Identification of the Factors That Affect the Environmental Administrative Burden for Businesses
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I would like to thank the authors for submitting your paper to Sustainability journal.
I have a couple of comments which I hope will help them to improve the paper.
The paper title indicates the focus of the paper on _identification_ of the factors. Since there is an established body of knowledge on factors affecting administrative burden, and the study is not of exploratory nature, I would suggest using a different term. The authors test, verify whether these factors work or not.
I would also require significant revision of how the individual hypotheses are developed and introduced in the paper. The way they are presented does not directly derive from the earilier discussion. Each hypothesis should be introduced separately. For example how H2 was developed? Also, the hypotheses should not be developed in Introduction part of the paper.
The authors dedicate a lot of attention to measurement of compliance costs across different institutional contexts. I do not find it necessary to introduce so much secondary data, particularly from American context. Instead, I would expect here to learn about different measures and methods for measuring these compliance costs.
I would also like to encourage the authors to discuss the issue of unproductive entrepreneurship in their LR and in the discussion section. Many enterprises benefit from abundant administrative burden, and benefit from that.
The differences between medium sized enterprises vs large and small enterprises are not presented and discussed consistently throughout the whole paper. Sometimes the authors present the results for differences between medium sized ones and large ones whereas later they discuss or conlude the differences between small and medium sized ones. In fact, I do not see the discussion why the experience of administrative burden for medium sized ones is so different for small enterprises and for large enterprises???
Last, a strong recommendation follows to present the actual contribution of the paper to scholarly output. The authors write that some of their results are not surprising. If that is the case, what is the novelty of this work?
Your Reviewer, (16 June 2020)
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Reviewer 2 Report
The document could include actual refereces related to the topic:
Russo, M. V., & Fouts, P. A. (1997). A resource-based perspective on corporate environmental performance and profitability. Academy of management Journal, 40(3), 534-559.
Freeman, J. H. (1973). Environment, technology, and the administrative intensity of manufacturing organizations. American Sociological Review, 750-763.
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Reviewer 3 Report
Please find the review report attached.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
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Reviewer 4 Report
The methodology is somewhat doubtful, owing to the inherent subjectivity surrounding the (already few) answers received. Insufficient data is given on the typologies of the respondents.
The literature is largely outdated. While this is explicable in the case of some of the information provided, it fails to account for the current relevance of the topic.
Slovenia may be outlined as an EU example with regard to the topic, but the relevance thereof is not sufficiently proven. More relevant EU data is welcome.
Well written from the linguistic standpoint.
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Reviewer 5 Report
Strong points:
The article aims to develop a conceptual modelwith the following determinants: enterprise characteristics, the relevance of environmental regulations for business operations, and the impact of environmental stimulus measures on compliance costs
the article is well structured, the reading is fluid, adequately presents the methodology and the discussion.
As weaknesses:
1. Acronyms must be defined the first time they are used, for example 1ka.
2. on lines 344-348 the font is different.
You should review the entire bibliography in terms of both content and format
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I would like to thank the authors for making an attempt to revise their paper.
The paper title now indicates the focus of the paper on _coping_ with compliance costs. This is a "process-oriented" term, and the paper itself does not focus on the process of coping. Therefore, I would expect the title to be REVISED again. Process oriented concepts or terms usually work with qualitative studies. In case the authors decided to include it, they would have to extend their LR and research method, by incorporating works of M.Peng, F.Welter, D.Smallbone.
Also, since there is an established body of knowledge on factors affecting administrative burden, and the study is not of exploratory nature, I would suggest using a different term. The authors test, verify whether these factors work or not. Still, in different parts of the paper, the authors claim that their study is of exploratory nature.
I would like to thank the authors for developing the background to their hypotheses.
The authors dedicate a lot of attention to measurement of compliance costs across different institutional contexts. I would expect here to learn about different measures and methods for measuring these compliance costs. The authors provide some overview, relating to methods based on primary and secondary data. I would expect to see them in a summative, succint table where these are overviewed and critically analysed too.
Also, there is too much unnecessary secondary data on compliance costs across different countries. It is very hard to read this data line by line. Again, another table that overviews the current state would enhance the quality of the presentation.
I would also like to encourage the authors to discuss the issue of unproductive entrepreneurship in their LR and in the discussion section. Many enterprises benefit from abundant administrative burden, and benefit from that. This request was not met by the authors.
The authors raise the issue of possible overestimation of the compliance costs (p.5, ll.213-216). Two things included in the paper should berevised:
- more details should be presented - not just the list of references i.e [17, 42, 46-52] in case the authors really consider this overestimation as important issue to discuss in their paper,
- the authors claim that overestimation of the costs is one of the limitations of the study. if that is the case, why they have decided to undertake the study using the methods that might lead to such overestimation?
Last, I can recognize a strong need to present what is the novel and actual contribution of the paper to scholarly output. I still cannot see the novelty in the claimed contribution if the paper against the background of current literature on administrative burden.
Your reviewer,
Review of the revised version of the paper, 13 July 2020
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