Threshold Effect of the Internet on Regional Innovation in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper doesn't have a literature review or theoretical discussion about the effect of Internet business adoption on increasing regional innovation. The author should put a literature review or theory section. And I strongly recommend using and citing some key works here such as "Zhu, K., Kraemer, K. L., & Xu, S. (2006). The process of innovation assimilation by firms in different countries: a technology diffusion perspective on e-business. Management science" "Dini, P., Lombardo, G., Mansell, R., Razavi, A. R., Moschoyiannis, S., Krause, P., ... & Len, L. (2008). Beyond interoperability to digital ecosystems: regional innovation and socio-economic development led by SMEs. International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development, 1(3), 410-426." "Allen et al. (2020). Does citizen coproduction lead to better urban services in smart cities projects? An empirical study on e-participation in a mobile big data platform. Government Information Quarterly, 37(1), 101412." "oschoyiannis, S., Krause, P., ... & Len, L. (2008). Beyond interoperability to digital ecosystems: regional innovation and socio-economic development led by SMEs. International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development, 1(3), 410-426." "Im et al. (2014). Internet, trust in government, and citizen compliance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 24(3), 741-763" "Paunov, C., & Rollo, V. (2016). Has the internet fostered inclusive innovation in the developing world?. World Development, 78, 587-609."
And the paper requires extensive English proofreading. I am not talking about just grammatical errors. This should be better written in English with developmental editing to meet the standard.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Respected Reviewer,
Thank you very much for you reviewing and giving valuable suggestions. We have read your review report repeatedly, and tried our best to revise according to the report. Our responses are listed below. Please let us know if we could be of any further work.
Best Rewards,
Authors
List of Responses and Actions:
POINT 1: This paper doesn't have a literature review or theoretical discussion about the effect of Internet business adoption on increasing regional innovation. The author should put a literature review or theory section.
Response 1: We have added literature review in introduction and some key works have been cited as your suggestion. We have also added some literatures for our review including Billon et al.(2017;2019); Zhang and Li(2018); Paunov and Rollo(2016); Zhang et al.(2017) and so on. Thank you very much for your suggestion.
POINT 2: And the paper requires extensive English proofreading. I am not talking about just grammatical errors. This should be better written in English with developmental editing to meet the standard.
Response 2: Thank you very much for you reminding shortcoming of English writing. We have done our best to meet the standard and looked for help from English writer. Thank you for your valuable suggestion again and again.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript focuses on the issue of Internet business in regional innovation. There are several critical remarks:
- In the introduction the research problem should be pointed put. Why is the topic important (or why do you study on it)? What are your contributions?
- I would suggest the author make the reader aware of the possible reasons of the results.
- Literature review should be introduced.
- The results should be clearly present.
- I would suggest the author make the reader aware of the possible reasons of the results.
- Conclusion- Add more future scope. Also, how the proposed method can be applicable to other real life problems need to be mentioned.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Respected Reviewer,
Thank you very much for you reviewing and giving valuable suggestions. We have read your review report repeatedly, and tried our best to revise according to the report. Our responses are listed below. Please let us know if we could be of any further work.
Best Rewards,
Authors
POINT 1: In the introduction the research problem should be pointed put. Why is the topic important (or why do you study on it)? What are your contributions?
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion on introduction. We have expounded the background of the Internet and innovation in the first graph. And then we could point out the research problems and the importance of our topic. We have used one graph for contributions including that: (1)this paper provides evidence of Internet business adoption influencing regional innovation with a threshold mode; (2) We use a novel empirical model the panel data threshold spatial autoregressive model (TSAR) for our research. The TSAR model is combined by spatial autoregressive model (SAR) with threshold model so it can estimate both spatial spillovers and threshold effect of the Internet.
POINT 2: I would suggest the author make the reader aware of the possible reasons of the results.
Response 2: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have explained the estimated results in Discussion part. We focus on the why the Internet has threshold effect on regional innovation and why we cannot ignore the spatial spillovers when we estimate the Internet’s effect.
POINT 3: Literature review should be introduced.
Response 3: Thank you for your valuable suggestion on literature review. We have added literature review in introduction and introduce some questions according to literature review including that: (1) Most literatures study Internet effect on innovation at nation level while the study at province level is rare. (2) The effect of the Internet on regional innovation is likely to be limited and complex. Relationship of regional innovation and the Internet reflects how heterogeneous firms with Internet adoption choose location. When Internet adoption has unbalanced spatial distribution, the opportunities to support regional innovation for the Internet would be not equal. (3) Most empirical literature on Internet’s effect presumes localized knowledge spillovers which might induce inaccurate estimation results because it has been a consensus that there is spatial dependence of regional knowledge. We try to solve the problems in the paper.
