Environmental Regulations, Green Technology Innovation, and High-Quality Economic Development in China: Application of Mediation and Threshold Effects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made an ambitious effort to link Environmental regulations to green technology innovation, and high-quality economic development in China: Application of mediation effect and Threshold effect. Yet, there are a few issues that must be addressed before publication. For example,

1. The paper should be proofread and checked for language inconsistencies, which looks inadequate now.
2. The authors should make an effort by justifying the need for this study, which currently lacks motivation, gap, and justification. Many scholars have recently conducted studies on China and other countries and groups to examine the role of green innovation and technology in the past three years. The authors can consult the following studies.

Critical success factors of green innovation: Technology, organization and environment readiness

Do higher education research and development expenditures affect environmental sustainability? New Evidence from Thirty-One Chinese Provinces

Do international collaborations in environmental-related technology development in the US pay off in combating carbon dioxide emissions? Role of domestic environmental 

Do international collaborations in environmental-related technology development in the US pay off in combating carbon dioxide emissions? Role of domestic environmental …

Impact of innovation in marine energy generation, distribution, or transmission-related technologies on carbon dioxide emissions in the United States

Institutional quality, green innovation and energy efficiency

On the goals of sustainable production and the conditions of environmental sustainability: Does cyclical innovation in green and sustainable technologies determine carbon …

The cyclical and asymmetrical impact of green and sustainable technology research (GSTR) on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) in BRICS economies: role of renewable energy …

The cyclical impact of green and sustainable technology research on carbon dioxide emissions in BRICS economies

The influence of green innovation performance on corporate advantage in Taiwan

Towards sustainable production and consumption: Assessing the impact of energy productivity and eco-innovation on consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions (CCO2) in G-7 nation

3. The authors are encouraged to make a Summary Table of literature.

4. The authors should compare the findings with previous findings while demonstrating novelty, theoretical, and practical contributions.

5. The authors should also make a diagram showing the main conceptual framework linking all variables.

Author Response

The authors have made an ambitious effort to link Environmental regulations to green technology innovation, and high-quality economic development in China: Application of mediation effect and Threshold effect. Yet, there are a few issues that must be addressed before publication. For example,

1.The paper should be proofread and checked for language inconsistencies, which looks inadequate now.

Response:According to the suggestions of experts, this revision carefully checks the language problem, and submits the paper to a foreign language editing agency for language editing to ensure the quality of the language. Modified parts are marked in red font.

2.The authors should make an effort by justifying the need for this study, which currently lacks motivation, gap, and justification. Many scholars have recently conducted studies on China and other countries and groups to examine the role of green innovation and technology in the past three years. The authors can consult the following studies.

Critical success factors of green innovation: Technology, organization and environment readiness

Do higher education research and development expenditures affect environmental sustainability? New Evidence from Thirty-One Chinese Provinces

Do international collaborations in environmental-related technology development in the US pay off in combating carbon dioxide emissions? Role of domestic environmental …

Impact of innovation in marine energy generation, distribution, or transmission-related technologies on carbon dioxide emissions in the United States

Institutional quality, green innovation and energy efficiency

On the goals of sustainable production and the conditions of environmental sustainability: Does cyclical innovation in green and sustainable technologies determine carbon …

The cyclical and asymmetrical impact of green and sustainable technology research (GSTR) on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) in BRICS economies: role of renewable energy …

The cyclical impact of green and sustainable technology research on carbon dioxide emissions in BRICS economies

The influence of green innovation performance on corporate advantage in Taiwan

Towards sustainable production and consumption: Assessing the impact of energy productivity and eco-innovation on consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions (CCO2) in G-7 nation

Response:We are very grateful for the high-quality references provided by the reviewers. We have carefully studied the relevant literature, and cited some high-quality viewpoints and cited them in the text. At the same time, the introduction has been revised to highlight the research motivation and research of this paper. The main contribution, thanks again to the experts for their help. Modified parts are marked in red font.

3. The authors are encouraged to make a Summary Table of literature.

Response:According to the opinions of experts, only the literature summary figure is made in this revision. Please refer to the revised part of literature review. Modified parts are marked in red font.

4. The authors should compare the findings with previous findings while demonstrating novelty, theoretical, and practical contributions.

Response:According to the opinions of experts, this revision adds a lot of discussion content, compares the results of this research with previous research results, draws differences and similarities, highlights the innovation of this paper, and demonstrates novelty , theoretical and practical contributions. Modified parts are marked in red font.

