A Non-Compensatory Index of Community Participation in Cross-Border Tourism Development Processes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The subject of the article is very interesting, current and very important for the further sustainable development of tourism, and the article itself is undoubtedly worth publishing. However, I will allow myself to point out a few shortcomings:

The article is titled "A non-compensatory index of community participation in interterritorial tourism development processes", but the purpose does not mention tourism.

The abstract lacks brief information on the research methodology.

The section "2.6. Data" requires improvement, as it lacks information on the method of conducting the study and selecting respondents.

The authors almost completely omitted the issues of the limitations of their study, and such undoubtedly exist. Several of them were indicated in the comments.

The "Conclusions" section is missing.

Detailed comments are included in the text.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
1. Summary
Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted in the re-submitted files.
2. Questions for General Evaluation	Reviewer’s Evaluation	Response and Revisions
Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references?	Yes	We are grateful to the Reviewer.   We thank the Reviewer. We are grateful to the Reviewer.     We have improved the description of our methods by following the suggestions of the Reviewer. We have improved the presentation of results by following the suggestions of the Reviewer. We have improved the conclusions by following the suggestions of the Reviewer.
Are all the cited references relevant to the research?	Yes
Is the research design appropriate?	Yes
Are the methods adequately described?	Must be improved
Are the results clearly presented?	Can be improved
Are the conclusions supported by the results?	Must be improved
We thank the Reviewer for the very positive feedback. We respond to the Reviewer’s comments point by point below. Changes are highlighted in yellow in the manuscript.   3. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Comments 1:  The article is titled "A non-compensatory index of community participation in interterritorial tourism development processes", but the purpose does not mention tourism. Response 1: We have not understood this comment, because at page 2, paragraph 1, line 45, we wrote: “The purpose of this study is to develop a benchmarking tool, that synthesizes information about community participation in interterritorial sustainable tourism development processes”. In the abstract too, lines 12-13: “We propose a composite index to measure and benchmark community participation in cross-border tourism development processes”.   Comments 2:  The abstract lacks brief information on the research methodology. Response 2: Agree. Accordingly, we have added in the end of the abstract: “We apply the proposed index to ten Croatian and Italian lands, involved in a European development project. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with residents, according to an availability sampling design. We obtained 879 valid questionnaires. The robustness of the resulting index is tested through an uncertainty and a sensitivity analysis.” (page 1, lines 25-28).   Comments 3:  The section "2.6. Data" requires improvement, as it lacks information on the method of conducting the study and selecting respondents. Response 3: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have added: “Destination managers and interviewers jointly identified the places of greatest tourist interest and the times of largest turnover, to maximize the number of interviews and, consequently, of responses. According to the availability sampling design, interviewers sub-mitted the questionnaire to all the non-residents found at the chosen times and locations. After a brief presentation of the Project and of the survey purpose, each interviewee decided whether to answer or not.” (page 10, paragraph 3, lines 469-474)   Comments 4:  The authors almost completely omitted the issues of the limitations of their study, and such undoubtedly exist. Several of them were indicated in the comments. Response 4: Agree. Accordingly, we have added: -          “On the one hand, non-compensatory CIs are essential when dealing with multidimensional phenomena where the high performance of one dimension cannot compensate, in the practice, for the underperformance of another. On the other hand, the scope of non-compensatory aggregation algorithms is restricted to ranking and benchmarking, as opposite to that of compensatory functions. The latter allows us to investigate the relationships between the index components, but they cannot be employed for benchmarking in the presence of area-level degenerate distributions of survey responses, as in our empirical setting. This is the main limitation of this study: the propounded CI cannot be employed to model the causal relations of participation with other relevant constructs, contribute to theory nor develop new conceptualizations.” (page 16, paragraph 5, lines 694-703); -          “With reference to the empirical application, we considered just ten lands, thus our findings cannot be generalized and the stability of results may be overestimated. Future research might consider larger sets of areas, as well as other aggregation functions and weighting systems. A further limitation of this work consists in the availability sampling employed. Although we initially devised a stratified design, determining the target sample size through the Cochran’s formula [81], non-responses forced interviewers to fall back on availability sampling. This way, we could not compute design weights to remove self-selection and non-response bias from the collected survey data.”(page 17, paragraph 2, lines 713-720).   Comments 5:  The "Conclusions" section is missing. Response 5: Agree. Accordingly, we have added a Conclusion section, where we have moved the concluding remarks, limitations and future research directions from the Discussion section (pages 16-17, lines 665-725).   We have responded to the detailed comments made by the Reviewer in the pdf version of the manuscript, point by point, in the same pdf, that we attach.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A non-compensatory index of community participation in interterritorial tourism development processes

