The Practice of Religious Tourism among Generation Z’s Higher Education Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting and comprehensive study. Methodology is clear and sound. Was ethical clearance  considered unnecessary due to anonymity of online survey responses? This could be made explicit.

For consideration of improvements:

Writing:

Citations were often inaccurate throughout the text, Brackets are only required around the date when stating the author in a sentence, eg. p. 10, line 345 (rather than, Tsang (Tsang, 2011), just Tsang (2011), and numerous other examples, eg. p.10, lines, 361, 370, 37404, 377, etc, throughout the article.

Generally the paper was clearly written, however, a couple of sentences were unclear and need re-wording: p. 12, line 443; p. 12 line 443. Page 8, lines 250-253 the meaning was unclear. Page 8, line 261 needs to specify the group at the beginning of the paragraph because both groups had been referred to in the paragraph before, so it was unclear to which group the author was referring.

p. 4, line 155 the word "decompose" would preferably be replaced with "deconstructed" due to meaning nuances in English.

Some figures used a mix of English and Spanish words - this needs to be made consistent.

Content:

I think the results could be a little clearer in some ways. The results seem to blurr with discussion, which was confusing. I think it would read better to separate these out. 

Hofstede's cultural dimensions were clearly explained, but the scoring system of these dimensions was not very explicit. This would help add clarity with the reporting of the results.

I hope these suggested amendments assist in the publication of the article. Best wishes with it. 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1,

Thank you very much for the effort and time spent in reviewing our paper.

Regarding the ethical issues in the respondents' answers, we have noted that we have no ethical issues to highlight since all responses are anonymous and have been considered as a whole.

We have changed different references throughout the text as indicated to us.

We have changed the wording of the lines indicated on pages 4, 8 and 12 as you have indicated.

We have changed this word

We have also revised the entire document to eliminate the Spanish words that had escaped.

The results, discussion and conclusions have been separated to further clarify the content of each section.

The Hofstede scale has been made explicit to clarify its use.

Thank you for your suggestions for improvement.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper that uses an excellently presented  cultural (via Hofstede) and generational approach to choices regarding travel particularly religiously inspired travel. The paper is rich in theory and careful in its application. Some critical points

1. there are some non-english expressions in figures
2. Tell us what country/society we are learning about. with nearly 90% claiming to be religious it seems likely to be Hispanic.
3.  Presumably the data were collected pre-Covid 19. Since the article speculates about the relationship between religion and travel given certain data about Gen Z, It could comment much more on the effects of Covid on the relationships observed and the effects of religion on the impact of Covid. On the other hand the article is long as it is.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

Thank you very much for the effort and time spent in reviewing our paper.

We have changed the Spanish expressions in the figures. That was an error.

As explained in the Methodology section, the procedure to find the respondents is totally random and anonymous, therefore we cannot know the nationality of the respondents, they are probably Spanish, but we cannot be sure.

We have added this paragraph linking religious tourism to Covid-19.

Thank you for your suggestions for improvement.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The title of the paper is quite expressive and it corresponds with the content of the paper. The abstract is specific and concise, and it contains the motivation, objectives, theoretical framework, methodology and main results in a brief and concise manner. The keywords are also adequate and representative for the paper’s content. The content of the paper reflects title correctly, each topic, that are written on abstract, are detailed on paper clearly. The article is following in sequence all the steps provided in the methodology of research, the theme of research being argued in a suitable manner, with sufficient and quite clear interpretations and correlations between the variables analyzed in the study. I consider that the results of the study are in a good level, and provides a scientific advance that is of sufficient importance to interest researchers with backgrounds across the tourism domain.

Despite all above-mentioned positive aspects, I would like to make some (minor) comments/recommendations in order to improve your paper.

First, I consider that the introduction is correct, but you need to pointed out shortly the hypotheses and research questions that you are going to try to resolve.

The bibliography is very extensive (and I it think it is correct), but some of references are more or less outdated and, at least some of titles, without really helping the argument for their theory or research approach chosen. Therefore I consider that the authors should keep just the most relevant and up-to-date ones.

In addition, I suggest strengthening your work, if it is possible, with more authors who have already published their work in the journal Religion.

Please note that the legend of the figure 4 contains terms in Spanish language!!!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3,

Thank you very much for the effort and time spent in reviewing our paper.

We have added a paragraph at the end of the introduction where we clarify the research questions of our paper.

In response to reviewer 3 we have removed outdated references throughout the text. These deleted references are: Bond (1987), Inkeles and Levinson (1969) y Rokeach (1973). The rest of the older references are necessary for their contribution to the study.

We have strengthened our work with more authors who have already published their work in the journal Religions:

Leonowicz-Bukała, I., Adamski, A., & Jupowicz-Ginalska, A. (2021). Twitter in Marketing Practice of the Religious Media. An Empirical Study on Catholic Weeklies in Poland. Religions, 12(6), 421. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12060421

Cívico-Ariza, A., Colomo-Magaña, E., & González-García, E. (2020). Religious Values and Young People: Analysis of the Perception of Students from Secular and Religious Schools (Salesian Pedagogical Model). Religions, 11(8), 415. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11080415

We have changed the Spanish expressions in the figures. That was an error.

Thank you for your suggestions for improvement.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx