The Economic Governance Capability of the Government and High-Quality Development of China’s Tourism Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Professor,

Thank you for your email. I think that this paper has a great ambition. This relationship should be performed, and I agreed with some findings in this paper. The robustness check is good.

Some comments for improving this paper as follows:

1/ the keywords are too long, all should be shortened.

2/ The novelty of the study should be strongly enhanced in the introduction. Why this study is so important? The hypotheses should be declared.

3/ 2. Model Setting, Variable Selection and Data Description should be divided into: 2. Literature review, 3. Variable Selection and Data Description. in the current paper, the information seems to be mixed. Therefore, the content of this section should be re-organized.

4/ From 2.4. Descriptive Statistics onwards, it should be "results"

5/ Table 3. Descriptive statistics of variables should be performed for the original data instead of Ln. It will be better to check to data.

6/ Explaining why the paper only applies FE? How about others such as RE, OLS?

Please check the autocorrelation as well as heteroskedasticity.

7/ Explaining why Spatial Durbin Model (SDM)  is appropriate for the robustness check.

8/ The discussion is quite poor and does not clarify the novelty of the research. I think the article needs to reinforce this further.

9/ The similarity index should be decreased. Actually, about 38% is unacceptable.

thank you

Comments on the Quality of English Language

A minor revision

Author Response

Dear reviewer，

On behalf of my co-authors, I sincerely appreciate for giving us an opportunity to revise the manuscript entitled “The Economic Governance Capability of the Government and High-Quality Development of China's Tourism Industry” (ID:sustainability-3119854).The comments are very valuable and have contributed a lot to improve the quality and readability of our manuscript. We have carefully considered your comments and highlighted the revisions and further explanations in red in the manuscript. The peer-to-peer reply to the reviewers' comments is a red font as shown below.

Comments 1: The keywords are too long, all should be shortened.

Response 1: We are sincerely thankful to your comments. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have shortened the keywords. (Page 1, Line 30-31)

Keywords: economic governance; high-quality development; tourism industry; innovative development; green development

Comments 2: The novelty of the study should be strongly enhanced in the introduction. Why this study is so important? The hypotheses should be declared.

Response 2: Thank you for this instructive comment. Based on this comment, we have included the marginal contribution of this paper in the introduction. (Page 2, Paragraph 4, Line 80-90)

The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows. First, it enriches the literature on the influencing factors of high-quality development of tourism. Most of the existing literature tests its impact on the tourism development quality from the perspectives of institutional quality, tourism resource endowment, cultural and tourism integration and urban-rural integration, while this paper innovatively examines its impact from the perspective of government's economic governance capacity. Second, it enriches the literature on the measurement of tourism high-quality development indicator. On the premise of grasping the connotation of high-quality development, the paper integrates the availability, rationality and representativeness of statistical measurement, and builds on existing research to constructs an evaluation system with the new development concept of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing.

Comments 3: Model Setting, Variable Selection and Data Description should be divided into: 2. Literature review, 3. Variable Selection and Data Description. in the current paper, the information seems to be mixed. Therefore, the content of this section should be re-organized.

Response 3: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have divided Model Setting, Variable Selection and Data Description into: 2. Literature Review, 3. Variable Selection and Data Description. (Page 2-3, Line 91-130)

2. Literature Review

It is found in the literature review that many researches have been made on the influencing factors of tourism development quality in-depth. First, quality of the institution. Zhang (2019) indicated that there are a series of practical problems such as imperfect system and mechanism and poor tourism experience in the high-quality development of China's tourism industry, and argued that institutional design is vital to the governance of tourism in its high-quality development. Liu and Han (2020) saw the institutional environment a guarantee factor for the high-quality development of tourism economy, and quality of the institution is not only closely linked to the level of quality and efficiency of the tourism industry, but also has a significant influence on the effectiveness and sustainability of the changes in the factor structure. Second, endowment of tourism resources. Tan and Sun (2019) studied the cross-section data of 38 countries in the world, 31 provinces and regions in China and 14 regions in Xinjiang, and found out that tourism development is positively linked with the abundance of tourism resources, which can promote tourism development quality. Li et al. (2020) found that resource endowment is a crucial basic condition for the high-quality development of the tourism economy through their study of the spatial distribution characteristics of high-quality tourist attractions in the Yellow River Basin. Third, cultural and tourism integration. Liu (2019) analyzed the current situation of the development of cultural industry and tourism, and found that there is a strong interdependence between culture and tourism, and cultural and tourism integration represents a significant avenue for the attainment of superior standards of tourism development, and proposes to improve the integration of culture and tourism. Xu et al. (2024) also believed that the integration of culture and tourism has become a significant factor in the advancement of cultural tourism. The extent of integration is a crucial element in the promotion of high-quality global tourism development. Fourth, urban-rural integration. A study conducted by Wang et al. utilizing data from China's provincial panels over the past decade revealed that urban-rural integration has a positive impact on the high-quality development of the entire tourism economy (Wang et al.,2023).

To sum up, detailed analysis on the influencing factors of tourism development quality is conducted from various aspects in the existing literature, yet little studies has focused on the impact of economic governance capacity of the government. In addition, the existing literature mainly studies from the standpoint of institutions, resources and culture, but few has focused on the market’s role in improving tourism development quality. In light of the present research literature, the paper systematically tests the causal relationship of the government's economic governance capacity on tourism development quality and its mechanism by constructing an evaluation index system for high-quality tourism development. This study not only helps to enrich the literature in the field of tourism development quality, but also supports to promote better combination of effective government and efficient market.

