Willingness to Stay of Tourism Lifestyle Entrepreneurs: A Configurational Perspective
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This work provides new insights into the willingness of tourism entrepreneurs to stay. Mixed methods are used. The study is interesting. The article is very well crafted and covers an important topic regarding destination sustainability. As such, the article aligns with the journal scope. The article is complete and publishable after some minor changes as described below:
Please explain why choose different Likert-type scales (some 5-point and the other 7-point) to measure the five constructs, and further whether the different Likert-type scales influence the data analysis.
The Likert-type scale of community-centered strategy is inconsistent with Appendix 1 in page 22, please revise it seriously.
Please add the name of figure 1.
Please illustrate the interview time, the sampling method and the analysis method of interview data.
Line 58. I agree that the use of examples is interesting to help reading the idea flow. However, some re-work should be done to refine what the authors meant in these cases: « the destination. For example, what happens if the business is not performing as ex-pected, i.e., if the actual results do not match what was anticipated? Will they end the business and look for another location? »
Line 81, revise the text for better comprehension: « They seek a better quality of life and to do so they are willing to leave their previous life to pursue their desired lifestyle [17], which drives some of their distinctive characteristics. »
Line 139, please work on the sentence « As a result of the connection to community and place, the products or experiences offered by these entrepreneurs are extensively associated with place, characteristics in which TLEs outperform large companies [28]. »
Line 582-6, when the authors are referring « Only one of the classes of entrepreneurs (business oriented) considers the achievement of business results as important to stay in the location. However, the other entrepreneurs are also important in terms of innovation, job creation and wealth creation. Evaluating the granting of subsidies solely based on financial results is somewhat reductive.», are they considering statal grants? Is that it? Please make it clear and elaborate more this section
After conducting some search, recent articles have been published on the topic, eventually consider updating the references.
Author Response
This work provides new insights into the willingness of tourism entrepreneurs to stay. Mixed methods are used. The study is interesting. The article is very well crafted and covers an important topic regarding destination sustainability. As such, the article aligns with the journal scope. The article is complete and publishable after some minor changes as described below:
R: Thank you for the supportive comment. We carefully revised the article based on the reviewer’s suggestions.
Please explain why choose different Likert-type scales (some 5-point and the other 7-point) to measure the five constructs, and further whether the different Likert-type scales influence the data analysis.
R: Thank you for pointing this out. To apply a rigorous use of the original scales we kept the same range used by the authors. We now recognise this in lines 233-4 stating “The original scale range used by the authors was maintained to assure the adherence to their approach.”
The Likert-type scale of community-centered strategy is inconsistent with Appendix 1 in page 22, please revise it seriously.
R: Thank you for pointing this out. We now revised the Likert-type scale to be coherent between what is described in the appendix and in the methodology.
Please add the name of figure 1.
R: We now added the name of figure 1.
Please illustrate the interview time, the sampling method and the analysis method of interview data.
R: We agree with the reviewer. We now added more detail, including interview time, the sampling method and the analysis method of interview data. Please see section 3.2. Qualitative Research, 2nd paragraph.
Line 58. I agree that the use of examples is interesting to help reading the idea flow. However, some re-work should be done to refine what the authors meant in these cases: « the destination. For example, what happens if the business is not performing as ex-pected, i.e., if the actual results do not match what was anticipated? Will they end the business and look for another location? »
R: We agree with the reviewer. We now illustrate with one example what we meant by those questions. Please see lines 62-4.
Line 81, revise the text for better comprehension: « They seek a better quality of life and to do so they are willing to leave their previous life to pursue their desired lifestyle [17], which drives some of their distinctive characteristics. »
R: We agree. We changed the sentence to “They seek a better quality of life and to do so they are willing to change from their previous life to create a business where they can reach the desired lifestyle”
Line 139, please work on the sentence « As a result of the connection to community and place, the products or experiences offered by these entrepreneurs are extensively associated with place, characteristics in which TLEs outperform large companies [28]. »
R: We agree. The sentence was changed to “As a result of the strong link to community and place, the products or experiences offered by these entrepreneurs are more associated to the place traditions and identity when compared to large companies”
Line 582-6, when the authors are referring « Only one of the classes of entrepreneurs (business-oriented) considers the achievement of business results as important to stay in the location. However, the other entrepreneurs are also important in terms of innovation, job creation and wealth creation. Evaluating the granting of subsidies solely based on financial results is somewhat reductive.», are they considering statal grants? Is that it? Please make it clear and elaborate more this section
R: We agree. We now changed the sentence for a more detailed description about the kind of subsidies we were referring to. As such, the sentence can be read as “Evaluating the access to public (governmental or from UE) subsidies solely based on financial results is somewhat reductive.”
