Population Aging and Household Tourism Consumption—An Empirical Study Based on China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) Data
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1.The research problem is not well defined. The objectives are usually in the introduction to be able to evaluate if the evaluated literature is in accordance with the objectives or not.
2This study proposes that the government develop diversified childcare institutions, and it needs to make a clear inference basis for the relationship between population aging and family tourism activities.
3.Table 2. The results of baseline regression's Employ is not significant, what is the reason?
4.What is the difference between urban residents and rural residents in using the Internet and intergenerational care? The interaction is not significant, are there other interference variables?
5.This study needs to further discuss the problem of aging population in the current family, and it needs to have a dialogue with previous related research, so as to benefit the contribution of this paper.
Overall English writing is average.
Author Response
Dear reviewers & editors,
Thank you very much for your valuable comments on our manuscript entitled “Population aging and household tourism consumption -- an empirical study based on China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data” (sustainability-2435876). Those comments are very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have studied the comments carefully and made corrections which we hope meet with approval, and the corrections are marked in red. The responds to the reviewers’ comments are as follows:
Comment 1:
The research problem is not well defined. The objectives are usually in the introduction to be able to evaluate if the evaluated literature is in accordance with the objectives or not.
Response:
Thank you for this comment. We have added a more explicit description of the research question and objectives in the introduction (lines 52 through 59). The research question of this paper is the impact of population aging on household tourism consumption and the influencing mechanism, and the research goal is to provide reference for the growth of tourism consumption under the background of population aging.
Comment 2:
This study proposes that the government develop diversified childcare institutions, and it needs to make a clear inference basis for the relationship between population aging and family tourism activities.
Response:
Thank you for this instruction. Since the moderating effect of the intergenerational care is not significant in this paper, it is explained that although the intergenerational care reduces the leisure of the elderly participating in the intergenerational care, it increases the leisure of other family members. Therefore, the overall household leisure time does not change much, resulting in insignificant changes in household tourism consumption. Based on the insignificance of this mechanism, for the consideration of rigor, the original suggestion of developing diversified childcare institutions is deleted.
Comment 3:
Table 2. The results of baseline regression's Employ is not significant, what is the reason?
Response:
Thank you for this comment. Since the data on household tourism consumption in the original CFPS data have some 0 values, and the explained variable household tourism consumption must be 0 or positive, it will not obtain a consistent estimator using the least squares method (OLS). Therefore, the TOBIT model is used for maximum likelihood estimation in this paper, and the OLS model results are only used for comparison and reference. In the baseline regression using the TOBIT model, Employ is significant with a negative coefficient, indicating that employment will squeeze residents' leisure time and reduce household tourism consumption.
Comment 4:
What is the difference between urban residents and rural residents in using the Internet and intergenerational care? The interaction is not significant, are there other interference variables?
Response:
Thank you for this comment. In terms of Internet use, the China Internet Network Information Center released the Statistical Report on China's Internet Development, showing that by June 2022, the number of urban Internet users in China was 758 million, and the Internet penetration rate in urban areas was 82.9%, while the number of rural Internet users was 293 million, and the Internet penetration rate in rural areas was 58.8%. The above data show that there is a large difference in Internet penetration rate between urban and rural residents. In terms of intergenerational care, Zhou's (2020) research found that the proportion of families with agricultural registration participating in intergenerational care was much higher than that of non-agricultural families.
The moderating effect of intergenerational care on household tourism consumption can be divided into two directions. On the one hand, intergenerational care reduces the leisure of the elderly and inhibits their tourism consumption. On the other hand, intergenerational care increases the leisure of other family members and may increase their tourism consumption. The reason why the moderating effect of intergenerational care is not significant in this paper may be that the two effects have the same strength and cancel each other out.
References: Zhou P.; Supporter characteristics of providing grandchild care. Beijing Soc. 2020, 203, 90-101. DOI: 10.13262/j.bjsshkxy.bjshkx.200308
Comment 5:
This study needs to further discuss the problem of aging population in the current family, and it needs to have a dialogue with previous related research, so as to benefit the contribution of this paper.
Response:
Thank you for this comment. We supplement the dialogue with the existing literature in Section 5, in lines 531 to 544, and summarize the main contributions of this study.
Thanks again for your careful review. We hope that the revision is acceptable for publication and look forward to hearing from you soon.
