Sustainable Development Practices of Restaurants in Romania and Changes during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I think the authors clearly addressed my concerns in the  revised manuscript.

Author Response

We are thankful for your comments which helped us to improve the quality of our article

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper can offer a valuable contribution to the discipline. Few suggested changes:

1) It is important to keep Romania only as empirical context, in that the results might apply to several international restaurant industries.

2) Adding a literature review table would help to bring out your contribution vis a vis with other covid manuscripts

3) It is important to discuss how to facilitate sustainable practices in this context. The following article from the general psychology literature might help in this sense: Do, K. T., Wang, C. Y., & Guchait, P. (2021). When normative framing saves Mr. Nature: Role of consumer efficacy in proenvironmental adoption. Psychology & Marketing, 38(8), 1340-1362.

Author Response

We are thankful for the comments as they are extremely useful to improve the quality of our article.

Point 1: It is important to keep Romania only as empirical context, in that the results might apply to several international restaurant industries.

 Response 1: In the Conclusion section, at page 21, we included the following sentences:

" The results presented in this study were collected based on an interview guide designed in accordance with previous research conducted internationally."

" The research results and the guide proposed by authors might apply to several international restaurant industries."

Point 2: Adding a literature review table would help to bring out your contribution vis a vis with other covid manuscripts

Response 2: In the Literature review section we included Table 1 highlighting the themes, topics, subtopics, and the main references which were analyzed in this section (pages 7-8).

Point 3: It is important to discuss how to facilitate sustainable practices in this context. The following article from the general psychology literature might help in this sense: Do, K. T., Wang, C. Y., & Guchait, P. (2021). When normative framing saves Mr. Nature: Role of consumer efficacy in proenvironmental adoption. Psychology & Marketing, 38(8), 1340-1362.

Response 3: In the Discussion section we highlighted the importance of individual proenvironmental behavior (consumers first, but also managers, staff, etc.) in achieving collective green efficacy (Do, K.T.; Wang, C.-Y.; Guchait, P. When normative framing saves Mr. Nature: Role of consumer efficacy in proenvironmental adoption. Psych. Mark. 2021, 38, 1340-1362, https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1002/mar.21486).

 Point 4: Moderate English changes required

Response 4: We revised English translation.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is interesting, relevant and it enables new insight in topic that is important for scientific comprehension of the innovations of restaurant business. It is well-written with all major chapters elaborated and an extensive and appropriate literature review. 

Research methodology and results presentation could be improved. Presentation of the interview results and the questions that the authors discussed with the restaurant managers could be better presented (although not necessary), maybe via table. The authors presented contribution via model proposal which is good.

I would like to suggest the explanation of the sampling (although it is partly explained too) namely referring town, area, and the response rate.

Paper contribution well explained as well the limitation of the study and aspects for future research.

Author Response

We are thankful for the comments as they are extremely useful to improve the quality of our article.

Point 1: Research methodology and results presentation could be improved. Presentation of the interview results and the questions that the authors discussed with the restaurant managers could be better presented (although not necessary), maybe via table.

 Response 1: Authors conducted a qualitative research using the semi-directive in-depth interview method. The discussions with managers were based on an interview guide that included 5 major topics, each topic being divided into subtopics. The respondents were asked to discuss each topic freely (the interview guide does not include questions).

In the Results section, in the final part of each topic, authors included a synthesis tabel meant to synthetise respondents' answers. In the revised form of the paper we added to each of this synthesis tables the structure of the subtopics discussed, the results obtained, alongside to the synthesis of recorded answers (tables 4-8).

Point 2: I would like to suggest the explanation of the sampling (although it is partly explained too) namely referring town, area, and the response rate.

Response 2:

In section 3 Materials and Methods we added explanations for the sampling, emphasizing the territorial distribution of the restaurants in the sample and the response rate:

" From the list of Romanian food establishments [21], authors selected 142 restaurants based on type, location and size criteria. The restaurant managers were contacted by telephone/email and only 56 managers expressed their consent to participate in the research process (response rate 39.44%). Restaurants were selected from all of the 9 Romanian regions, and the sample members operate in major cities (București, Brașov, Sibiu, Timișoara, Iași Constanța, Cluj-Napoca, etc.), popular tourist destinations (Poiana Brașov, Sinaia, Mamaia, Băile Felix, Tușnad, Vatra Dornei, etc.), and rural areas (Bran, Moeciu,Viscri, Vama Buzăului, Breb, etc)."

Also, we added Table 2 which details restaurants’ distribution and managers’ response rate.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is a qualitative research that investigates managers’ viewpoints regarding sustainable practices of Romanian restaurants during the Covid-19 pandemic and suggests meaningful solutions to overcome the crisis. 

However, it lacks logical organization which is very critical in writing and publishing the research article in terms of hypotheses formulation, interview analysis, and discussion. There is no alignment among research objectives (p3), hypotheses (p6~p7), and results section (interview analysis contents & tables describing main results) (p7~p13).  

In order for the paper to be published to the journal, like Sustainability, the paper requires much improvement in the organization of the manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is lack in clarity and no coherency. The research objectives of the study is not well presented. The application/use of hypotheses are not suitable since this is a qualitative research.  The article needs to be significantly improved. More discussion needs to be added on the qualitative approach used in this study. The authors also needs to address on the issue of data collection. Further elaboration is required.

Reviewer 3 Report

Reviewer Comments to Author

This paper tried to investigate the practices identified by restaurant managers in Romania that define their responsible behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. It must have taken much effort to conduct the research, but its contribution is not clear to readers. In specific, it should be improved in the following ways to be published.

(1) Contribution

This research is based on the data of 56 restaurant managers in Romania. It seems that the contribution of this research also lies in this sample towards these. Readers may wonder identifying an evaluation model is the same important for different areas or countries. That is, please discuss more about the contribution of this research and explain how the research findings can be used to give values to different area or country.

(2) Methods

Please include more information about the survey process of the method of semi-directive in-depth interviews. What are the criteria or bias that you choose the sampling procedure?

(3) Theoretical and managerial implications

Please extend the discussions in this paper and link them to the contribution. In this paper, the implications are lacked without linked to the empirical findings. Instead of linking to the empirical results, it is also recommended to emphasize what the previous studies could not identify but this paper did.