After conducting some search, recent articles have been published on the topic, eventually, consider updating the references.
R: We agree with the reviewer. We conducted a search and included a new reference that adds new information to the topic. We believe now that the most relevant references are included in the article.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
Thank you for the opportunity to read and review your manuscript submitted to Sustainability. After reading the manuscript, I am convinced that the research of the willingness to stay of tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs is outstanding, relevant, instrumental, and valuable. However, I offer several minor recommendations that may improve the quality of the paper.
- The abbreviation TLE needs to be explained in the text.
- A clear statement of the purpose of the study is essential to be stated in the Introduction.
Once again, thank you for this opportunity to read the manuscript.
Author Response
Thank you for the opportunity to read and review your manuscript submitted to Sustainability. After reading the manuscript, I am convinced that the research of the willingness to stay of tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs is outstanding, relevant, instrumental, and valuable. However, I offer several minor recommendations that may improve the quality of the paper.
R: Thank you for the supportive comment. We carefully revised the article based on the reviewer’s suggestions.
- The abbreviation TLE needs to be explained in the text.
R: We agree with the reviewer. We added the full description of the acronym in lines 29-30 and a conceptualization of the concept in lines 32-33.
- A clear statement of the purpose of the study is essential to be stated in the Introduction.
R: Thank you for pointing this out. We now present the objectives in lines 55-57.
Once again, thank you for this opportunity to read the manuscript.
R: Thank you again for the supportive comment.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for submitting your research.
The object of research is initially interesting but I must make the following considerations:
It would be interesting to know the profile of the companies surveyed: size, location (tourist city, village, etc).
Are there differences between rural and urban tourism?
It is important to know if the strategies proposed by the tourism companies translate into greater value for them, analyzing variables such as EBITDA, profitability of assets, etc. I think that for the study to be more robust it should incorporate an economic-financial analysis
Good Luck
Author Response
Thank you for submitting your research.
The object of research is initially interesting but I must make the following considerations:
R: Thank you for the supportive comment. We carefully revised the article based on the reviewer’s suggestions.
It would be interesting to know the profile of the companies surveyed: size, location (tourist city, village, etc).
R: Thank you for pointing this out. We now added this information in the method section. Please see section 3.1.1. Sample and data collection, 2nd paragraph.
Are there differences between rural and urban tourism?
R: That’s a very interesting question. The purpose of this study was to explore the factors influencing the willingness to stay whether it was rural or not. Since it wasn’t an objective to analyse the differences between those two types of destinations, we didn’t include this analysis. Based on the suggestion of the reviewer, we conducted some exploratory tests to find significant differences between both subsamples, but no significant difference was found. Although this is a very interesting topic to be explored in future research. For this reason, we added in the suggestions for future research the comparison of willingness to stay factors in those two types of destinations.
It is important to know if the strategies proposed by the tourism companies translate into greater value for them, analyzing variables such as EBITDA, profitability of assets, etc. I think that for the study to be more robust it should incorporate an economic-financial analysis.
R: We agree with the reviewer. However, we opted to use self-efficacy as a business outcome variable for two main reasons. First, we argue that due to the fact of these entrepreneurs pursuing a multiplicity of objectives suggests that the most appropriate way to assess the performance of TLEs are subjective performance measures as recommended by Wang Li & Xu (2019b) also referred to as entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Furthermore, due to the difficulty to access financial data from small tourism businesses, Fu, Okumus, Wu & Köseoglu (2019) consider entrepreneurial self-efficacy as a good indicator to measure business performance. This is recognized in lines 120-5. Second, since financial data is, in most cases, very sensitive (in part due to data confidentiality). Form previous experience, by asking for these elements, respondents’ the willingness to participate in the survey fall dramatically. We do recognize the importance of including these indicators in future research. As such, we added a reference for using EBITDA, profitability of assets and other financial indicators in suggestions for future research.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is already at the second level of review, and the work done by the other reviewers to make it more complete is visible.
The authors have solved most of my suggestions acceptably.