3. Variable Selection and Data Description

Reference:

Liu, Y.; Han, J. Change of Factor Structure, Institutional Environment and High-quality Development of Tourism Economy. Tour. Trib. 2020, 35, 28-38.

Zhang, H. Governance Logic and Institutional Innovation of High-quality Development of Tourism in the New Era. Conte. Econ. Manage. 2019, 41, 60-66.

Tan, Z.; Sun, G. The Basis of High-quality Development of Tourism: An Analysis on the Gospel Theory of Tourism Resources. Soc. Scient. 2019, 108-115.

Li, D.; Zhang, X.; Lu, L.; Zhang, X.; Li, L. Spatial Distribution Characteristics and Influencing Factors of High-level Tourist Attractions in the Yellow River Basin. Econ. Geogr. 2020, 40, 70-80.

Liu, Z. Integrated Development of Culture and Tourism: Theory, Practice and Future Direction. People. Forum. Aca. Front. 2019, 92-97.

Xu, D.; Li, X.; Yan, S., Cui, L.; Liu, X.; Zheng, Y. A Quantitative Model to Measure the Level of Culture and Tourism Integration Based on a Spatial Perspective: A Case Study of Beijing from 2000 to 2022. Sustainability 2024, 16, 4276.

Wang, R.; Gao, L.; Zhu, Y.; Liu, Y.; Li, Y.; He, J. Urban–Rural Integration Empowers High-Quality Development of Tourism Economy: Mechanism and Empirical Evidence. Sustainability 2023, 15, 15893.

Comments 4: From 2.4. Descriptive Statistics onwards, it should be “results”.

Response 4: Thank you for this suggestion. The words form 3.4. Descriptive Statistics onwards are put into 4. Results in the revised manuscript. (Page 8, Line 262)

Comments 5: Table 3. Descriptive statistics of variables should be performed for the original data instead of Ln. It will be better to check to data.

Response 5: Thanks for your enlightening comment. Follow your suggestion, we have used the original data instead of Ln to re-conduct the descriptive statistics, and the new descriptive statistics results are as follows: (Page 6, Paragraph 2, Line 232-241)

Descriptive statistics are conducted on explained variable, explanatory variable and control variables. Table 3 shows the descriptive statistics performed on the original data instead of Ln. Table 3 illustrates that the mean value of the government's economic governance capacity is 6.9015, and the median is 6.9370. This suggests that the level of marketisation across all provinces is moderate. The mean of tourism development quality is 0.0956, and the median is 0.0850. This suggests that tourism development quality is satisfactory. In addition, the distribution of the mean and median is not obviously unreasonable.

Table 3. Descriptive statistics of variables.

Variables	Mean	Standard Deviation	Minimum	Median	Maximum	Observation
TQ	0.0956	0.4440	0.0355	0.0850	0.2443	600
GC	6.9015	2.0628	2.5145	6.9370	11.1085	600
Economic Development	1.12e+04	7400.3271	3316.8647	8990.2222	3.93e+04	600
R&D Intensity	0.0134	0.0106	0.0020	0.0104	0.0595	600
Opening	0.3036	0.3719	0.0348	0.1309	1.6151	600
Transport Infrastructure	1.15e+05	7.49e+04	8517.7500	1.09e+05	3.06e+05	600
Government Intervention	0.2041	0.0937	0.0805	0.1844	0.5811	600

Comments 6: Explaining why the paper only applies FE? How about others such as RE, OLS? Please check the autocorrelation as well as heteroskedasticity.

Response 6: Thank you for the valuable comment. The reasons for applying FE instead of RE and OLS are as follows.

First, in econometric regression, OLS is generally used for cross-section data, while FE is mostly used to analyze panel data; Second, since our research object is the quality of tourism development in 30 provinces, there is no random sampling problem, so FE is used instead of RE; Third, due to the presence of individually related fixed effects for unobservables in our regression model, unbiased and valid regression results cannot be obtained using RE and OLS.

The results of autocorrelation are as follows:

F(1,29) = 10.064

Prob>F = 0.0036

According to the results, the null hypothesis is rejected, that is, there is autocorrelation in the model.

The results of heteroscedasticity are as follows:

chi2 (30) = 37.00

Prob>chi2 = 0.1770

According to the results, the null hypothesis is accepted, that is, there is no heteroskedasticity in the model.

In order to obtain the robust standard error of heteroscedasticity and serial correlation, we add the option of “vce(cluster)” in the basic regression.

Comments 7: Explaining why Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) is appropriate for the robustness check.

Response 7: Thank you for pointing this out. The reasons for using the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) for the robustness check include the following aspects. On one hand, there may be spatial effect when studying the influence of the government's economic governance capacity on the high-quality development of tourism. The use of Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) can effectively deal with the autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity of spatial data, and improve the accuracy of prediction and interpretation. On the other hand, the high-quality development of tourism may have a positive spatial spillover effect, that is, the high-quality development of tourism in this region may drive the high-quality development of tourism in neighboring areas. For example, with the improvement of tourism development in a certain region, the transportation infrastructure in that region will also be more perfect, and sound transportation infrastructure may have a radiating effect on the development of tourism in neighboring regions. On the whole, since Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) can examine both the spatial autoregression of the explained variables and the spillover effect between regions, we use Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to study the impact of the government's economic governance capacity on the high-quality development of tourism, so as to enhance the robustness of the conclusions of this paper.

