-->PONE-D-26-15774-->-->How Soundscape Shapes Restorative Experience in a World Heritage Site: The Mediating Role of Cultural Authenticity at Mount Emei, China-->-->PLOS One

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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-->5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: This paper investigates the relationship between different sound experiences and restorative experiences. The data consists of a survey of visitors to famous cultural world heritage site in China. The method consists of CB-SEM. The empirical methods are competently performed, and the authors have good knowledge of the literature and references from good journals. I have only a few minor comments on this paper, particularly regarding the theoretical background and the data.

Main comments

1)

Theoretical framework: the relationship between natural and religious sounds and restorative experience is well known and well documented in the literature. Why do the authors want to investigate the relationships? Of course, there is a positive relationship. However, the soundscape experience is not the only factor in the restorative experience at this cultural heritage site. It is a religious site. The main motivation for visiting this area is pilgrimage and religious motives, not just religious sounds. Also, the restorative experience or tourism depends on many factors, not just sound. Please look into the tourism literature or religious tourism literature again.

2)

There is a sufficient information about the data collection. I think it would be good to document the university's ethical approval of the research design. Also, document the questionnaire in Mandarin and English in the appendix (or online appendix). Can you explain why you have only asked domestic visitors or those who understand Mandarin? Can you add a sentence explaining why international visitors are not included in this survey? I also suggest making the data available to allow replication (on an online archive).

3)

“ Likert scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree. “

I appreciate that the authors elaborate on common-method bias and report the discriminant validity measures and all other validity measures. However, the authors must also present descriptive statistics for the Likert-scale variables. I do not find these statistics. It is important to show the means and the standard deviation to see that there is enough variation in the data

4)

Table 6. Results of hypothesis testing

Do not show both the standard errors and the t-stat. One is redundant.

5)

“After establishing acceptable overall fit, the structural relationships were examined. SP had a significant positive effect on CA (β = 0.405, SE = 0.056, t = 7.181, p < 0.001), supporting H1. CA also had a significant positive effect on RE (β = 0.567, SE = 0.046, t = 12.432, p < 0.001), supporting H2. In addition, SP had a significant positive direct effect on RE (β = 0.396, SE = 0.050, t = 7.883, p < 0.001), supporting H3.”

I suggest that the authors should be more careful in interpreting the estimated coefficients. Using CB-SEM and cross-sectional data, you will not obtain effects or impacts. You should interpret the estimated coefficient as a relationship or association.

6)

Another point concerns the normality assumption in CB-SEM. I do not find the test. I also suggest that authors justify their choice between CB-SEM and PLS-SEM.

7)

I know that most scholars never conduct robustness checks when using structural equation modelling. I think given that you have a relatively large sample size you can think of some robustness checks. Maybe you can provide separate estimation results for women or for men. Alternatively, provide results for younger people versus older people.

Minor comments

Please reduce the number of abbreviations in the text.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

The manuscript Soundscape and Restorative Experience at Mount Emei presents a promising study on the soundscape of a World Heritage site. It intends to assess to what extent the soundscape affects restorative experience and cultural authenticity during the experience of walking through the site. The study is based on a survey which investigates visitors’ perceptions and evaluations. A structural equation modelling delves into the relationships between the three constructs: soundscape perception, cultural authenticity and restorative experience.

The paper is well written and the structure is clear. The literature review is slightly repetitive, it could be synthetized and at the same time enhanced with other references, especially on cultural and heritage soundscapes. Objectives and hypotheses are well presented. Photos of the sample areas would help to better understand the differences between the sample areas.

My main concerns on the manuscript are about the methodology and on the interpretation of the results.

First, I think the contribution of acoustic data is not clear. I appreciate table 1, but acoustic data are not integrated in the model and do not concur to answer research questions. I think you could think about how to better integrate acoustic data in the results.

Second, the paper lacks a descriptive analysis of the survey results, and especially it does not say anything about the perceived differences between the sites, which, in my opinion are quite interesting considering your final discussion. Site-specific responds could integrate table 1. Furthermore, it would be interesting to know more about respondents: are they religious? Did you find any gender or age-related differences in the answers? I would recommend to add all the questions of the questionnaire in Annex 1, not only the constructs.

Third, the paper is too focused on the SEM, which present some methodological issues. Although it is well structured and clearly conceptualized the SEM, I would like to point out some issues. The reported fit indices (RMSEA = 0.000; CFI = 1.000; TLI = 1.000) are unusually perfect for a model of this complexity and raise concerns about potential overfitting or estimation issues. Further clarification of the estimation procedure and model specification is required. The hierarchical structure of the data (participants nested within locations) is not accounted for, which may bias inference.

Four, the mediation analysis is statistically appropriate; however, the results are interpreted in causal terms despite the cross-sectional design. Without temporal or experimental evidence, the proposed directional relationships (SP → CA → RE) should be interpreted as associations rather than causal effects.

