PONE-D-23-15317Using cellular device location data to estimate visitation to public lands: An example comparing device location data to U.S. National Park Service’s visitor use statisticsPLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for the opportunity to review your manuscript. The study explored the use of commercially available cellular data for estimating visitation to public lands by comparing it with NPS visitor use statistics. It is a well-written, needed, and useful study of the use of cell data. The manuscript effectively summarizes the methods and results. Here are some recommendations:

• In the introduction section, the manuscript needs to emphasize the unique contribution of this study. On page 3, the authors listed many existing studies that found cell data and on-site counts were comparable. What are the research gaps? Why is this study needed? What are the theoretical, methodological, or empirical contributions of this study?

• The study explored the role of park type, park setting, and porousness in explaining differences between the cell data and NPS recreation visit estimates. There might be some other important factors. For example, geographic characteristics might influence the quality of cell data. The proportion of different modes to access park units, such as private vehicles, biking, walking, bus, and boat, might affect the NPS counts. If these data are not available, these issues need to be discussed as limitations.

• On page 10, the manuscript states, “the cell data may be appropriate for trends analysis.” Although this thought is interesting and valuable, more data and evidence are needed to support this argument.

• Page 10, the manuscript states, “It may also be useful to capture use in areas of a park where on-the-ground counts are impractical.” More explanations are needed to describe the situations when on-the-ground counts are impractical.

• Figure 2, in each category, parks are ordered alphabetically. Reordering the parks based on the proportion of local visitors (i.e., from low to high, from high to low) would help to convey more information.

• Page 5, line 198, why do authors choose 50 miles as the threshold? Is there any reference for it?

• There are some typos in the manuscript. For example,

o Page 4, line 143, it should be “National Park Service” instead of “National Park Servive”

o page 8, line 301, it should be “grouping” instead of “groupping”.

o Page 8, line 312, it should be “fitted” instead of “fit”

Reviewer #2: This study presents an attempt to utilize human mobility data (celluar device location here) to estimate the visits to public lands. While I think the paper is of certain interests, the paper needs certain revision to be publishable. I especially have concerns about the writing and references of the study.

1. The abstract needs to substantial revision. The authors should first give a sentence of the broader context of the background, rather than directly jumping into what you did.

2. Besides, in the abstract, too many sentences started from “We”, I suggest revise these sentences to make them more academically professional and diverse. I also suggest the authors do not include so many findings, but highlight the important points or implications out of the findings.

3. “However, this new source …. collected by more traditional methods.” Not sure why this is included in the abstract. Also, maybe the authors can consider talking about the meaning/value of your study in broader context, to other fields or real-world practice in general.

4. More importantly, I suggest the authors should carefully polish the motivations of this study. Especially, the authors can discuss the gaps left by previous works and how the study fills such gap. Has previous works done similar things? What are the important issues yet not been addressed? These are the important storyline to be told, in Abstract and especially in Introduction.

5. I suggest including a table to show the sources and statistics of the data used in this study.

6. In section 3.1, I suggest give a concise and clear implications out of your findings. The current section looks like a piles of the results without interpretation.

7. I think there lacks a discussion of the limitations/potential directions for future works.

8. There are certain important relevant works missed by the authors: “Categorisation of cultural tourism attractions by tourist preference using location-based social network data: The case of Central, Hong Kong” (which talks about human mobility for tourism categorization and profiling), “A review of human mobility research based on big data and its implication for smart city development” (an important review for human mobility application for smart cities), “Smart tourism destinations: An extended conception of smart cities focusing on human mobility” (another important study at the intersection of human mobility&tourism)

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Using cellular device location data to estimate visitation to public lands: Comparing device location data to U.S. National Park Service’s visitor use statistics

PONE-D-23-15317R1

Dear Dr. Tsai,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Zihao Zhang

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for addressing my questions and comments. Great improvements have been made in the abstract, introduction, limitation, and reference sections.

Reviewer #2: The authors have addressed my concerned. The manuscript has been much improved and I recommend acceptance.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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