Comments 8: The discussion is quite poor and does not clarify the novelty of the research. I think the article needs to reinforce this further.

Response 8: Thank you for this suggestion. We have further clarified the novelty of our research in the “5. Conclusions and Discussion”. (Page 16, Paragraph 1, Line 537-547)

Theoretical contributions are: First, it enriches the literature on the influencing factors of high-quality development of tourism. Most of the existing literature tests its impact on the tourism development quality from the perspectives of institutional quality, tourism resource endowment, cultural and tourism integration and urban-rural integration, while this paper innovatively examines its impact from the perspective of government's economic governance capacity. Second, it enriches the literature on the measurement of tourism high-quality development indicator. On the premise of grasping the connotation of high-quality development, the paper integrates the availability, rationality and representativeness of statistical measurement, and builds on existing research to constructs an evaluation system with the new development concept of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing.

Comments 9: The similarity index should be decreased. Actually, about 38% is unacceptable.

Response 9: Thank you for pointing this out. In order to reduce the similarity index, we further modify the content of the article according to the review report. We find that the evaluation index system of high-quality development of tourism and the calculation process of entropy value method in the paper have a high similarity rate. This is because this paper belongs to the same group as Zhang et al. (2024), and the evaluation index system of high-quality development of tourism constructed in this paper uses the same underlying data as the evaluation index system of high-quality development of tourism constructed by Zhang et al. (2024). However, the focus of these two papers is different, Zhang et al. (2024) focuses on the spatial and temporal evolution of tourism quality, while this paper focuses on finding the influencing factors affecting the high-quality development of the tourism industry and its functioning mechanism. In addition, since the calculation process of the entropy value method has a specific calculation process, we have deleted the calculation process of the entropy value method from the manuscript in order to reduce the similarity rate.

Reference:

Zhang, H.; Xia, Z.; Wang, J. Spatiotemporal Changes in China’s Tourism Industry Development. Sustain. 2024, 16, 3244.

Thanks again to the reviewer for your great help in improving the quality of our paper. Please criticize and correct the revised manuscript if there are any improper points.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, your article is an interesting scientific work that can be published for wide familiarization in the scientific environment. You did some serious research. The article presents important results characterizing the development of tourism in the regions of China.

Nevertheless, I recommend to improve the quality of interpretation of the results, to deepen the conclusions regarding the sustainability of tourism development in China. That is, try to explain in more detail how the results obtained from your research affect the indicators of sustainable tourism development in China.

I believe that in case of a small revision, your article will be more suitable for the requirements of the magazine.

Author Response

Dear reviewer，

On behalf of my co-authors, I sincerely appreciate for giving us an opportunity to revise the manuscript entitled “The Economic Governance Capability of the Government and High-Quality Development of China's Tourism Industry” (ID:sustainability-3119854). The comments are very valuable and have contributed a lot to improve the quality and readability of our manuscript. We have carefully considered your comments and highlighted the revisions and further explanations in red in the manuscript. The peer-to-peer reply to the reviewers' comments is a red font as shown below.
 

Comments 1: Nevertheless, I recommend to improve the quality of interpretation of the results, to deepen the conclusions regarding the sustainability of tourism development in China. That is, try to explain in more detail how the results obtained from your research affect the indicators of sustainable tourism development in China.

Response 1: Thank you for this suggestion. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have tried to explain in more details of the results. (Page 8, Paragraph 2, line 280-292)

We argue that the economic governance capacity of the government can achieve sustainable development of China's tourism primarily through rationally guiding resource allocation, maintaining fair market competition and promoting innovation of tourism enterprises. On one hand, the enhanced synergy between an efficacious market and an active government caused by the enhancement of the government's economic governance capacity, the tourism industry can rationally allocate resources in the market by developing new tourist attractions, improving tourism infrastructure, and providing tourism-related services, thus to realize sustainable tourism development. On the other hand, the improvement of the government's economic governance capacity can effectively reduce the extent of government involvement in economic activities and ensure free and fair market competition. In the competitive environment, tourism enterprises will continue to perform process innovation and product innovation, in turn to promote the sustainable development of tourism industry.

Thanks again to the reviewer for your great help in improving the quality of our paper. Please criticize and correct the revised manuscript if there are any improper points.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The following questions still require some thought on your part.
Major issues:
(1) The background of the study needs to be more brief in the abstract; for example, it is possible to point out the specific role of economic governance capacity to better lead to the research in this paper.
(2) The introduction details this paper's research background, necessity, and methods. However, the content of this part is lengthy, so it is recommended that it be streamlined appropriately and highlight the core issues and innovations of the research so that readers can grasp the article's main idea more quickly. In addition, in the literature review, the author can further analyze the internal relations and differences between different studies and clarify the advancement and deepening of this paper based on existing studies.
(3) In the variable selection section, it is suggested that the specific details of the model setting, such as the selection basis of control variables, be supplemented further to improve the repeatability and transparency of the research.
(4) In the conclusion section of the manuscript, the authors present the study's findings and managerial implications. However, the structure needs more clarity, and there needs to be more discussion about the theoretical contributions and limitations of the research. It is recommended that the final chapter's title be amended to 'Conclusions and Discussion' and that this section be subdivided into four distinct parts where appropriate: 1) Conclusions, 2) Theoretical Contributions, 3) Managerial Implication, and 4) Limitations. The authors are encouraged to supplement the missing elements to ensure the comprehensiveness and scholarly rigor of the paper.