5. The authors should also make a diagram showing the main conceptual framework linking all variables.

Response:Based on expert opinion, this revision adds the main conceptual framework for all variables in the variable selection section. Modified parts are marked in red font.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The article uses the intermediary effect and threshold effect to more comprehensively identify green technology innovation impact on high-quality economic development through environment regulation. The authors use the entropy method to evaluate high-quality economic development.

The subject matter is relevant with particular reference to sustainable development goals. Therefore, it is a topical issue. Moreover, the paper is addressed in an organic manner. This makes the article easy to read and therefore of interest to the reader.

In my opinion, the presentation and discussion of the results is also effective. I only suggest a careful re-reading of the English form.

Author Response

The article uses the intermediary effect and threshold effect to more comprehensively identify green technology innovation impact on high-quality economic development through environment regulation. The authors use the entropy method to evaluate high-quality economic development.

The subject matter is relevant with particular reference to sustainable development goals. Therefore, it is a topical issue. Moreover, the paper is addressed in an organic manner. This makes the article easy to read and therefore of interest to the reader.

In my opinion, the presentation and discussion of the results is also effective. I only suggest a careful re-reading of the English form.

Response:Thank you very much for the careful review of the experts. According to the suggestions of the experts, this revision carefully checks the language problems, and submits the paper to a foreign language editing agency for language editing to ensure the quality of the language. Modified parts are marked in red font.

Reviewer 3 Report

Introduction:

1. You intruded that high-quality economic development is important for China, but why environmental regulation is particularly important than other variables on high-quality economic development. In other words, why must you examine the environmental regulation instead of other variables on high-quality economic development?
2. In fact, the relationship between environmental regulation and high-quality economic development has been examined by many empirical studies, The incremental contribution of this study is trivial. Although you include green technology innovation as a partial mediating variable in your theoretical framework, green technology innovation has been examined in many above-mentioned empirical studies.
3. Finally, there is no theory to support your theoretical framework, so you should explain why your theoretical framework must include these variables instead of other variables.

 

Methods:

1. Although you employ the entropy method to verify your theoretical framework, you should employ more data to support it because of no theory.

 

Discussion

1. You only intruded on the analysis results but you should cite past studies to verify the consistency.
2. I suggest you should rewrite the discussion to demonstrate more contributions.

Author Response

1.You intruded that high-quality economic development is important for China, but why environmental regulation is particularly important than other variables on high-quality economic development. In other words, why must you examine the environmental regulation instead of other variables on high-quality economic development?

Response:Thanks for the expert review.High-quality economic development is to move from the previous extensive development model with high pollution and high energy consumption to a sustainable development model that conforms to the new development concept of "innovation, coordination, green, openness, and sharing". Both environmental regulation and green technology innovation are important factors that affect whether the economy can achieve high-quality development. Appropriate environmental regulation can effectively solve the external problem of pollution, and green technology innovation can effectively improve the comprehensive allocation efficiency of production factors. Moreover, domestic scholars have carried out abundant research on economic growth in environmental regulation. The theoretical research is relatively mature, but the impact on the high-quality development of economic growth is insufficient, and the research combined with China's national conditions is obviously insufficient, which has the value of further exploration. Do research for entry points. Thanks to the expert's professional advice, this paper will explore the research of other variables according to the expert opinion in the follow-up research, expecting to draw different conclusions. Modified parts are marked in red font.

2.In fact, the relationship between environmental regulation and high-quality economic development has been examined by many empirical studies, The incremental contribution of this study is trivial. Although you include green technology innovation as a partial mediating variable in your theoretical framework, green technology innovation has been examined in many above-mentioned empirical studies.

Response:Thanks for the expert review.Many scholars have done a lot of research on the relationship between environmental regulation and high-quality economic development, but in light of the actual situation faced by China’s development, different conclusions may be drawn. In addition, green technology innovation is regarded as the There are also mediating variables, but not many, and there is also a lack of related research combined with the threshold effect. The research in this paper can make certain improvements and supplements to the existing research. Thanks to the expert's professional advice, this paper will explore the research of other variables according to the expert opinion in the follow-up research, expecting to draw different conclusions. Modified parts are marked in red font.

Finally, there is no theory to support your theoretical framework, so you should explain why your theoretical framework must include these variables instead of other variables.

