Cultural Integration and Rural Tourism Development: A Scoping Literature Review

Reviewer 1

Line 55ff     This is not a good example for cultural tourism/integration, this is nature tourism

Thank you for your helpful feedback.

Yes, we agree our iteration of the study is a bit confusing. We also agree that tourism in the Khunjerab National Park is based on its natural resources. However, the introduction of hunting is a culture integration affected by the weight of colonisation. Trophy hunting is also known as ‘hunting with the camera’ and it starts by colonisers to fabricate and domesticate the animals of distant colonial territories. More evidence could be found at:

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/

9780203004883-10/hunting-camera-james-ryan

Thanks for pointing out this case. We also revised and rewrote it to make a closer connection to cultures and colonisation.

Line 90     “This study aims to dismantle the homogeneous view of cultural integration in rural  tourism and asks three questions” If this is based on a scoping literature review, then having this aim at the start appears like a biased approach. The authors may want to rephrase this.

Thanks for your advice. We rewrote it.

Please find our changes at line 94.

Line 133          State why only Web of Science core and not also GoogleScholar which has a deeper coverage?

Thanks for your question. We use Web of Science (WoS) because it is reproductive and more rigorous. GoogleScholar can only show studies for the first 100 pages and more studies after 100 pages cannot be shown. In addition, results searched by each time is not the same on GoogleScholar. For example, it we choose to show 20 results per page and every time the 20,000 results returned are not the same. Thus, we choose to use WoS.

More details can be found in this paper:

Harzing, A.-W., & Alakangas, S. (2016). Google Scholar, Scopus and the Web of Science: a longitudinal and cross-disciplinary comparison. scientometrics, 106(2), 787-804.

Line 138          “The exclusion criteria specified articles including both culture and rural 138 tourism. “ this is confusing. What are they Excluded?  Fix expression?

Thanks for your advice. We rewrote it to make it clear. Please find our change at line 142.  

List the 54 selscted studies in the appendix

Yes, we did and listed all the studies in the appendix now. Please find them in both of the supplementary documents 1 and 2.

Reviewer 2

This paper has been provided an interesting relationship for cultural integration and rural tourism development. And the reviewed results also have supported a way for possible understanding in this filed.

The research method is suitable for explanation what the evidences behind the published articles. The Figure 1 is well-designed in the whole research process.

Thank you very much for your constructive feedback and great interest in our paper.

The Figure 2 and Figure 3 have no problem but Figure 4 should be revised, since its words too small. Figure 5 is good in this paper, which has constructed a framework for more possible studies in the future.

Thank you for your advice.

We changed the colour and font of the Figure 4 and it is much clearer now.

Totally, this paper is good enough to be considered for the journal’s readers.

Thank you very much.

Reviewer 3

First I would like to say that I have enjoyed reading this paper as it conceptualizes and systematizes many important subjects related to culture and tourism development in the rural context. Not only it systematizes knowledge making a good contribution, but also the authors had attention to detail in figures and data availability.

Nonetheless, there are things I defend can be improved for the reader and help to enhance scientific rigour.

Thank you so much for your constructive and detailed feedback, as well as your strong interest in our research.

We revised the paper as you suggested, please find our changes we made in the re-submitted manuscript (track-and-change version), and our latest manuscript (clean version).

1) The structure of the paper and its organization has to be strongly improved as there is no clear literature review section. The introduction tries to do that but very superficially. There needs to be a section of the literature review leading to problem number 2...

Thank you for your feedback. This paper is a scoping review paper, and it is a literature review. That’s the reason we didn’t chose to include another literature review section in the paper, otherwise it might be a bit reductant.

2) Anywhere in the paper there is a definition for "culture integration" as the authors may know is important to define as the main theme of the paper. This is important as only 4 reference entries mention "integration". And because culture is only defined in the results this won´t do. First, there needs to be a proper definition of what is "culture integration" in tourism as opposed to cultural shock among other confrontations or relational contexts of culture and tourism even in rural tourism.

Thank you very much for your advice. We have defined the ‘culture integration’ more clearly at the beginning of this paper. Please find the revised definition at lines 88-95.

In short, for local communities, cultural integration means change and it means an integration of a different culture that is different from what they have now. We highlighted this point again both in the introduction and conclusion. Please find the added texts at lines 471-478.

3 What about rural museums as forms of integrating culture in rural areas? Are they mentioned or not relevant? Authors must mention this.

Thanks for your great advice. We briefly discussed this on the Bali case but yes, we agree it is an important point to highlight. We now added more discussion on it at lines 362-367.

4 more recent references may be added about rural tourism planning, cultural-led tourism planning and sustainable tourism in rural areas.

Thanks for the advice. We mentioned this in the introduction, but we agree these popular concepts should be emphasized.

According to your advice, we included more references in the section 5 on rural tourism planning, cultural-led tourism planning and sustainable tourism in rural areas. Please find the added references at lines: 644-650.

5 Then a better presentation of the results has to be done in relation to the starting goals of the paper. The results are presented as a discussion section.

This is very confusing to the reader as 1 the aims and motives of tourism managers to integrate cultural concepts into rural tourism; 2who has participated in the cultural integration process and 3 how cultures have been integrated into rural tourism are not exactly the same as "different geographical locations, participating stakeholders, and integration forms".

The text gets confusing as it is organized.

So major revisions have to be done about these issues and resubmitted.

Thank you very much for your advice.

We realise that more transitions are needed to better present our aims and results.

We rewrote the introduction and conclusion to make it clear. Also, according to suggestions, we changed the expression of the questions we have asked, please find changes at lines 88-116.

Regarding the relationships you mentioned – ‘This is very confusing to the reader as 1 the aims and motives of tourism managers to integrate cultural concepts into rural tourism; 2who has participated in the cultural integration process and 3 how cultures have been integrated into rural tourism are not exactly the same as "different geographical locations, participating stakeholders, and integration forms’- we accept they are not exactly the same. There need more in-depth research on it and future studies need to be done based on solid field work.

However, analysis of motives of culture integration found in different regions and countries can help us better to understand motives and aims. Also, analysis of participating stakeholders can show us who has participated in the cultural integration process. The same to the integration forms, it can provide a clearer picture of how cultural integration has been done. The other two reviewers also agree on this.

As a scoping review, we believe that we aim to focusing on providing the research landscape of current research. More detailed and in-depth discussion is needed but it is not the focus of this research.

Thanks again.