Minor issues:
(1) There are some minor details that the author should pay attention to, such as chapter 5 after 3.5.2, but what about chapter 4 of the article? Besides, the authors should provide detailed table notes beneath each table to enhance the presented data's clarity and interpretability. Specifically, as demonstrated in Table 7, these notes should elucidate the significance of asterisks and the numerical values within parentheses, thereby facilitating a comprehensive understanding for the reader. These small mistakes should be avoided.
(2) In the 3.4.3 section, the author uses the ratio of Internet broadband users to the number of permanent residents at the end of the year to represent the level of information. Is this too simplified? Because the level of informatization also involves Internet applications, digital skills, information consumption, and other aspects.

Author Response

Dear reviewer，

On behalf of my co-authors, I sincerely appreciate for giving us an opportunity to revise the manuscript entitled “The Economic Governance Capability of the Government and High-Quality Development of China's Tourism Industry” (ID:sustainability-3119854). The comments are very valuable and have contributed a lot to improve the quality and readability of our manuscript. We have carefully considered your comments and highlighted the revisions and further explanations in red in the manuscript. The peer-to-peer reply to the reviewers' comments is a red font as shown below.

Comments 1: The background of the study needs to be more brief in the abstract; for example, it is possible to point out the specific role of economic governance capacity to better lead to the research in this paper.

Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have made the background of the study to be briefer in the abstract. (Page 1, Line 9-29).

Abstract: The economic governance capacity of local government in China is instrumental in fostering tourism development quality and sustainability from the aspects of leading resource allocation, maintaining market fairness and promoting enterprise innovation, yet this important aspect has received limited attention in present researches. China’s tourism development quality is evaluated in five dimensions in this study: innovation, greenness, coordination, openness, and sharing. Employing a fixed-effects model with data from 2000 to 2019 for 30 Chinese provinces, the paper empirically tests the influence of government economic governance capacity on the tourism development quality. Our findings reveal several key insights: (1) The economic governance capacity of the government significantly contributes to enhancing the tourism development quality. (2) It is shown in the regression results of the sub-indexes of the government's economic governance capacity and tourism development quality that the innovative development and green development of the tourism industry can be accelerated strongly by the government's economic governance capacity, while tourism development quality can be improved significantly by the development of non-state-owned economy, the development of factor market, the development of market intermediary organizations and the legal system. (3) It is shown in mechanism analysis that the government's economic governance capacity can stipulate regional competition, industrial structure upgrading and improve the level of informatization, and eventually improves tourism development quality. This comprehensive analysis sheds light on the intricate relationship between local government economic governance capacity and tourism development quality, offering a novel research perspective and valuable reference points for policymakers and scholars engaged in the analysis and construction of sustainable tourism development strategies.

Comments 2: The introduction details this paper's research background, necessity, and methods. However, the content of this part is lengthy, so it is recommended that it be streamlined appropriately and highlight the core issues and innovations of the research so that readers can grasp the article's main idea more quickly. In addition, in the literature review, the author can further analyze the internal relations and differences between different studies and clarify the advancement and deepening of this paper based on existing studies.

Response 2: Thanks for the valuable comments. Therefore, we have simplified the introduction and put the literature review in a separate section after the introduction. Also the marginal contributions of the study are added in the introduction so that the readers can grasp the article's main idea more quickly. (Page 2, Line 80-90)

The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows. First, it enriches the literature on the influencing factors of high-quality development of tourism. Most of the existing literature tests its impact on the tourism development quality from the perspectives of institutional quality, tourism resource endowment, cultural and tourism integration and urban-rural integration, while this paper innovatively examines its impact from the perspective of government's economic governance capacity. Second, it enriches the literature on the measurement of tourism high-quality development indicator. On the premise of grasping the connotation of high-quality development, the paper integrates the availability, rationality and representativeness of statistical measurement, and builds on existing research to constructs an evaluation system with the new development concept of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing.

In addition, in the literature review, the internal relations and differences between different studies are further analyzed and the advancement and deepening of this paper based on existing studies are summarized. (Page 3, Paragraph 2, Line 119-129).

To sum up, detailed analysis on the influencing factors of tourism development quality is conducted from various aspects in the existing literature, yet little studies has focused on the impact of economic governance capacity of the government. In addition, the existing literature mainly studies from the standpoint of institutions, resources and culture, but few has focused on the market’s role in improving tourism development quality. In light of the present research literature, the paper systematically tests the causal relationship of the government's economic governance capacity on tourism development quality and its mechanism by constructing an evaluation index system for high-quality tourism development. This study not only helps to enrich the literature in the field of tourism development quality, but also supports to promote better combination of effective government and efficient market.

Comments 3: In the variable selection section, it is suggested that the specific details of the model setting, such as the selection basis of control variables, be supplemented further to improve the repeatability and transparency of the research.

Response 3: Thank you for this instructive comment. Based on this comment, we have further supplemented the specific details of the selection basis of control variables. (Page 3, Line 138-144).

