Economic Valuation of Cultural Heritage Using the Travel Cost Method: The Historical Centre of the Municipality of Bucharest as a Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In my opinion, authors should better face the debate among the conservation of heritage buildings and their use for economic purposes.

I suggest to the author to divide the Introduction section into:

Introduction (related to the general introduction to the study, the main aim, its implications, and structure of the paper)

Literature background, related to the explanation of the travel cost method and to the main results due to the application of this method in heritage studies. In my opinion, in this section, authors should focus on the importance and usefulness of this method, that has push them to use in their study. The limitation related to the application of this method should go in the Conclusion section.

Authors should check the grammar and the punctuation along all the text.

Authors should provide more information about the zonal travel cost and the individual travel cost methods in terms of application to their study. They should also provide more information about the study method. How did they define their sample? Who submitted the questionnaires? Where were the questionnaires submitted?

In the results section, authors should better highlight the role of zonal travel cost method and of individual travel cost method, emphasizing the originality of the relation between the two methods and how they obtained original results

Author Response

Thank you for your time, efforts and suggestions. Details are available in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I find your proposal relevant. You applied a satisfactory methodology to offer appealing conclusions in the field of heritage and tourism. I find your paper needs just some slight reviews that you may find further on. Before that, I would like to point out just one issue. I missed a section (although it was short) concerning literature review. I mean, it would be enriching to find a section were you offer a slight review on the main literature on the issue you are studying.

Some particular comments:

Line 36. When you mention museums as an example of reusing heritage built you may consider giving more examples. As you know, in current cities we find different alternatives when using or reusing buildings, and not only in the form of museums. It is true that after this point, you give more examples, but it might be confusing to put only museums at first.

Line 59. You may revise references format.

You may consider to shorten the part of your introduction when explaining travel cost method. In particular, from line 138 on. And also, it would be pleasant for the reader to find at the endo of the introduction a brief advance of the parts in which the text is divided.

Line 158. Again format. Maybe you don´t have to refer to the exact page. You should review references format.

Line 206. The same as mentioned before.

Line 229. Slight typo. ‘(…) was applied to 206 visitors’ (and not ‘to a 206 visitors’)

Author Response

Thank you for your time, efforts and suggestions. Details are available in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf