Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Esteemed Authors,

It has been a great honor, as well as a pleasantly challenging activity, to review the article entitled ”Can I learn from the Mistakes of Neighbors? —The Spatial spillover effects of local government learning from crisis.”

For various reasons, local, national, and global crises have intensified recently, which requires better management by local, regional, national, and international authorities.

The disasters of the past years in different high-risk industries (e.g., aviation, offshore, nuclear) push for a moment of reflexivity about learning from accidents. From this point of view, the paper is likely to elicit specialists' interest in administration, emergencies, emergency management, public policies, and good governance.

The paper is well structured and possesses an appreciable novelty character. The major components of the article – Introduction; Literature Review; Theoretical assumption; Empirical Strategy; Empirical Results and Discussion and Conclusions and Policy Recommendations - are organized judiciously and directly linked to one another. Moreover, the theoretical models of the relationships between the different types of accidents and the potential factors of influence are well-chosen and unequivocally illustrate various situations.

The documentation is adequate, and the provided scientific results are precise. The goal of the conducted research is well specified and delineated. The working protocol is appropriate, and the analysis methods are coherent with the proposed objectives.

The bibliography of the paper is generous. What is even more relevant for the quality of the article, all the authors in the bibliographic reference list are quoted in the text of the material (with one exception – Coze, 2013 – number 19 in the bibliographic references list, which is not mentioned even once in the text of the article).

The article is very well documented, and most bibliographic references are recent and very recent.

I would advise the authors to be more careful concerning the bibliography: it is preferred that the cited authors be mentioned in alphabetical order, and references without specified authors be mentioned at the end of the list of references, in chronological order. I also recommend using a single system not only in citations but also when it comes to journals. I refer here mainly to mentioning the following elements for each article consulted: journal, volume, issue, and pages (the DOI may also be noted, should the author, so desire, but the essential descriptive elements are the previously mentioned ones).

Also, to avoid confusion, it is recommended to accurately mention the article's descriptive elements - for example - the additional mention of the article number, where the situation requires it.

For example - page 16, lines 657-658, number 1 in the bibliographic references list – Drupsteen L., Groeneweg J., Zwetsloot G.I.J.M. Critical Steps in Learning From Incidents: Using Learning Potential in the Process From Reporting an Incident to Accident Prevention. International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics (or ISO Abbreviation – Int. J. Occup. Saf. Ergon.), 2013, 19, 1, 63-77. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10803548.2013.11076966.

            Another example - page 16, lines 675-676, number 12 in the bibliographic references list – Dekker S., Hansén D. Learning under Pressure: The Effects of Politicization on Organizational Learning in Public Bureaucracies. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (or ISO Abbreviation – J. Public Adm. Res. Theory), 2004, 14, 2, 211-230. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muh014.

Another example - page 17, line 687, number 19 in the bibliographic references list – Le Coze J.C. What have we learned about learning from accidents? Post-disasters reflections. Safety Science (or ISO Abbreviation – Saf. Sci.), 51, 1, 441-453. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2012.07.007.

Adequate presentation of bibliographic sources would avoid other non-compliant situations, such as duplication of articles, such as 11 and 17, in the list of bibliographic references which correspond to the same author and article.

In conclusion, I suggest that the authors review the entire list of bibliographic references and present them in a manner that is correct and appropriate to the journal's requirements.

The work also benefits from adequate iconographic support, materialized by six tables and one figure. Both the tables and figure present and synthetically illustrate the essential data of the work.

The authors should pay more attention to using certain abbreviations to avoid confusion; basically, all abbreviations should be used in the text only after at least one mention made in the extenso.

The obtained results are interpreted correctly, and their practical value is visible.

The graphical representation of the results is adequate. As for the grammar of the paper, the text is very well written, with only a few parts that would require some minor changes, as follows:

Page 1, line 18 – replace “exces-sive” with “excessive”;

Page 1, line 21 – replace “weak-ened” with “weakened”;

Page 1, line 36 – replace “just as a Safety accidents” with “just as Safety accidents”;

Page 5, line 234 – replace “As can be seen” with “As it can be seen”;

Page 6 line 291 - replace “As can be seen” with “As it can be seen”;

Page 9, line 372 - replace “As can be seen” with “As it can be seen”;

Page 10, line 429 - replace “As can be seen” with “As it can be seen”;

Page 13, line 528 - replace “As can be seen” with “As it can be seen”;

Page 14, line 585 – replace “frequent” with “frequently”;

Page 15, line 595 – replace “betweeren” with “between”.