X_it represents a series of control variables, including the level of economic development, R&D density, the degree of openness to the outside world, the level of transport infrastructure and the degree of government intervention. These control variables are related to independent variables and dependent variables, but there is no causal relationship between them and the explanatory variable of the government's economic governance capacity. Therefore, we select the above five indicators as control variables.

Comments 4: In the conclusion section of the manuscript, the authors present the study's findings and managerial implications. However, the structure needs more clarity, and there needs to be more discussion about the theoretical contributions and limitations of the research. It is recommended that the final chapter's title be amended to 'Conclusions and Discussion' and that this section be subdivided into four distinct parts where appropriate: 1) Conclusions, 2) Theoretical Contributions, 3) Managerial Implication, and 4) Limitations. The authors are encouraged to supplement the missing elements to ensure the comprehensiveness and scholarly rigor of the paper.

Response 4: Thank you for the valuable comment. Base on your comment, we first change the title to “Conclusions and Discussion”, and then add theoretical contributions and limitations content to the conclusions and discussion. (Page 16, Paragraph 1, Line 537-547 and Page 17, Paragraph 6, Line 583-591).

2)Theoretical Contributions

Theoretical contributions are: First, it enriches the literature on the influencing factors of high-quality development of tourism. Most of the existing literature tests its impact on the tourism development quality from the perspectives of institutional quality, tourism resource endowment, cultural and tourism integration and urban-rural integration, while this paper innovatively examines its impact from the perspective of government's economic governance capacity. Second, it enriches the literature on the measurement of tourism high-quality development indicator. On the premise of grasping the connotation of high-quality development, the paper integrates the availability, rationality and representativeness of statistical measurement, and builds on existing research to constructs an evaluation system with the new development concept of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing.

4) Limitations

The paper quantitatively evaluates the impact of the government's economic governance capacity on tourism development quality, which provides a useful reference for promoting the subsequent better shift from quantitative expansion to qualitative improvement of tourism. However, due to the limitations of objective conditions such as poor data availability and non-uniform criteria for indicator construction, this paper fails to explore deeper research topics. Therefore, the improvement direction of future research mainly includes the following points: First, to build a more comprehensive index to measure the economic governance capacity of the government; Second, based on this study, we further identify whether there is a spillover effect.

Comments 5: There are some minor details that the author should pay attention to, such as chapter 5 after 3.5.2, but what about chapter 4 of the article? Besides, the authors should provide detailed table notes beneath each table to enhance the presented data's clarity and interpretability. Specifically, as demonstrated in Table 7, these notes should elucidate the significance of asterisks and the numerical values within parentheses, thereby facilitating a comprehensive understanding for the reader. These small mistakes should be avoided.

Response 5: Thank you for pointing this out. We have checked carefully and revised the number of the chapters and sections accordingly. In addition, we have also added detailed table notes under each table base on your suggestion.

Comments 6: In the 3.4.3 section, the author uses the ratio of Internet broadband users to the number of permanent residents at the end of the year to represent the level of information. Is this too simplified? Because the level of informatization also involves Internet applications, digital skills, information consumption, and other aspects.

Response 6: Thank you for pointing this out. We would like to explain the  reasons why we use the ratio of Internet broadband users to the number of permanent residents at the end of the year to represent the level of information: First, the existing literature has adopted this index to measure the level of informatization (Zhu et al.,2019). Second, the number of Internet broadband users and the number of permanent residents can be obtained from the China Statistical Yearbook. Third, due to the level of informatization, some data are difficult to obtain, such as digital skills and information consumption, etc. Therefore, we use the ratio of Internet broadband users to the number of permanent residents at the end of the year to represent the level of information. In future studies, we will try to construct more comprehensive indicators to measure the level of informatization based on the valuable comments of reviewer.

References:

Zhu, Q.; Bai, J.; Peng, C.; Zhu C. Does informatization increase agricultural productivity? China. Rural. Econ. 2019, 22-40.

Thanks again to the reviewer for your great help in improving the quality of our paper. Please criticize and correct the revised manuscript if there are any improper points.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Review attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer，

On behalf of my co-authors, I sincerely appreciate for giving us an opportunity to revise the manuscript entitled “The Economic Governance Capability of the Government and High-Quality Development of China's Tourism Industry” (ID:sustainability-3119854). The comments are very valuable and have contributed a lot to improve the quality and readability of our manuscript. We have carefully considered your comments and highlighted the revisions and further explanations in red in the manuscript. The peer-to-peer reply to the reviewers' comments is a red font as shown below.

Comments 1: The classification of variables - control and explanatory – from Table 2 should be justified. Why are certain control variables (Transport Infrastructure, Government Intervention) not considered explanatory?

Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. The reasons for taking transport infrastructure and government intervention as control variables rather than explanatory variables are listed as follows.

First, the main research focus of this paper is to explore the impact of the government's economic governance capacity on the high-quality development of tourism, which has not been paid much attention to in previous literatures, while the impact of transportation infrastructure and government intervention on tourism development has been studied in a large number of literatures (Jiang,2006; Zhang and Zhao,2015). Second, the basic contents of the government's economic governance capacity include the transformation of government functions, the construction of a government governance system with clear responsibilities and administration according to law, the innovation and improvement of macro-control, and the improvement of government governance efficiency. It is important to study its impact on the high-quality development of tourism, while transport infrastructure and government intervention have less impact on the high-quality development of tourism compared to the government's economic governance capacity.

