Green Strategy Effect on Financial and Environmental Performance: A Mediation Analysis of Product Quality
, Henry Okwo, Benjamin Chukwu *, Chuka Ifediora and Charity Ezenwakwelu *Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General comment:
The paper addresses a very relevant topic, that is, the effects of adopting green strategies on financial and environmental performance, exploring the mediator effect of product quality. The literature review uses adequate reference studies, although it is required the incorporation of additional recent references from your target journal, especially devoted to eco-innovation and environmental performance. For improving the global quality of the manuscript, several specific comments and suggestions are made available below.
Specific comments:
- It is suggested to improve the motivation, by removing the first direct quotation; as well as to clearly identify at the introductory item, the scientific contributions to the reference literature on green strategy, eco-innovation and environmental performance, along with the core research question and its innovativeness;
- It is recommended the inclusion of previous findings concerning the effects of adopting eco-innovation practices in the sub-item devoted to environmental performance. For example https://doi.org/10.3390/su11082225
- All the items of the paper require sequential numbering, please consider the submission guidelines;
- It is recommended to include a rationale for justifying the focus on the largest multinational firms operating in Nigeria;
- It is suggested to merge the sub-items: 'Results'; and 'Hypothesis Result' in one new item on Pieces of Evidence; and
- Before presenting Theoretical implications and Managerial implications, it is recommended to introduce the concluding remarks and limitations of the analysis.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript deals with the important issue of the green strategy effect on financial and environmental performance: a mediation analysis of product quality. The dilemma of firms in developing economies was the crux of this study. In probing whether the adoption of organization-wide green strategy would enhance the product quality and the firm’s financial lifeline while also improving the environment, we developed a mediation model. The specific objectives were to ascertain the direct and determine the total effect of green strategy on both environmental and financial performance through product quality. The following remarks should be referred to. The abstract needs to be better structured to ease its readability, show it the abstract the novelty of the presented approach. Are there concrete steps that can be recommended and how generalizable are the findings? Can they be applied to other areas? How dependent are they to specific characteristics of the region under examination. Add DOI number to references. The affiliation is the same for all authors?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
GREAT paper! I like the techniques used!
Minor edits:
line 34-"a dilemma as an..."
line 66- "...be in doubt-that green..."
line 182- "...strategies are likely a achieve..."- fix this sentence
I like line 270 technique. Way to realize a weakness and try to address it.
In the paper there is numerous references to "author and their peers" I would rewrite this phrase throughout the manuscript
Table 3- I would put notes in for the variable names or rewrite the variable names. or make an additional paragraph that addresses the variables.
In the future, it would interesting to see more companies in a benchmark over time!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The revised version was substantially improved. Before publication, the manuscript needs extensive editing of the English language and style required.
Reviewer 2 Report
The target of the manuscript should be the international reader and the presented method should be applicable to other situations.
The manuscript can be accepted for publication.
Too many references. Ten references are cited in one sentence: Al-romeedy [2]; Dai, Cantor, & Montabon, [3]; Fanasch,[4]; García-marco & Sánchez, [5]; Ge et al., [6]; Liu, et al., [7]; Malviya, Kant, & Gupta, [8]; Yu & Han, [9]; H. Zhang, Zhang, Pu, & Li, [10]; W. Zhang, Xu, & Wang.
The same situations occur in other places in the manuscript.