Response:Thanks to the experts for their review opinions, in the selection of variables, combined with the current research hotspots, such as green development, green transformation, ecological welfare, etc., the economic society has higher and higher requirements for the quality of green economic growth or economic growth, while environmental regulation and green Technological innovation is one of the most important indicators to achieve green economic growth. Therefore, this paper combines the current hot issues of research and my research direction to carry out research. On the one hand, I hope to find out the differences with previous research, and to draw some valuable conclusions; On the other hand, it is hoped that the research in this paper can provide theoretical reference for the formulation of relevant regional policies. Thanks to the expert's professional advice, this paper will explore the research of other variables according to the expert opinion in the follow-up research, expecting to draw different conclusions. Modified parts are marked in red font.

Methods:

1.Although you employ the entropy method to verify your theoretical framework, you should employ more data to support it because of no theory.

Response:Thank you very much for the review opinions of the experts. According to the suggestions of the experts, this revision has provided a lot of literature support for the application of the entropy weight method, and I hope to provide support for the application of the method in this paper. Modified parts are marked in red font.

Discussion

1.You only intruded on the analysis results but you should cite past studies to verify the consistency.

Response:According to the opinions of experts, this revision adds a lot of discussion content, compares the results of this paper with previous research results, and draws differences and similarities, which verifies whether this paper is consistent with previous research. Modified parts are marked in red font.

 

 

2.I suggest you should rewrite the discussion to demonstrate more contributions.

Response:According to the opinions of experts, this revision adds a lot of discussion content, compares the results of this research with previous research results, draws differences and similarities, highlights the innovation of this paper, and demonstrates novelty , theoretical and practical contributions. Modified parts are marked in red font.

 

Reviewer 4 Report

The article “Environmental regulation, green technology innovation and high-quality economic development in China: Application of mediation effect and Threshold effect", addresses a very important and current problem of the relationship between the implementation of environmental regulation policies and the high-quality economic development. Authors used in their research entropy method to measure high-quality development level in China and the intermediary and threshold effects to verify the main paths of green technology innovation affecting environmental regulation to promote high-quality economic development.

Strengths of this study:

• the topic of the paper is very important in the context of Sustainable Development Goals,
• the paper is well structured,
• the applied methods are adequate for the purpose of the research,
• the tables and figures have been carefully compiled,
• the bibliographic review is complete and up-to-date,
• the paper is easy to read.

My suggestions:

1. In my opinion, abstract contains too many detailed conclusions which can be transferred to the part 5.1 Conclusions.
2. The purpose of the research as well as the spatial and temporal scope of the research should be specified in the abstract.

This paper qualifies to be published in the Journal of Sustainability after minor revision.

 

Author Response

The article “Environmental regulation, green technology innovation and high-quality economic development in China: Application of mediation effect and Threshold effect", addresses a very important and current problem of the relationship between the implementation of environmental regulation policies and the high-quality economic development. Authors used in their research entropy method to measure high-quality development level in China and the intermediary and threshold effects to verify the main paths of green technology innovation affecting environmental regulation to promote high-quality economic development.

Strengths of this study:

the topic of the paper is very important in the context of Sustainable Development Goals,

the paper is well structured,

the applied methods are adequate for the purpose of the research,

the tables and figures have been carefully compiled,

the bibliographic review is complete and up-to-date,

the paper is easy to read.

My suggestions:

1.In my opinion, abstract contains too many detailed conclusions which can be transferred to the part 5.1 Conclusions.

Response:According to the opinions of experts, this revision has revised the abstract part, and put some abstract content into the conclusion, and strive to make the conclusion part more substantial. Modified parts are marked in red font.

2.The purpose of the research as well as the spatial and temporal scope of the research should be specified in the abstract.

Response:According to the opinions of experts, this revision has revised the abstract part, and increased the research purpose and the temporal and spatial scope of the research. Modified parts are marked in red font.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Accept after moderate language checking

Author Response

Response:According to the suggestions of experts, this revision carefully checks the language problem, and submits the paper to a MDPI editing agency for language editing to ensure the quality of the language. This revision will provide the MDPI language editing Certificate. Modified parts are marked in red font.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for revising the article according to my comments. After reviewing your article again, I found that the variables and hypotheses of this article have been empirically examined in serval studies, so its contribution should not be enough for publication. It is recommended that the author can focus on the theoretical framework and discuss the significant differences from the past literature. Also, you should propose why this research has made a high contribution, because there is no a single theory to fully support your theoretical model, which will represent a data driver article.