Finally, some minor observations are about the survey methodology. How did you distribute the questionnaire? Were they paper questionnaries? How many researchers were involved in the distribution? Did you distribute the questionnaire at the beginning of the path or in each sampling point? In which period of the day? How long is the route to from sample point 1 to the last sample point?

**********

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Reviewer #1: Yes:  Martin Thomas Falk

Reviewer #2: No

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-->PONE-D-26-15774R1-->-->How Soundscape Shapes Restorative Experience in a World Heritage Site: The Mediating Role of Cultural Authenticity at Mount Emei, China-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Wang,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 30 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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Renwu Wu

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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

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Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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 very much for the revisions. I have reviewed the article again. I have no comments regarding the empirical modelling; I consider it to have been carried out competently.

My main concern is the theoretical model. Please check the wording of all three hypotheses carefully. When you refer to ‘soundscape perception’, we need to know what kind of soundscape perception is meant. Is it, for example, a pleasant perception? Furthermore, the three hypotheses are too general. Of course, sound space perception is positively correlated with the relaxing experience. They are all outcome variables. The theoretical model does not make sense.

Comments

1)

The hypotheses are generic

H1: Soundscape perception is significantly and positively associated with cultural authenticity

To be read as

H1: The perception of a pleasant soundscape is significantly and positively correlated with cultural authenticity

H3: Soundscape perception is significantly and positively associated with restorative experience.

Of course, a pleasant soundscape is closely linked to a relaxing experience.

Why do you want to investigate this?

The theoretical model is not convincing.

All three dimensions are outcome variables: scoundscape experience, cultural authenticity and restorative experience

2)

Figure 1. Proposed research model

What is the source?

Line 82

3)

There are too many abbreviations

example

ART proposes that restorative environments help restore attentional resources [4], while SRT emphasizes rapid emotional and physiological recovery from stress [5,19].

4)

In my opinion, the Vancouver citation style has not been applied correctly. When the author’s name appears in the text, the reference number should follow immediately after the author’s name.

Similarly, Hong and Jeon showed that contextual and acoustic factors jointly shape soundscape evaluation [9].

To be read as

Similarly, Hong and Jeon [9] showed that contextual and acoustic factors jointly shape soundscape evaluation .

5)

Because all latent variables were measured through self-reported questionnaire responses collected in the same survey, common method bias was examined before model evaluation. Harman’s ingle factor test was applied by loading all measurement items into an unrotated exploratory factor analysis. The first unrotated factor accounted for 31.708% of the total variance, which was lower than the commonly used threshold of 50%. On this basis, common method bias was not considered to pose a serious problem in the present study.

The Harman article should be cited. The test is outdated.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

I think the manuscript has greatly improved after the last round of revision. I still have some minor observations concerning the theoretical framework and the discussion section. In general, I think you could improve the section on cultural authenticity by delving into the academic debate on religious heritage tourism experiences. For instance, the paragraph from line 173 to 179 does not refer to any scientific publication. Another example can be found in the discussion section from line 615 to 617 when you refer to research in rural soundscapes and temple soundscape without citing any scientific reference. A more thorough revision of the scientific literature on these themes would enhance the manuscript.

**********

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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-->PONE-D-26-15774R2-->-->How Soundscape Shapes Restorative Experience in a World Heritage Site: The Mediating Role of Cultural Authenticity at Mount Emei, China-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Wang,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 22 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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-->

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Kind regards,

Renwu Wu

Academic Editor

PLOS One

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-->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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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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-->6. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Thank you very much for the revisions. The revised paper looks good to me.

Please find my final comments

1)

Which software package is used to estimate CB-SEM

2)

S1 Table. Bilingual questionnaire items

S1 Data. Data

I cannot find the link to the supplementary information . Upload the dada to allow replication of the analysis.

3)

Introduction

Line 37

Heritage tourism has also grown rapidly in recent years.

An in-text citation is needed here.

Is it really growing

4)

Line 45

Although these perspectives have been widely applied in forests, parks, and coastal settings, they have been used less often in heritage tourism environments.

Can you add some citations here?

5)

Line 167

Although authenticity has been widely studied in relation to visual, architectural, and symbolic features of heritage sites, the role of sound in shaping authenticity perception remains relatively underexplored.

Can you add some citations here :

Widely studied? Which studies

6)

Line 812

Although LAeq was measured at each sampling point, it was used mainly as contextual environmental information rather than as a modeled variable in the SEM framework.

Please write out. LAeq: weighted average sound level.

Reviewer #2: Dear authors,

I think the comments have been addressed and the manuscript is now suitable for publication.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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How Soundscape Shapes Restorative Experience in a World Heritage Site: The Mediating Role of Cultural Authenticity at Mount Emei, China

PONE-D-26-15774R3

Dear Dr. Wang,

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.

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PLOS One