References:

Zhang, G.; Zhao, J. A spatial econometric study on the impact of transportation infrastructure on regional tourism economic development. Econ. Mana. 2015, 37, 116-126.

Jiang, S. Analysis of government function positioning in the development of China's tourism industry. Yunnan. Geogra. Envi. Res. 2006, 108-112.

Comments 2: In the explanations for Equation 13, a notation correction should be made: w is the spatial weight matrix => W is the spatial weight matrix

Response 2: Thank you for pointing this out. We have checked and made the correction accordingly in the manuscript. (Page 10, Line 341)

Comments 3: Since most of the presented results consist of displaying the values of the regression coefficients in various tables, it should be explained at the beginning how to interpret these values.

Response 3: Thank you for this instructive comment. Base on your comment, we have provided detailed table notes that elucidate the significance of asterisks and the numerical values within parentheses beneath each table, to help facilitate a comprehensive understanding for the reader. In addition, the explanations of regression coefficients are placed in the upper paragraph of the corresponding table.

Comments 4: It should be mentioned that in the context of determining regression coefficients, the t- value refers to the t-statistics obtained for each coefficient in a significance test.

Response 4: Thank you for reminding us of the role of t-value in the regression results. However, the t value in the table of each regression results in this paper is the process value of the t-test, which is used to calculate the p-value. Our study uses the p-value to check whether the independent variable associated with that coefficient has a significant effect on the dependent variable. P value less than 0.01 indicates ***, it is significant at the level of 1%; P value less than 0.05 indicates **, it is significant at the level of 5%; P value less than 0.1 indicates *, it is significant at the level of 10%.

Comments 5: It should also be mentioned that the t-test for regression coefficients serves to check whether the independent (or control) variable associated with that coefficient has a significant effect on the dependent variable. How to interpret these values should be described. Also, interpretations should be provided for regression coefficients with negative values.

Response 5: Thanks for the valuable comments. Our study uses the p-value to check whether the independent variable associated with that coefficient has a significant effect on the dependent variable. P value less than 0.01 indicates ***, it is significant at the level of 1%; P value less than 0.05 indicates **, it is significant at the level of 5%; P value less than 0.1 indicates *, it is significant at the level of 10%.

With your suggestion, we have added the following to section 4.1. (Page 9, Line 313-317)

In addition, the reason why the economic governance capacity of the government is negatively correlated with openness is that openness focuses on solving the internal and external linkage problems of development, while the government's economic governance capacity is usually reflected in the degree of marketization, so it is difficult to have a positive and significant impact on openness.

Thanks again to the reviewer for your great help in improving the quality of our paper. Please criticize and correct the revised manuscript if there are any improper points.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Sir

Thank you for your email. The paper is much better. However, I have a question:

The literature review should be more discussions and more update recent studies. The current section is not enough.

Thank you

Author Response

Dear reviewer，

On behalf of my co-authors, I sincerely appreciate for giving us an opportunity to revise the manuscript entitled “The Economic Governance Capability of the Government and High-Quality Development of China's Tourism Industry” (ID: sustainability-3119854). The comments are very valuable and have contributed a lot to improve the quality and readability of our manuscript. We have carefully considered your comments and highlighted the revisions and further explanations in red in the manuscript. The peer-to-peer reply to the reviewers' comments is a red font as shown below.

Comments 1: The literature review should be more discussions and more update recent studies. The current section is not enough.

Response 1: Thank you for this instructive comment. Based on this comment, we have expanded the content of the literature review. (Page2-4, Line 91-162)

2. Literature Review

This paper is directly related to the following two parts. The first part of literature review summarizes the basic connotation of the economic governance capacity and discusses its impact on economic development, the second part studies the influencing factors of the high-quality development of tourism.

Williamson (2005) believed that different types of organizations should choose different contract structures and corresponding governance mechanisms, and his theory has also become one of the theoretical sources of governance theory. The rule of law is closely related to the national governance system and governance capacity, and the rule of law is the basic way of national governance (Zhang, 2014). The modernization of national governance should at least reform the relationship among the government, society and citizens on both ideas and behaviors (Li and Chen, 2015). Government governance is different from specific government behaviors such as government policies and revenue and expenditure as operational results, and it is more inclined to refer to the process, method and system of government power operation (Bevier, 2009). As an important aspect of institutions, the process and method of government governance have certain path dependent characteristics (Zhang and Wang, 2013). Different from other aspects of governance, economic governance emphasizes the application of economic theory in the governance process (Stiglitz, 2002). As an important part of national governance capacity, economic governance capacity is usually summarized as the ability of the government and the market to regulate economic subjects (Liu, 2015). The government's economic governance capacity is mainly reflected in creating an environment conducive to economic development, so as to better play the decisive role of the market in allocating resources (Xie et al., 2020).

Economic governance capacity plays an important role in improving the quality of economic development. Fang and Ma (2019) pointed out that there were obvious inter-provincial differences in high-quality development, and advocated that regions should follow the path of distinctive economic governance according to their own economic realities. Kraay and Kaufmann (2002) emphasized that higher economic output does not mean that the level of governance will be naturally improved, and on the contrary, the improvement of governance capacity has a more significant positive effect on economic development. Zhang and Wang (2013) constructed a governance index to study the relationship between governance capacity and output, and found that the impact of governance capacity on economic output varied significantly in different income stages, with the high-income stage roughly twice that of the low-income stage.

