Evaluation of Environmental Management and Conservation of Natural Resources in Tourism Enterprises in Ayacucho, Peru: Workers’ Perceptions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I am sorry to tell you that I don’t consider your paper adequate for publication.

I advise you to perform a deep revision of the objectives of this paper, to improve the presentation of results, and to better discuss the importance and implications of this study.

Please consider the following comments, which I hope can be useful to improve your paper.

Topic under study and objectives of the paper:

C1 – My major concern when reading your paper was the inconsistency between the objectives of the paper and the methodology used. Regarding the objectives of this study, different information is provided: ‘to analyze the environmental management of companies in the department of Ayacucho, Peru, in order to assess its influence on the conservation of natural resources’ (line 64); ‘to propose an environmental management model to improve the conservation of natural resources in tourism enterprises in Ayacucho’ (line 167). However, your methodology was to ‘measure the opinion about the variable environmental management (…) and the variable conservation of natural resources’ (line 192) of tourism enterprises’ workers. So what you are really measuring are perceptions, and this is inconsistent with the objectives previously defined.

Methodology section:

C2 – Important information is missing: how where the questionnaires applied to the respondents? When did this occur? What kind of tourism enterprises were selected to participate in this survey? How did you measure the variables – you refer 15 questions for the variable environmental management and 10 questions for the variable conservation of natural resources, what were these questions and how did you use them to measure the variables?

C3 – You say in this section (line 205) that you found a correlation between the variables environmental management and conservation of natural resources. First of all, this is a result, and should be in the results section. Also, as I said in C1, what you are measuring are perceptions regarding these two variables, and this should be clarified. Finally, it is difficult to interpret this result since you don’t clearly define how these variables were measured, as I said in C2.

Results:

C4 – Important information is missing: how many valid questionnaires did you obtain? What are the characteristics of your sample (age, sex, occupation…)? The respondents come from which type of tourism activities?

C5 – Your presentation of results is very poor: you only show the perceptions for the different levels of environmental management (Figures 1, 2, 3) and the perceptions for the different levels of natural resources conservation (Figures 4 and 5). The text only repeats the results shown in the figures. What about the 15 + 10 questions included in the questionnaire? What about the correlations?

Conclusions:

C6 – Given my previous comments, our conclusion that ‘as the level of environmental management increases (…), the level of conservation of natural resources also increases’ (line 337) is not a proper conclusion since you only measured perceptions regarding these variables.

C7 – You present in the conclusions some information that is not adequately supported in your previous text (paragraph from lines 349 to 357).

English language and style:

C8 - Although no major errors can be found in the use of English, I suggest a careful revision of the text to improve clarity.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Many thanks for the opportunity to review this paper that aims at proposing a model for the environmental management and conservation of natural resources in the tourism sector.

I think that this contribute presents some strong points. First, the case study itself, located in the Peruvian Andes, is of interest for the reader; then the focus on the employees together with the number of participants (600) can offer some interesting results and outcomes, which are worthy to be discussed.

Nonetheless, I have some concerns about the paper in its present version, and I kindly ask the Authors to take into consideration my recommendations and suggestions.

 

Literature review

This part needs to be improved by adding a section on the strategies and tools for the environmental management. In fact, in the discussion the Authors point out the need to implement the ISO14001 Standard (page 8 line 275-277) and to relay on the PDCA (I assume the Deming cycle – page 9 line 301) but nothing is mentioned in the conceptual background (apart from a reference in page 3 lines 139-140). Moreover, a more comprehensive discussion on what “environmental management” is for the tourism sector can be more informative for readers. In fact, 38 references may be not enough for supporting your publication in a journal wit Impact Factor 3.

 

Methodology

I would move the section on the case study in the methodological part before paragraph 3.1 – Design - and I would improve this section by adding more information on the Ayacucho's tourism sector, both in terms of offering and demand, in accordance with your research question (a model for the environmental management and conservation of natural resources in the tourism sector).

In the methodological section, I have not really understood the formula you have inserted (page 4, line 183). Please explain it in a more suitable way.

The procedure can be refined. Please, explain how the questionnaire has been compiled by the participants (for instance Pen-and-Paper Personal Interview (PAPI) method or Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) method or a mix of both) and how the sample was selected at the beginning of the analysis (random, snowball sampling, ...). Then, state how many invalid questionnaires you have excluded and the kind of questions you have provided. Inserting the questionnaire in the supplementary materials or in an index can be useful for replicating the study in other contexts.

Normally the Likert scale is set on numbers (1-7; 1-10) rather than on only low, medium and high.

Finally, lines 205-210 (page 5) van be placed in the results.

 

Results

The results seem quite basic to me. I would suggest more sophisticated analysis (ANOVA, non-parametric tests as Kruskal-Wallis and/or Whitney-Mann).

I would place the proposal and the end of the discussion section o in the conclusive remarks.