Minor corrections and clarifications notwithstanding, the authors’ work and obtained results are highly commendable. They bring significant added value to the paper and may constitute a launching pad for further valuable studies.

Provided that the authors verify the paper and perform the required corrections, the article may be accepted and published in the Sustainability.

 

Best Regards,

Reviewer

Author Response

Thank you very much for your thorough review of our paper and your many thoughtful suggestions. We have revised the manuscript accordingly. Our responses to your specific concerns and suggestions are as follow.

Point 1: The bibliography of the paper is generous. What is even more relevant for the quality of the article, all the authors in the bibliographic reference list are quoted in the text of the material (with one exception – Coze, 2013 – number 19 in the bibliographic references list, which is not mentioned even once in the text of the article).

 

Response 1: Thanks for the reminding of reviewers. There is an error in the literature citation here and we cited this literature in the text. The detailed revisions are as follows:

Page 4, line 143：Learning from disasters is not always a straightforward process [40],

[40]Le Coze, J.C. What have we learned about learning from accidents? Post-disasters reflections. Safety science 2013, 51, 441-453.

Point 2: I would advise the authors to be more careful concerning the bibliography: it is preferred that the cited authors be mentioned in alphabetical order, and references without specified authors be mentioned at the end of the list of references, in chronological order. I also recommend using a single system not only in citations but also when it comes to journals. I refer here mainly to mentioning the following elements for each article consulted: journal, volume, issue, and pages (the DOI may also be noted, should the author, so desire, but the essential descriptive elements are the previously mentioned ones).

Adequate presentation of bibliographic sources would avoid other non-compliant situations, such as duplication of articles, such as 11 and 17, in the list of bibliographic references which correspond to the same author and article.

In conclusion, I suggest that the authors review the entire list of bibliographic references and present them in a manner that is correct and appropriate to the journal's requirements.

 

Response 2: Thanks for the reminding of reviewers, following your suggestion, First, we have revised all references in the article according to the template requirements of the journal, organizing the elements of each document, including journal, volume, issue, and page. Second, we have arranged the references in the order in which they appear in the article, while treating the same literature to avoid any non-compliance with the journal's regulations. The detailed revisions are as follows:

[1]Burgos-Garcia, A. Mainstreaming occupational safety and health into education: Good practice in school and vocational education. Int. J. Interdiscip. Soc. Sci. Annu. Rev 2007, 2, 29-36.

[2]Ryley, T.; Burchell, J.; Davison, L. Valuing air transportation and sustainability from a public perspective: Evidence from the United Kingdom and the United States. Research in Transportation Business & Management 2013, 7, 114-119.

[3]Hardcopf, R.; Shah, R.; Dhanorkar, S. The impact of a spill or pollution accident on firm environmental activity: An empirical investigation. Production and Operations Management 2021, 30, 2467-2491.

[4]Burgherr, P.; Hirschberg, S. Comparative risk assessment of severe accidents in the energy sector. Energy policy 2014, 74, S45-S56.

[5]Mouneer, T.A. Sustainable Development Importance in Higher Education for Occupational Health and Safety Using Egypt Vision 2030 under COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection 2021, 9, 74.

···

[88]Tao, P.; Chen, C. Towards a politics of disaster response: Presidential disaster instructions in China, 1998–2012. Disasters 2018, 42, 275-293.

[89]Wenxuan, Y. Sudden crisis events and organizational learning: Insights from Singapore's response strategy to the New Crown Pneumonia outbreak. Urban Governance Research 2020, 5(01), 76-96+74-75.

Point 3:The authors should pay more attention to using certain abbreviations to avoid confusion; basically, all abbreviations should be used in the text only after at least one mention made in the extenso.

 

Response 3: Thanks for the reminding of reviewers, following your suggestion, we have double-checked the full-text documentation and corrected the abbreviations, the detailed revisions are as follows:

Page 2, line 56：such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);

Page7, line 314: The frequency of major accidents and the number of fatalities in major accidents were obtained from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR) database;

Point 4: The graphical representation of the results is adequate. As for the grammar of the paper, the text is very well written, with only a few parts that would require some minor changes:

 

Response 4: Thanks for the reminding of reviewers, following your suggestion, the detailed revisions are as follows:

Page 1, line 20 – replace “exces-sive” with “excessive”;

Page 15, line 578 – replace “frequent” with “frequently”;

Page 15, line 598 – replace “betweeren” with “between”.

Other grammatical errors have been replaced or removed in the full text.