Author Response

Response:In the past, scholars have made great contributions to the connotation, path selection, construction of evaluation index system, environmental regulation and technological innovation of high-quality economic development, respectively, but environmental regulation and green technology innovation jointly contribute to high-quality economic development. The research results are relatively few. Compared with the existing literature, this paper is different in that: (1) High-quality development is a new expression first proposed by China in 2017, indicating that China's economy has shifted from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage. In recent years, many scholars have Abundant research has been carried out on high-quality development, but the existing research has not formed a unified view on the evaluation of high-quality development, and there are few studies. This paper takes the national policy as the background and constructs indicators from the perspectives of innovation, coordination, greenness, openness and sharing. Systematic evaluation of high-quality development is a major difference from previous research and a major supplement to existing research. (2) Previous studies have mainly focused on the impact of technological innovation on high-quality development, while research from the perspective of green technology innovation is obviously insufficient. Green technology innovation can better reflect the high-quality requirements and is an innovation to existing research. Therefore, in terms of theoretical analysis, this paper integrates environmental regulation, green technology innovation and high-quality economic development into the same framework, and comprehensively analyzes the relationship between the three, which helps to clarify the mechanism of action between the three, and can better grasp the green technology. Theoretical evidence on the impact of innovation on high-quality economic development; (3) In terms of empirical methods, although the mediating effect model has been widely used, the literature on the impact of green technology innovation as a mediating variable on high-quality development is obviously insufficient. The innovation of this paper is that this paper uses the mediation effect model to more comprehensively identify the main paths through which green technology innovation affects environmental regulation and promotes high-quality economic development, and expands related research fields. In view of this, based on the panel data of 30 provinces in my country from 2004 to 2020, on the basis of measuring the high-quality development of China's regional economy, this paper systematically explains the internal mechanism and transmission mechanism of green technology innovation and environmental regulation affecting the high-quality economic development, and discusses the The driving effect of green technology innovation and environmental regulation for high-quality economic development in China. Modified parts are marked in red font.

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

After reviewing your article again, I found that the variables and hypotheses of this article have been empirically examined in serval studies, so its contribution should not be enough for publication. It is recommended that the author can focus on the theoretical framework and discuss the significant differences from the past literature. Also, you should propose why this research has made a high contribution, because there is no a single theory to fully support your theoretical model, which will represent that it is a data driver article.

 

Author Response

Response:In the past, scholars have made great contributions to the connotation, path selection, construction of evaluation index system, environmental regulation and technological innovation of high-quality economic development, respectively, but environmental regulation and green technology innovation jointly contribute to high-quality economic development. The research results are relatively few. Compared with the existing literature, this paper is different in that: (1) High-quality development is a new expression first proposed by China in 2017, indicating that China's economy has shifted from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage. In recent years, many scholars have Abundant research has been carried out on high-quality development, but the existing research has not formed a unified view on the evaluation of high-quality development, and there are few studies. This paper takes the national policy as the background and constructs indicators from the perspectives of innovation, coordination, greenness, openness and sharing. Systematic evaluation of high-quality development is a major difference from previous research and a major supplement to existing research. (2) Previous studies have mainly focused on the impact of technological innovation on high-quality development, while research from the perspective of green technology innovation is obviously insufficient. Green technology innovation can better reflect the high-quality requirements and is an innovation to existing research. Therefore, in terms of theoretical analysis, this paper integrates environmental regulation, green technology innovation and high-quality economic development into the same framework, and comprehensively analyzes the relationship between the three, which helps to clarify the mechanism of action between the three, and can better grasp the green technology. Theoretical evidence on the impact of innovation on high-quality economic development; (3) In terms of empirical methods, although the mediating effect model has been widely used, the literature on the impact of green technology innovation as a mediating variable on high-quality development is obviously insufficient. The innovation of this paper is that this paper uses the mediation effect model to more comprehensively identify the main paths through which green technology innovation affects environmental regulation and promotes high-quality economic development, and expands related research fields. In view of this, based on the panel data of 30 provinces in my country from 2004 to 2020, on the basis of measuring the high-quality development of China's regional economy, this paper systematically explains the internal mechanism and transmission mechanism of green technology innovation and environmental regulation affecting the high-quality economic development, and discusses the driving effect of green technology innovation and environmental regulation for high-quality economic development in China.