 

Conclusions

In the concluding remarks I would suggest the Authors better define new potential avenues of research. Please, point out potential limitations of the study, as well (if any).

 

Please, revise your references in accordance with the “Instructions for Authors” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity/instructions)

I wish you good luck!

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The topics of the paper are relevant to the modern challenges of civilization. However, the content of the article is narrowed in relation to the title. They refer only to the tourism sector. The authors identified a research gap in the tourism literature: "it has not been possible to assess the relationship between environmental management and natural resource conservation" (line 62). According to the authors' statement, the purpose of the paper is: This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing the environmental management of companies in the department of Ayacucho, Peru, in order to assess its influence on the conservation of natural resources. (line 63 and next). The research question is: What is the relationship between environmental management and conservation of natural resources in the department of Ayacucho? (line 67).

 I have huge reservations about the research procedure: the method, the selection of the research sample, the results, the conclusions and their discussion.

1. It is not clear what institution the surveyed employees represented. Was it one company or several?

2) Where did the respondents come from? From the whole department or one locality?

3. No wider discussion of the survey, type of questions, freedom of response. No sample survey questions or attached survey. No information and how the questions were asked: direct, indirect, remote?

4. The criteria for the selection of respondents in my opinion is wrong. No analysis in age groups and employee seniority. Perhaps someone who has been working for 3 months does not know everything about the company, and therefore his answers may be intuitive and not based on actual knowledge. The lack of a breakdown of respondents by seniority and position does not allow us to see any relationship between these elements. Nor does it allow inferences about the company's information strategy. This, in turn, makes the results and the proposed model of new management (part 5: Proposal) not reliably documented.

5. These elements of the work testify to the inadequacies of the research workshop.

6. Part Discussion: is extensive, but not authorized in the context of the comments made above. One more point - the authors apply generalization of the discussion to the results. Instead, they do not state whether the surveyed employees were from companies that have an impact on biodiversity, and what the environmental monitoring carried out by these companies consisted of. Without providing these inputs, the discussion of the results is incomprehensible.

 Order notes:

1. Background = Review of the literature on the subject

2. Verse 152 - from which year the population data are from

3. Fig. 1, p. 4 - is it about the region or the city?

4. Lines 170-176 should be moved to summary

5. Fig. 1, p. 6 – it is in native language?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I recognize that significant improvements have been made to your paper, particularly in the literature review section, methodology, and in the structure of the paper. Nevertheless, it is my opinion that the originality of your study relies on the results of the survey, and these are not adequately analyzed.

As I said in my previous report, it is not clear how you measured the variables ‘Environmental Management’ and ‘Natural Resources Conservation’. In the current version of the paper, you present the complete questionnaire used, and I can’t see the connection between these questions and the analyzed variables:

-          In Figure 1 you show results regarding the variable ‘Environmental Management’ divided in ‘planning’, ‘implementation and operation’ and ‘check’. What are the connection between these variables and the 15 questions of the questionnaire regarding Environmental Management? For example, which of those 15 questions did you use to measure ‘planning’?

-           How do you justify the connection between the selected questions and the variable you are measuring – for example, environmental management planning?

-          The same happens in Figure 2 regarding the variable ‘Natural Resource Conservation’, and the corresponding 10 questions of the questionnaire, you need to explain which questions were used to measure this variable and why were these questions chosen.

For me this is a critical issue, since you are showing quantitative results for your variables and you do not explain how these were measured. Without this explanation, your results, discussion and conclusions cannot be validated.

Author Response

It was specified in the attached questionnaires which questions correspond to each of the dimensions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to thank the Author(s) for taking into account my previous comments and suggestions.

I think that the paper has advanced comparing to the previous version, but I would ask the Author(s) to make a further effort for improving this manuscript on two main aspects.

1. The statistical analysis are quite basic: your data have a potential for more sophisticated analysis and correlations so that both results and discussion can be improved.

2. The literature review on environmental management systems (especially on ISO14001, being EMAS and European regulation) is worthy to be better considered. In the discussion, in fact, ISO14001 is mentioned twice and a better focus on how it is used in the tourism sector and in the hospitality industry should be provided.

 

Please, translate figure 7 into English and discuss the sample selection criteria in the limitation of your study.

 

Good luck!

Author Response

The analysis of the results was improved in order to better represent the information and to perform an analysis of the correlations between the variables. In addition, more information on ISO14001 and EMAS was added. Figure 7 was also translated into English and the sample selection criteria were discussed in the limitation of the study.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I am glad that the authors took into account my suggestions.

Author Response

This review had no comments for improvement from reviewer 3.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, you have successfully answered my questions and made significant improvements to your manuscript. Therefore, I am glad to tell you that I consider that this paper can be accepted for publication.

Just two minor issues that you should correct in the final version of your paper: the numbering of the figures is not sequential, and Figure 7 is in Spanish.

Best regards