Kind regards,
Xing Cai
Hunan Key Laboratory of Macroeconomic Big Data Mining and Its Application, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, 410081, China
E-mail address: caixing@hunnu.edu.cn
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Manuscript ID: Sustainability-2435876
Dear authors,
Concerning the abstract, try to summarize the findings and restructure the information.
At the end of the introduction section, specify something about the paper structure.
“With the increasing trend of population aging in various countries, the economic impact of population aging has attracted much attention from scholars” – please reformulate, avoiding repetition.
Concerning the descriptive statistics table, provide the median value of the variables.
Specify the software used to process the data.
I suggest discussing the theoretical and empirical implications of the results, providing some practical guidelines.
Some limits and future directions of research should be stated.
No comments.
Author Response
Dear reviewers & editors,
Thank you very much for your valuable comments on our manuscript entitled “Population aging and household tourism consumption -- an empirical study based on China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data” (sustainability-2435876). Those comments are very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have studied the comments carefully and made corrections which we hope meet with approval, and the corrections are marked in red. The responds to the reviewers’ comments are as follows:
Comment 1:
Concerning the abstract, try to summarize the findings and restructure the information.
Response:
Thanks for this revision recommendation. We further condensed the abstract and made the research conclusions and other information clearer.
Comment 2:
At the end of the introduction section, specify something about the paper structure.
Response:
Thank you for this comment. We have added a description of the structure of this paper at the end of the introduction (lines 120 to 124).
Comment 3:
With the increasing trend of population aging in various countries, the economic impact of population aging has attracted much attention from scholars" - please reformulate, avoiding repetition.
Response:
Thanks for your careful review. We merge the introduction and literature review in this revision and remove this expression.
Comment 4:
Concerning the descriptive statistics table, provide the median value of the variables.
Response:
Thank you for this instruction. We have supplemented the median values of the variables in the last column of Table 2.
Comment 5:
Specify the software used to process the data.
Response:
Thank you for this instruction. We used Stata15.0 to process the data and append this information on line 278.
Comment 6:
I suggest discussing the theoretical and empirical implications of the results, providing some practical guidelines.
Response:
Thank you for this suggestion. In the suggestion section, we add the interpretation of the empirical results and make corresponding suggestions based on the specific empirical results. At the same time, in order to ensure the rigor of the proposed suggestions, we deleted several suggestions that were not closely related to the research of this study.
Comment 7:
Some limits and future directions of research should be stated.
Response:
Thank you for this comment. At the end of this paper (lines 601 to 615), we add the limitations of this paper and the prospects for future research.
Thanks again for your careful review. We hope that the revision is acceptable for publication and look forward to hearing from you soon.
Kind regards,
Xing Cai
Hunan Key Laboratory of Macroeconomic Big Data Mining and Its Application, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, 410081, China
E-mail address: caixing@hunnu.edu.cn
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper aims to study the impact of population ageing on household tourism consumption from theoretical and empirical aspects. It provides a reference for introducing relevant policies to promote tourism consumption in the context of the ageing population. The results find that the increase in the ageing population significantly reduces household tourism consumption and negatively mediates household tourism consumption by deteriorating household economic conditions. The results of heterogeneity analysis manifest that the negative impact of population ageing on the tourism consumption of urban families is greater than that of rural families, and the negative impact on the tourism consumption of families with the old-old elderly is greater than that of the families with the young-old elderly.
The authors are recommended to revise or elaborate on the following to enhance the paper’s readability before publication:
1. In lines 84-85, the authors stated that some research results are consistent with the life cycle hypothesis, while other parts of the research results are inconsistent. It is suggested that the authors consider making a table to compare the consistent and inconsistent hypotheses for readers’ reading convenience.
2. In line 123, the authors stated that Internet use would moderate the effect of population ageing on household tourism consumption; thus, the authors are suggested to present some official statistics on how the elderly people have online habits/experiences in China as not many elderly people would have online habits/experiences in other countries.
3. In section 4.1.1, Baseline model, the authors are suggested to elaborate further on how and why the equations were developed and set via the baseline model.
4. In section 4.2, the authors stated that the micro-data of CFPS in 2014, 2016 and 2018 were collected. Since this paper was submitted in 2023, why the data in 2020 was not collected? Is it because the data was not available due to the COVID-19 pandemic? If yes, the authors may explain why there is a gap.