Point 5: English language and style are fine/minor spell check required

 

Response 5: Thanks for the reminding of reviewers, according to your suggestion, we invited a professor who had been a visiting scholar in the UK to guide us in polishing the manuscript. We also used the paid service "Grammarly," an online grammar correction and proofreading tool, to check spelling, correct punctuation, and fix grammatical errors. The revisions we have made are as follows:(1) Replace overused words;(2) Replace the phrase with a strong adjective;(3)We have rephrased some sentences to make them more accurate and fluent in expression and to enhance the readability of the manuscript;(4)We thoroughly and carefully reviewed the manuscript, correcting spelling errors, singular and plural changes, tense changes, punctuation, and other fundamental grammar issues.

In particular, due to the large number of changes involved, it may not be possible to list them all, and the above list is only part of the changes made in our manuscript. However, we have done a thorough and detailed review of our manuscript and completed the revision of the full text following the modification mentioned above ideas. The complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript.

Thank you again for your approval of our article and your valuable comments.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is about an argument of high interest, but I have several concerns which induce me to reject it. First, the paper should be more consistent with the purpose of the Journal which is 'It provides an advanced forum for studies related to sustainability and sustainable development'. In the development of the paper's contents the author/s should consider the importance of the subject for the sustainable development.

Introduction. The author asserts 'the key lies in the failure of local governments to truly learn from past failures'. Are you sure of this? You decisively state that the cause is macro-driven (failures in the actions of local governments) citing references too dated for a subject (safety accidents) in continuous evolution. 

Literature review. The great weaknesses of this part is related to the cited references. In general, they are too old and I'm not sure that in the last ten years no scholar has dealt with the subject covered in the paper.There are some minor correction suggestions:

-'...crisis learning research is still one of the...' : the cited reference is dated 2008. Are you sure of this 'still'?

-'...research in the area of crisi learnins is emerging...': please insert the references

- '...most of the existing crisis learning reserach...'the references 16,17,18 date back to more than ten years ago...

-...'second. the research perspective is gradually extending...': cite references

-'...however, existing research has focused on learning...': cite references

-since reference n.20 no one has dealt with the subject anymore?

-'...especially crisis knowledge...': cite references

Finally, clarify how this study aims to bridge the gap and why it is innovative, especially with reference to more recent studies and considering the sustainability issue Theoretical assumptions. In this section the assumptions are not supported by an appropriate literature. What is the theory/theoretical framework within which your research is developed?

Other minor corrections to make:
-'...based on the practice..' What practice?
- After the HP 1 in bold '...after the occurence of a major accident...': document this practice
- editing error 'the regulatory effect when the frequency...'
-in the text usually only surname are cited
-editing error 'in order to quickly...'

Empirical strategy. The link between variabled and hypotesis lacks.

Other minor suggestions
-'...we made previous studies...': add the references
-insert ref to tables within the text

Empirical results and Discussion. Are the hypothesis confirmed or not?
Furthermore, there are many typo errors. Insert ref to table within the text.

Conclusions. There are not limitations of the study and suggestions for future research

References. Update with the latest research (only two articles dated 2020 and two articles dated 2021 in 44 references)

 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Thank you very much for your thorough review of our paper and your many thoughtful suggestions. We have revised the manuscript accordingly. Our responses to your specific concerns and suggestions are as follow.

Point 1: the paper should be more consistent with the purpose of the Journal which is 'It provides an advanced forum for studies related to sustainability and sustainable development. In the development of the paper's contents the author/s should consider the importance of the subject for the sustainable development.

 

Response 1: Following your suggestion, we have added elaboration on the relationship between major accidents, local government crisis learning, and local sustainable development, as described in the abstract and in the text. The detailed revisions are as follows:

In Abstract: “accident prevention is an important prerequisite for achieving sustainable development, and effective crisis learning is a necessary path to accident prevention”;

In Introduction：“Reducing workplace accidents is crucial for overall sustainability, especially major accidents are not conducive to a safe and healthy working environment, and they can stymie local governments' sustainable development [1]”;

“The important relationship between accident prevention and sustainable development can also be seen in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs),the Sub-target 3.9, for example, aims to "...significantly reduce the number of deaths and illnesses caused by hazardous chemicals, air, water, and soil pollution and contamination" by 2030; and target 8.8, which aims to "...protect labor rights and promote safe and secure working environments" by 2030 [5,6]”;

In Literature Review: “Sustainable development is a long-term goal for the survival of organizations, which requires that they are able to learn effectively from the experiences of other organizations in crises, forming a virtuous learning path for the similar crises.”;

In addition, we cited literature on related topics to support the link between this research and the topic of sustainable development, especially in terms of the impediments that cause unsustainable development[1-4],[5,6],[17],[29].At the same time, it’s important to note that In Sustainability Journal, many researches on accidents and learning from accident or crisis has been published from various perspective, such as discussing learning from accident management in different industries (Nordin S M, et al,2021) ^[1];paying attention to vicarious learning from the failure of alliance members(Edwin K W, et al,2021) ^[2]; urban resilience and sustainable development (Hoelscher, K,et al,2022)^[3].Of course, our study also cites some of these papers.