It is found in the literature review that many researches have been made on the influencing factors of tourism development quality in-depth. First, the institution. Zhang (2019) indicated that there are a series of practical problems such as imperfect system and mechanism and poor tourism experience in the high-quality development of China's tourism industry, and argued that institutional design is vital to the governance of tourism in its high-quality development. Liu and Han (2020) saw the institutional environment a guarantee factor for the high-quality development of tourism economy, and quality of the institution is not only closely linked to the level of quality and efficiency of the tourism industry, but also has a significant influence on the effectiveness and sustainability of the changes in the factor structure. Second, the endowment of tourism resources. Tan and Sun (2019) studied the cross-section data of 38 countries in the world, 31 provinces and regions in China and 14 regions in Xinjiang, and found out that tourism development is positively linked with the abundance of tourism resources, which can promote tourism development quality. Li et al. (2020) found that resource endowment is a crucial basic condition for the high-quality development of the tourism economy through their study of the spatial distribution characteristics of high-quality tourist attractions in the Yellow River Basin. Third, the integration of culture and tourism. Liu (2019) analyzed the current situation of the development of cultural industry and tourism, and found that there is a strong interdependence between culture and tourism, and the integration of culture and tourism represents a significant avenue for the attainment of superior standards of tourism development, and proposes to improve the integration of culture and tourism. Xu et al. (2024) also believed that the integration of culture and tourism has become a significant factor in the advancement of cultural tourism. The extent of integration is a key element in the promotion of high-quality global tourism development. Fourth, urban-rural integration. A study conducted by Wang et al. utilizing data from China's provincial panels over the past decade revealed that urban-rural integration has a positive impact on the high-quality development of the entire tourism economy (Wang et al., 2023).

To sum up, detailed analysis on the influencing factors of tourism development quality is conducted from various aspects in the existing literature, yet little studies has focused on the impact of economic governance capacity of the government. In addition, the existing literature mainly studies from the standpoint of institutions, resources and culture, but few has focused on the market’s role in improving tourism development quality. In light of the present research literature, the paper systematically tests the causal relationship of the government's economic governance capacity on tourism development quality and its mechanism by constructing an evaluation index system for high-quality tourism development. This study not only helps to enrich the literature in the field of tourism development quality, but also supports to promote better combination of effective government and efficient market.

Reference:

Williamson, O. E. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism. New York: Free Press, 2005.

Zhang, W. Rule of Law and Modernization of State Governance. Chin. Law. Sci. 2014, 61-70.

Li, W.; Chen, X. Evaluation framework for the modernization of government governance capacity. Chin. Pub. Admin.2015, 23-28.

Bevier, M. Key Concepts in Governance. Sage Publishing Limited, 2009.

Zhang, H.; Wang, Y. Stage evolution of the relationship between government governance capacity and economic growth: a cross-country empirical comparison based on different income stages. Compar. Econ & Soc. Sys, 2013, 151-159.

Liu, C. Modernization of Economic Governance System and Governance Capacity: The Dual Perspective of Government and Market. Economist. 2015, 28-34.

Fang, D.; Ma, W. Measurement and spatial-temporal characteristics of China's inter-provincial high-quality development. Reg. Econ. Rev. 2019, 61-70.

Kraay, A.; Kaufmann, D. Growth without governance. The World Bank, 2002.

Zhang, H. Governance Logic and Institutional Innovation of High-quality Development of Tourism in the New Era. Conte. Econ. Manag. 2019, 41, 60-66.

Tan, Z.; Sun, G. The Basis of High-quality Development of Tourism: An Analysis on the Gospel Theory of Tourism Resources. Soc. Scient. 2019, 108-115.

Li, D.; Zhang, X.; Lu, L.; Zhang, X.; Li, L. Spatial Distribution Characteristics and Influencing Factors of High-level Tourist Attractions in the Yellow River Basin. Econ. Geogr. 2020, 40, 70-80.

Liu, Z. Integrated Development of Culture and Tourism: Theory, Practice and Future Direction. People. Forum. Aca. Front. 2019, 92-97.

Xu, D.; Li, X.; Yan, S., Cui, L.; Liu, X.; Zheng, Y. A Quantitative Model to Measure the Level of Culture and Tourism Integration Based on a Spatial Perspective: A Case Study of Beijing from 2000 to 2022. Sustainability. 2024, 16, 4276.

Wang, R.; Gao, L.; Zhu, Y.; Liu, Y.; Li, Y.; He, J. Urban–Rural Integration Empowers High-Quality Development of Tourism Economy: Mechanism and Empirical Evidence. Sustainability. 2023, 15, 15893.

Thanks again to the reviewer for your great help in improving the quality of our paper. Please criticize and correct the revised manuscript if there are any improper points.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The following questions still require some thought on your part.

(1) In Section 4.5.1, based on the significant differences in economic development level, physical geographical environment, and local institutional background among different regions, the author proposes a research strategy to divide the whole sample into three areas: eastern, central, and western. However, no detailed explanation has been provided about the specific division criteria of these three regions, that is, how they are clearly defined and distinguished. Therefore, to enhance the research's transparency and reproducibility, the authors need to clarify the basis and criteria for the division of these areas further.

(2) In the conclusion and discussion section, the content of the text needs to be more standardization. This section can be subdivided into four appropriate parts: 1) Conclusions, 2) Theoretical Contributions, 3) Managerial Implication, and 4) Limitations. In addition, in this part, it is suggested that the author quote the core literature in related fields in a timely and appropriate manner during the discussion process to show the similarities and differences between this research and existing research and strengthen the credibility and depth of the argument.