This paper proposes a composite index to measure and benchmark community participation in interterritorial tourism development processes. The index synthesizes information regarding three dimensions of this construct, deemed very important by the extant literature: resident engagement in the planning process, willingness to proactively welcome tourists and provide tourist services directly on sharing economy platforms. This study offers a methodological innovation using response rates to open-ended questions to measure residents’ engagement in tourism planning. The findings indicate that this index is a very relevant and useful tool for tourism recovery and innovation planning, including compliance with measures to prevent the spread of future infections.

Comments

ü  The introduction of the article is long in length and has no clear targeting. It does not give the reader a quick understanding of the article. It mixes many concepts and complicates things that they shouldn't be. It should be changed to make the contribution of the article clearer.

ü  Also, it needs to be clarified how the index proposed by the authors will benefit tourism growth.

ü  The article contains the literature review in the introduction, this should be changed and there should be a separate section for the literature review of the article

ü  The article omits a related bibliography of DSM models; they should definitely be mentioned. The authors should enrich the literature review with relevant papers such as Cuyvers et al. 1995) and Konstantakopoulou and Tsionas (2024).

ü  In the 2.6 Data section of the paper, it fails to clearly justify why the study site/location (small lands involved in EXCOVER) was selected for this particular study.

ü  The entire paper is focused on only one region. This means that generalizing the study outcomes to other (situations, destinations, or countries) is problematic. It needs to clearly provide what other region can learn from this study.

ü  The specification of the model should be made clear.

 

References

Cuyvers, L., De Pelsmacker P., Rayp G., Roozen, I.T.M. (1995). A decision support model for the planning and assessment of export promotion activities by government export promotion institutions: the Belgian case. International Journal of Research in Marketing 12(2), 173–186

Konstantakopoulou, I., Tsionas, M. (2024). Identifying Export Opportunities: Empirical Evidence from the Southern Euro Area Countries. Open Economies Review 35, 41–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11079-023-09715-8

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

 Extensive editing of English language required.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript submitted for review concerns the issue of community participation in interterritorial tourism development processes. In particular, the authors set themselves the goal of creating a non-compensatory index concerning this issue. As is commonly known, in the EU, special emphasis is placed on implementing the concept of civil society, which actively participates in the socio-economic life of its country. The presented manuscript fits into this trend. Especially since tourism is a dynamically developing branch of industry, which generates large revenues. It is also important for local communities and the protection of nature and the environment.

The manuscript submitted for review concerns the issue of community participation in interterritorial tourism development processes. In particular, the authors set themselves the goal of creating a non-compensatory index concerning this issue. As is commonly known, in the EU, special emphasis is placed on implementing the concept of civil society, which actively participates in the socio-economic life of its country. The presented manuscript fits into this trend. Especially since tourism is a dynamically developing branch of industry, which generates large revenues. It is also important for local communities and the protection of nature and the environment.

Materials and methods were also presented correctly and comprehensively.

The Results chapter comprehensively presents the data obtained. The discussion is correct and well related to the presented results.

The conclusions are accurate and justified.

My comment concerns the way the manuscript is presented. Namely, the authors have used only continuous text and tables. This is quite difficult to understand. I suggest considering the possibility of introducing flowcharts and graphs into the text, for variety.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

The paper in this version is improved.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required.