 

Point 2: Introduction. The author asserts 'the key lies in the failure of local governments to truly learn from past failures'. Are you sure of this? You decisively state that the cause is macro-driven (failures in the actions of local governments) citing references too dated for a subject (safety accidents) in continuous evolution. 

 

Response 2: Following your suggestion, we have reworked this introduction section and adjusted the textual elaboration. First, we discuss the importance of crisis learning for the sustainable development of local governments; then we present the situation of safety accident trends in the Chinese context, next we argue that crisis learning is an important tool for accident prevention and lead to the two research questions of this article, Finally, we add the theoretical framework of this paper and describe the methodology used to do this study, and also explain the theoretical contribution of this paper. The complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript. Also, based on the reviewers' comments, we added the latest research that related to our topic, the details are as follows：

[3]Hardcopf, R.; Shah, R.; Dhanorkar, S. The impact of a spill or pollution accident on firm environmental activity: An empirical investigation. Production and Operations Management 2021, 30, 2467-2491.

[5] Mouneer, T.A. Sustainable Development Importance in Higher Education for Occupational Health and Safety Using Egypt Vision 2030 under COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection 2021, 9, 74.

[8]Zhen, X.; Vinnem, J.E.; Han, Y.; Peng, C.; Huang, Y. Development and prospects of major accident indicators in the offshore petroleum sector. Process Safety and Environmental Protection 2022, 160, 551-562, doi:10.1016/j.psep.2022.02.050.

[10]Jiao, Y.; Li, X.; Liu, Q.; Kong, M.; Chen, Y.; Wang, X.; Chen, W. Analysis of the characteristics of major accidents and particularly serious accidents from 2005 to 2019 in China. Journal of Safety and Environment 2021, 21, 2875-2882.

[11]Chen, C.; Reniers, G. Chemical industry in China: The current status, safety problems, and pathways for future sustainable development. Safety science 2020, 128, 104741.

[12]Meyer Jr, V.; e Cunha, M.P.; Mamédio, D.F.; Nogueira, D.P. Crisis management in high-reliability organizations: lessons from Brazilian air disasters. Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal 2020.

[13]Eriksson, P.; Hallberg, N. Crisis management as a learning system: Understanding the dynamics of adaptation and transformation in-between crises. Safety science 2022, 151, 105735.

In particular, due to the large number of changes involved, it may not be possible to list them all, we list only some of the references, and completed the revision of the full text following the modification mentioned above ideas. The complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript.

Point 3: Literature review. The great weaknesses of this part are related to the cited references. In general, they are too old and I'm not sure that in the last ten years no scholar has dealt with the subject covered in the paper.

 

Response 3: Following your suggestion, we have reorganized the content of the literature review and added references related to various parts of the full text, especially the literature on local crisis learning of local government in recent years, we have made extensive changes to the references and the content, such as increase from 44 references to 90 references.

At the same time, we revised each of the minor correction suggestions based on the reviewers' comments:

(1)-'...crisis learning research is still one of the...' : the cited reference is dated 2008. Are you sure of this 'still’?

Page 3, line 107: crisis learning has once again become the focus of discussion in the field of emergency management and public management [27].

(2)-'...research in the area of crisis learning is emerging...': please insert the references

Page 4, line154: Research in the area of crisis learning is emerging [47-50] and relevant prior re-search has provided an important foundation for this study.

(3)- '...most of the existing crisis learning research...'the references 16,17,18 date back to more than ten years ago...

Page 4, line157: most of the existing crisis learning research is based on discursive induction and case-based deduction [51,52], with case descriptions, textual analysis and empirical summaries.

[51] Steen, R.; Rønningsbakk, B. Emergent learning during crisis: A case study of the arctic circle border crossing at Storskog in Norway. Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy 2021, 12, 158-180.

[52]Toubes, D.R.; Araújo-Vila, N.; Fraiz-Brea, J.A. Organizational Learning Capacity and Sustainability Challenges in Times of Crisis: A Study on Tourism SMEs in Galicia (Spain). Sustainability 2021, 13, 11764.