(3) Section 3.4 presents the descriptive statistical analysis presented in Table 3 based on raw data rather than its logarithmic form Ln. Given this, the definitions of "Economic Development" and "Transport Infrastructure" in Table 2 must also be adjusted to ensure the consistency of full-text data processing and analysis accuracy.

(4) There are some minor errors that the authors need to pay attention to, for example, the appearance of "[Error! Reference source not found.]" in lines 61 and 411, suggesting that the author double-check the full text for revision.

(5) Is it necessary that parts of Table 6 appear three times in the manuscript after lines 301, 320, and 333? It is recommended that the author delete the duplicate table content in the text.

Author Response

Dear reviewer，

On behalf of my co-authors, I sincerely appreciate for giving us an opportunity to revise the manuscript entitled “The Economic Governance Capability of the Government and High-Quality Development of China's Tourism Industry” (ID: sustainability-3119854). The comments are very valuable and have contributed a lot to improve the quality and readability of our manuscript. We have carefully considered your comments and highlighted the revisions and further explanations in red in the manuscript. The peer-to-peer reply to the reviewers' comments is a red font as shown below.

Comments 1: In Section 4.5.1, based on the significant differences in economic development level, physical geographical environment, and local institutional background among different regions, the author proposes a research strategy to divide the whole sample into three areas: eastern, central, and western. However, no detailed explanation has been provided about the specific division criteria of these three regions, that is, how they are clearly defined and distinguished. Therefore, to enhance the research's transparency and reproducibility, the authors need to clarify the basis and criteria for the division of these areas further.

Response 1: Thank you for this instructive comment. Based on your suggestion, we have added the details about the specific division criteria of these three regions. (Page 14, Line 486-496)

Considering that the northeast region only includes Liaoning province, Jilin province and Heilongjiang province, the results are likely to be insignificant due to the small sample size in the econometric analysis. Due to its location, Liaoning is usually considered in the eastern region in China in many authoritative literatures, such as the article published by Wang et al. (2019) in the Journal of Geography. Jilin and Heilongjiang are classified in the central part of China by analogy with Central China. Based on these, the eastern region includes Beijing, Tianjin, Liaoning, Hebei, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Shandong, Guangdong and Hainan; the central region comprises Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangxi, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jilin and Heilongjiang; the western region includes Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang.

Reference:

Wang, L.; Zeng, G.; He, B. Spatial spillover effect of informatization on tourism industry development. Acta. Geogr. Sini. 2019, 74, 366-378.

Comments 2: In the conclusion and discussion section, the content of the text needs to be more standardization. This section can be subdivided into four appropriate parts: 1) Conclusions, 2) Theoretical Contributions, 3) Managerial Implication, and 4) Limitations. In addition, in this part, it is suggested that the author quote the core literature in related fields in a timely and appropriate manner during the discussion process to show the similarities and differences between this research and existing research and strengthen the credibility and depth of the argument.

Response 2: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have subdivided section 5 into four parts: 5.1 Conclusions, 5.2 Theoretical Contributions, 5.3 Policy Implications, 5.4 Limitations. In addition, we have added citations as appropriate to the 5.2 Theoretical Contributions. (Page 16-18, Line 555-639)

Comments 3: Section 3.4 presents the descriptive statistical analysis presented in Table 3 based on raw data rather than its logarithmic form Ln. Given this, the definitions of "Economic Development" and "Transport Infrastructure" in Table 2 must also be adjusted to ensure the consistency of full-text data processing and analysis accuracy.

Response 3: We are very thankful to your comments. Since the logarithmic forms of economic development and transport infrastructure are used in our full-text regression analysis, to ensure the consistency of full-text data processing and analysis accuracy, we have modified the descriptive statistical results of economic development and transport infrastructure in the descriptive statistics table and use their logarithmic forms instead of the original data. (Page 7, Line 273)

Table 3. Descriptive statistics of variables.

Variables	Mean	Standard Deviation	Minimum	Median	Maximum	Observation
TQ	0.0956	0.4440	0.0355	0.0850	0.2443	600
GC	6.9015	2.0628	2.5145	6.9370	11.1085	600
Economic Development	9.1691	0.5199	8.1068	9.1039	10.5778	600
R&D Intensity	0.0134	0.0106	0.0020	0.0104	0.0595	600
Opening	0.3036	0.3719	0.0348	0.1309	1.6151	600
Transport Infrastructure	11.3405	0.9025	9.0499	11.5961	12.6305	600
Government Intervention	0.2041	0.0937	0.0805	0.1844	0.5811	600

Comments 4: There are some minor errors that the authors need to pay attention to, for example, the appearance of "[Error! Reference source not found.]" in lines 61 and 411, suggesting that the author double-check the full text for revision.

Response 4: Thank you for the suggestion. Base on your suggestion, we have checked the full text thoroughly and made revision accordingly.

Comments 5: Is it necessary that parts of Table 6 appear three times in the manuscript after lines 301, 320, and 333? It is recommended that the author delete the duplicate table content in the text.

Response 5: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have deleted the duplicate table content in the text.

Thanks again to the reviewer for your great help in improving the quality of our paper. Please criticize and correct the revised manuscript if there are any improper points.