5. In section 6, Conclusions and Suggestions, the authors are suggested to explain any limitations in this research paper and any suggestions for further research.
The authors are suggested to proof-read the article again as some typos and grammatical errors are spotted, for example:
- In the abstract, ‘using the data from CFPS’ instead of ‘using the data of CFPS’ [line 14], and ‘families with the young-old elderly’ instead of ‘falimies with the young-old elderly’ [line 26] & [line 130].
- In line 42, ‘It is precise’ instead of ‘It is precisely’.
- In line 107, ‘However, some studies …’ instead of ‘However, Some studies …’
- In line 245, ‘… the method of Luo et al., who identified …’ instead of ‘… the method of Luo et al. identified …’
- In line 311, ‘date on household …’ instead of ‘data of household …’
- In line 469, ‘Jiang et al.’ instead of ‘Jiang et al’
Author Response
Dear reviewers & editors,
Thank you very much for your valuable comments on our manuscript entitled “Population aging and household tourism consumption -- an empirical study based on China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data” (sustainability-2435876). Those comments are very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have studied the comments carefully and made corrections which we hope meet with approval, and the corrections are marked in red. The responds to the reviewers’ comments are as follows:
Comment 1:
In lines 84-85, the authors stated that some research results are consistent with the life cycle hypothesis, while other parts of the research results are inconsistent. It is suggested that the authors consider making a table to compare the consistent and inconsistent hypotheses for readers' reading convenience.
Response:
Thank you for this suggestion. We have supplemented this table (Table 1).
Comment 2:
In line 123, the authors stated that Internet use would moderate the effect of population ageing on household tourism consumption; thus, the authors are suggested to present some official statistics on how the elderly people have online habits/experiences in China as not many elderly people would have online habits/experiences in other countries.
Response:
Thank you for this instruction. The China Internet Network Information Center released the Statistical Report on China's Internet Development, showing that by December 2021, China's Internet penetration rate reached 73.0%. The number of Internet users aged 60 and above reached 119 million, with an Internet penetration rate of 43.2 percent. The above data show that the Internet penetration rate of the elderly is at a high level in China. These contents have been supplemented in the article (lines 182 to 186).
Comment 3:
In section 4.1.1, Baseline model, the authors are suggested to elaborate further on how and why the equations were developed and set via the baseline model.
Response:
Thank you for this comment. In lines 227 to 234 and 238 to 240, we explain how to obtain the mediating effect test model and the moderating effect test model based on the benchmark model respectively.
Comment 4:
In section 4.2, the authors stated that the micro-data of CFPS in 2014, 2016 and 2018 were collected. Since this paper was submitted in 2023, why the data in 2020 was not collected? Is it because the data was not available due to the COVID-19 pandemic? If yes，the authors may explain why there is a gap.
Response:
Thank you for this comment. Up to now, all the data from CFPS in 2020 have not been fully released, and only the data of the individual database and the family relationship database have been released. Therefore, the data used in this paper do not include the data of 2020.
Comment 5:
In section 6, Conclusions and Suggestions, the authors are suggested to explain any limitations in this research paper and any suggestions for further research.
Response:
Thank you for this instruction. At the end of this paper, we supplement the limitations of our study and prospects for future research.
Language correction：
- In the abstract, “using the data from CFPS” instead of “using the data of CFPS” [line 14] and “families with the young-old elderly” instead of “falimies with the young-old elderly” [line 26] & [line 130].
- In line 42, “It is precise” instead of “It is precisely”.
- In line 107, “However, some studies ...” instead of “However, Some studies ...”.
- In line 245, “... the method of Luo et al., who identified ...” instead of “... the method of Luo et al. identified ...”.
- In line 311, “data on household ...” instead of “data of household”.
- In line 469, “Jiang et al.” instead of “Jiang et al”
Response:
Thanks for your careful review. The above language problems have been corrected and we will check further for language errors.
Thanks again for your careful review. We hope that the revision is acceptable for publication and look forward to hearing from you soon.
Kind regards,
Xing Cai
Hunan Key Laboratory of Macroeconomic Big Data Mining and Its Application, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan, 410081, China
E-mail address: caixing@hunnu.edu.cn
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
There are no other comments.
There are no comments.