POINT 4: The results should be clearly present.
Response 4: Thank you for your valuable suggestion on results. We have revised some details of TABLE 4 Regression results for SAR model and TSAR model and we hope the new table could be more clear.
POINT 5: Conclusion- Add more future scope. Also, how the proposed method can be applicable to other real life problems need to be mentioned.
Response 5: Thank you for your valuable suggestion on conclusion. We have added one graph to talk about extended application of TSAR and some limitations as following:
Except for the problem of the paper, TSAR model could be applicable to other research fields where there are spatial spillovers and threshold effect. For example, influence of environmental regulation on technological progress can also be modeled by TSAR. Our analysis is subjected to limitations. For one, we study a specific time set of recent 5 years. The impact of Internet business adoption on regional innovation may be different over a later time period due to ICT progress such as 5G, AR, AI may change the mode of knowledge and information flowing. Second, we select only firms to represent the actors of regional innovation system. More work may examine how Internet adoption by local governments, university, research institution influences regional innovation system, if researchers can find good indicators to describe more kinds of Internet adoption. Another limitation is that our research focuses primarily threshold effect on regional knowledge production. Future work should test whether there is threshold effect of Internet on interregional knowledge spillovers. Research on the later would provide new insights on whether Internet can help overcome localization of knowledge and narrow the innovative divide at regional level.
Reviewer 3 Report
The research subject is highly interesting, however I have some remarks which I believe could help to improve the manuscript:
1) The manuscript lacks systematic literature review and theoretical development. I would suggest to add separate section by summarizing current and more relevant understanding and theoretical background information about the topic, explaining the variables which are included in econometric modelling.
2) Findings is too much like a report and its analysis does not satisfy the high requirements we will expect for a paper to the journal. I would suggest to add more interpretations of the main findings
Minor remarks:
Line 221 - what is the meaning of " GDP per capital"? Is it the indicator GDP per capita?
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Respected Reviewer,
Thank you very much for you reviewing and giving valuable suggestions. We have read your review report repeatedly, and tried our best to revise according to the report. Our responses are listed below. Please let us know if we could be of any further work.
Best Rewards,
Authors
POINT 1: The manuscript lacks systematic literature review and theoretical development. I would suggest to add separate section by summarizing current and more relevant understanding and theoretical background information about the topic, explaining the variables which are included in econometric modelling.
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion on results. We have added literature review in Introduction part. We have reviewed theorical development of innovation management to summarize the micro theory of the Internet’s effect on innovation. And then we have reviewed relevant researches at region level. We hope the new contents could help to introduce theoretical background and lead to research problem solved by the paper.
POINT 2: Findings is too much like a report and its analysis does not satisfy the high requirements we will expect for a paper to the journal. I would suggest to add more interpretations of the main findings.
Response 2: Thank you for your valuable suggestion on conclusion. We have added more interpretations of main findings, especially why there is threshold effect of the Internet on regional innovation. Additionally, we have added one graph to talk about extended application of TSAR and some limitations.
POINT 3: Line 221 - what is the meaning of " GDP per capital"? Is it the indicator GDP per capita?
Response 3:Thanks for reminding the mistakes. We have replaced GDP per capital with GDP per capita.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
In the 1st review round, I suggested adding a literature review section and use some key works in this area including "Zhu, K., Kraemer, K. L., & Xu, S. (2006). The process of innovation assimilation by firms in different countries: a technology diffusion perspective on e-business. Management science" "Dini, P., Lombardo, G., Mansell, R., Razavi, A. R., Moschoyiannis, S., Krause, P., ... & Len, L. (2008). Beyond interoperability to digital ecosystems: regional innovation and socio-economic development led by SMEs. International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development, 1(3), 410-426." "Allen et al. (2020). Does citizen coproduction lead to better urban services in smart cities projects? An empirical study on e-participation in a mobile big data platform. Government Information Quarterly, 37(1), 101412." "oschoyiannis, S., Krause, P., ... & Len, L. (2008). Beyond interoperability to digital ecosystems: regional innovation and socio-economic development led by SMEs. International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development, 1(3), 410-426." "Im et al. (2014). Internet, trust in government, and citizen compliance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 24(3), 741-763" "Paunov, C., & Rollo, V. (2016). Has the internet fostered inclusive innovation in the developing world?. World Development, 78, 587-609."
These works are not reviewed not cited.
Please don't ignore reviewers' suggestions.
Reviewer 2 Report
Congratulation!!!
The improvment is good
