Does Environmental Information Disclosure Affect the Sustainable Development of Enterprises: The Role of Green Innovation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have carefully considered and read the manuscript entitled “Does Environmental Information Disclosure Affect the Sustainable Development of Enterprises: The Role of Green innovation” and have the following observations:

After implementing command-and-control and market-incentive environmental regulation policies, environmental information disclosure is another important measure for the Chinese government to implement environmental governance. In the context of advocating corporate sustainable development and green governance, this study uses data from China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies in heavily polluting industries spanning 2008-2019 to explore the relationship between corporate environmental information disclosure and green innovation empirically. The results reveal the following. (1) High-quality environmental information disclosure significantly promotes the absolute green innovation level and the relative green innovation level of enterprises. (2) An intermediary model found that the internal mechanism of corporate environmental information disclosure to promote green innovation mainly comes from the government’s energy-saving innovation subsidy effect and the social media attention effect. (3) Corporate environmental information disclosure has a more evident promotion effect on green patents for energy conservation and green patents for inventions. (4) The environmental information disclosure of state-owned enterprises is more conducive to green innovation than to the activities of private enterprises. (5) The environmental information disclosure of enterprises in high-level administrative cities has no significant impact on green innovation; however, it has a significant promoting effect in low-level administrative cities. The research not only provides an empirical basis for China to improve the environmental information disclosure system of listed companies but also offers guidance for companies to pursue green and sustainable development.

Major comments and Suggestions for Authors:

This paper is missing the content clarity of the aims and objectives, so please do it to clarify for more understanding to meet the standard of readership of Sustainability. There is needful some more discussion, clarifications, improvements in modeling techniques (increase the articles reading), acute conclusion, policy recommendations, and research limitations for reconsidering that manuscript for publication in the Sustainability.

In addition to the above, I have a few points for the authors to consider before the publication of this work:

• The abstract should check thoroughly and compose it with a summative style without spelling mistakes and more focused on main impacting results and policy implications.
• Please highlight your contribution and novelty of this manuscript with accuracy in the introduction part before the arrangement description. Furthermore, the objectives of your study should elaborate clearly there in the introduction part.
• The literature and theoretical background should construct properly and add more relevant studies e.g. (latest) to grab and display more contemporary literature critically.
• Add the latest literature in this section.

• Recheck the references and their style are according to the journal requirements, and in-text and end-text should be the same and vice versa.
• In the Methodology part, please more detailed the results and discussion in presence of constructed hypothesis part for the actual output of this study for stakeholders and targeted policymakers.
• In the result and discussion section, some associated literature must be added to compare and contrast the key findings with the existing studies. Furthermore, Study limitations should be included in final conclusion part.
• The conclusion should be based on your results and discussion. So, do consider it and improve it based on the logic of your results and do provide some recommendations and policy implications as well.
• The acronyms should be defined at first appearance in the manuscript and then must be consistently used throughout the manuscript. Furthermore, the manuscript must be checked for typo errors and spelling checks.

Author Response

Please see attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript titled “Does Environmental Information Disclosure Affect the Sustainable Development of Enterprises: The Role of Green innovation”  is interesting but I have few suggestions.
1.    The novelty of this study is not clearly stated. Kindly elaborate on this.
2.    Create a mini paragraph at the end of the introduction discussing what the next sections present.
3.    The literature review can be expanded by incorporating the following recent studies
On innovation and environmental degradation
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-021-01322-2
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14993-1
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18168503
4.    Kindly expand the discussion section. Compare the study findings with prior studies
5.    Expand the policy suggestion path
6.    What is the direction for future studies? Is there a gap in this study? If so incorporate it

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The research article is innovative. The article makes a case and provides some new and preliminary data to be used as a starting point for further research.

Current gaps in research have been identified, and the significance of this research has been discussed. There is satisfactory comprehension and engagement with literature throughout the paper, covering a wide range of important articles. There is a need for more discussion of theoretical/conceptual positions that will illuminate the topic. The hypothesis section is well-organised and includes a wide variety of important articles.

Each of the following aspects of the data is satisfactory: mechanics, validity, reliability, and coding. The theoretical notions and framework underpinning the topic needs more discussion,  i.e., legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, and signal transmission theory. The contents of the tables have been clearly labelled/tagged to facilitate easy comprehension. Researchers employed in this work have used competent and appropriate discussion in the empirical results section.

There is explicit evidence to support the findings, and the discussion of data and conclusions appears to be appropriate in this context.

There is no separate section devoted to practical implications or theoretical implications, but a brief mention of them is included in the conclusion section. A more in-depth discussion of both theoretical and practical implications under a separate section is necessary.

Additional comments to authors

The article represents a commendable effort because it contributes new and preliminary knowledge that can be used as a building block for future research.

Create a literature review section and discuss the various theories utilised in the article especially more discussion on the legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory, and signal transmission. The literature review section should include a discussion of the theory that have been used to construct the paper.

Given how current and dynamic the topic of sustainability is, it would be beneficial to include more recent citations in addition to the extensive literature already cited.

Proofreading is required to ensure that all grammatical, sentence structure and syntax errors are eliminated from the manuscript. E.g. from page 7. Line 250-- List (this List should be lower case) of Listed Companies’ Environmental Inspection Industry Classification Management Directory.

Please check the reference list for consistency of the style utilised.

It is important to have a separate section on contribution to theory, contribution to practice or practical implications and conclusion.

This paper will be of high academic quality if some of the changes recommended in this review are implemented.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is very clear and interesting. The authors have done properly all the necessary corrections. The manuscript has considerably improved and so far.