & Kim, H. (2019). Perceived innovativeness of drone food delivery services and its impacts on attitude and behavioral intentions: The moderating role of gender and age. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 81, 94-103.
ü Hwang, J., Kim, H. & Kim, I. (2022). The antecedent and consequences of brand competence: Focusing on the moderating role of the type of server in the restaurant industry. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 50, 337-344.
l Discussion
The discussion section is well-explained and clear.
I hope that my reactions and suggestions are helpful for strengthening the manuscript. Good luck.
Minor editing of English language required
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Your suggestions have greatly improved the quality of our manuscript, and we have made the necessary changes according to your advice. Please see the attachment.
We hope that our revised manuscript meets your expectations and standards, and we look forward to receiving your approval .
Best regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 5 Report (New Reviewer)
The introduction is not very well done and does not convince about the purpose of the research!
Line 38-39: Food systems are a major contributor to carbon emissions and that food consumption is considered an important experience in the tourism process – the two ideas are not related to each other and are not justified by bibliographic references!
Line 47: “Few tourist restaurants ????? are concerned with low-carbon food service” – the expression is not clear!!! Are restaurants concerned with low-carbon food service or their customers?
Line 59: “Figure 1 shows … the six tasks between the tourist and the service provider.” – the word task is not the most appropriate, in my opinion! In addition, fig. 1 refers to the tourism experience!!!
Line 69-72: “through the analysis of tourists' low-carbon attitude mining and real food action, we determined the reasons for low-carbon attitude-friendly tourists to produce high-carbon food action in real tourism behavior, and their requirements for low-carbon tourism food service in order to extract low-carbon tourism food service design elements.” The paragraph must be completely reformulated! I suggest the authors to use simple formulas, short and clear sentences!
Line 83: What is the basis of the first question of the research “high-carbon food actions in core users”?
Line 85: “Construction of a design framework for low-carbon tourism food services”. – it is not a question, but an objective of the research!
The literature analysis is very weak and does not include the key aspects imposed by the title of the article! The writing style is not suitable for a scientific paper, the expression is very ambiguous, there are many mistakes in English.
The article is difficult to read and understand! I could not continue the evaluation of the article because of the very poor expression in English.
The article is difficult to read and understand! I could not continue the evaluation of the article because of the very poor expression in English.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. Thank you for your comments and suggestions concerning our manuscript. The comments and suggestions are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as having important guiding significance to our research. We have studied the comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope meet with your approval. Please see the attachment.
Best regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 5 Report (New Reviewer)
The authors made all the changes suggested in the initial revision of the paper in a satisfactory manner, significantly improving the previous version of the paper.
Congratulations to the authors!
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic this article seeks to tackle with can be of great value for scholars and practitioners alike. Unfortunately, the way its rationale is developed and presented does not help reveal its potential and contribution. Some general guidelines which the authors could work on are the following, yet I’m not convinced the study was developed appropriately. Still, it might be that I have misunderstood the whole approach.
- Please re-write the abstract providing (1) some background on why this study is of value, (2) key methodological choices and (3) key findings, as the information currently presented raises a series of questions. E.g. the abstract refers to ‘target group’ but it’s best to talk about population and sampling, as I assume tourists with a low-carbon tourism mentality but high-carbon food actions is a group that can only be identified during the analysis rather than when recruiting respondents? Also, why 2 interviews? When and how did you choose your sample?
- Can you provide a reference in terms of the 6 tasks between the tourist and service provider? (p.2)
- What do you mean by ‘tourism food’ (p.2, 2nd paragraph)?
- You don’t need to mention methodological details (NVivo, Grounded theory) in the introduction, nor listing the contribution of this study. It’s best to change these parts with a short paragraph with key methodological choices and contribution in a way that flows.
- Figures 2 and 3 were developed based on what? The ones in green are your focus? What about eco-tourists, campers, those travelling for gastronomy and food, those who participate in cooking lessons while on holidays or those take away/ order takeaway while on holidays? Why do you focus on dine-in only? Shouldn’t you have identified specific travel motives before setting off for this study? Your approach seems too superficial and generic.
- I don’t understand what you mean by ‘this study screens for low-carbon attitude friendly tourists (p.4).
- You need to restructure and enrich section 3. Perhaps starting with a paragraph that will lead to figure 4 would be better before discussing the details of 3.2 etc. You don’t need subsections for just one paragraph either. Better make sure that your text flows.
- Why don’t you name the cities chosen? I don’t understand how you define your population and sample. You kept respondents’ information so that you could recruit them for the second round? Had they provided you with their consent for this? How did you know who was a tourist and who was local? Your research protocol included which questions based on what/ which references? Was it a structured interview? The duration of 5-10 minutes suggests a structured questionnaire? Such info should be in section 3.
- I don’t understand the discussion in 3.1.
- You don’t need the historical details of grounded theory.
- The methodological choices and presentation of your findings is confusing to me; some methodological aspects are in the findings, the information presented does not flow. I’m afraid I’m too confused to provide you with specific instructions to improve; I suggest retrieving a journal article that has employed a similar methodology, and restructuring and redeveloping your manuscript using that one as a template/ guidelines.
- What is the objective of Table 9? Once the methodology and findings sections are improved, you will be in position to provide a more competitive and straightforward discussion as conclusions and implications.
- Proof read to improve the language employed. Apart from several mistakes, the language is not natural, does not flow in most parts.
- Check guidelines in terms of how to proceed to in-text citations.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Please find attached my comments.
Congratulations on such an exemplary, well conducted and well communicated research.
Kind regards,
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Food waste in tourism is quite an important topic for researchers to investigate, and toward the current manuscript, here are some of my concerns:
1. Abstract: it is a bit long, but I do not detect the most important element, namely, the four core elements of the LCT.
2. Introduction: figure 1 is quite straightforward and is clear to all tourism researchers. Thus, I think maybe it is meaningless to present it in a manuscript. Meanwhile, it is better to propose the research question directly in addition to describing the research objective in a detailed way.
3. Literature review: this section lacks a clear critique of past studies, thus it cannot lay a foundation for conducting the research. At least, authors need to give a concluding paragraph for this section to point out the research gap.
4. Method: there are different schools or ways to do grounded theory analysis, and I think authors need to tell which school or way they are actually using and why they choose this one. Meanwhile, in the first interview, the researcher interviewed tourists in 4 different cities within one day. I want to know how they did it.
5. Discussion: in findings or discussions, studies using grounded theory normally will present a storyline to analyze the reason, the process, and the outcome. I cannot find such a storyline here and for most studies this storyline is the most critical contribution.
6. Conclusion: grounded theory is mainly used to construct new theories. Thus, what kind of theory or framework has this study established?