(4)-...'second. the research perspective is gradually extending...': cite references

Page 4, line160: Second, the research perspective is gradually extending from intra-organizational to inter-organizational learning [53,54].

(5)-'...however, existing research has focused on learning...': cite references

Page 4, line164: Existing research has focused on learning from crises within the organization [55,56], although some scholars have begun to call for a shift to inter-organizational crisis learning [57] and emphasized the importance of "learning from the experience of the accident" instead of "learning from the accident of a single organization" [58].

（6）-since reference n.20 no one has dealt with the subject anymore?

We have added relevant references cited in the subsequent theoretical hypothesis and empirical discussion.

(7)-'...especially crisis knowledge...': cite references

Page 4, line170: especially crisis knowledge [59], are its important characteristics.

Point 4: Finally, clarify how this study aims to bridge the gap and why it is innovative, especially with reference to more recent studies and considering the sustainability issue Theoretical assumptions. In this section the assumptions are not supported by an appropriate literature. What is the theory/theoretical framework within which your research is developed?

 

Response 4: Following your suggestion, First, we added the theoretical model (Figure 1) to clearly demonstrate the theoretical framework and assumptions of this article. The detailed revisions are as follows:

 

Next we point out the shortcomings of existing studies on crisis learning of local governments in major accidents based on a literature review, there are three aspects, as follows：

“But there is room for further expansion as follows: First, from a methodological perspective, most of the existing crisis learning research is based on discursive induction and case-based deduction [51,52], with case descriptions, textual analysis and empirical summaries, thus lacking a concrete understanding of positivism. Second, the research perspective is gradually extending from intra-organizational to inter-organizational learning [53,54]. Sustainable development is a long-term goal for the survival of organizations, which requires that they are able to learn effectively from the experiences of other organizations in crises, forming a virtuous learning path for the similar crises. However, the focus and depth of the relevant research needs to be improved. Existing research has focused on learning from crises within the organization [55,56], although some scholars have begun to call for a shift to inter-organizational crisis learning [57] and emphasized the importance of “learning from the experience of the accident” instead of “learning from the accident of a single organization” [58].Thirdly, crisis learning is essentially the process of acquiring, transferring and assimilating crisis knowledge with knowledge demand attributes, and the diffusion and spillover of knowledge, especially crisis knowledge [59], are its important characteristics”;

And we added to how this study fills a gap in established research that focuses less on crisis learning in non-accident local governments, the detailed revisions are as follows:

“This article adds several contributions to the literature: First, it clarifies local crisis learning effects and mechanisms from spatial effects, which not only complements the public sector observation perspective for developing organizational learning theory, but also provides a new growth point for cross-sectional researches of emergencies. Second, it empirically examines the crisis learning effects of local governments in major accidents with objective quantitative data, complementing and improving the quantitative evidence of crisis learning research. Third, this study seeks to provide evidence that extends the literature on multi-level organizational learning, moving from learning within public organizations to learning among public organizations”;

After that we also added a description of how to go about doing this study, as follows：

“To this end, this study focuses on the crisis learning effect of local governments from major accidents, and uses quantitative data to explore the crisis learning effect and spatial spillover of local government based on practical work on safety production accidents in China, and further elaborates the relationship between the two in terms of post-disaster political factors, with a view to providing reference for crisis learning re-searches”;

For the above additions and modifications, we refer to and cite some of the literature, the complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript.

In addition, we revised each of the minor correction suggestions in this section:

(1)-‘…based on the practice..’ What practice?

It’s an expression error, and we have reformulated and summarized into a small part that named Theoretical Background, as follow:

“When a major accident occurs in China, the government will conduct crisis learning based on three processes…”.

(2)- After the HP 1 in bold ‘…after the occurrence of a major accident…’: document this practice？

There is an error in the expression here, we modify it to:

“Hypothesis 1: There is a spatial spillover effects of crisis learning by local governments in major accidents.”

(3) -in the text usually only surname are cited

There is an error in the expression here, we modify it to:

“this article adopts the theoretical model of validated moderating effect proposed by Wen et al [81].”

(4)-editing error ‘in order to quickly…’

We deleted the editing error, as follow:

“In order to reach the goal of accident supervision and oversight quickly and short-term.”

Point 5: Empirical strategy. The link between variable and hypothesis lacks.

 

Response 5: Following your suggestion, first, we strengthen the description between hypotheses and variables, especially the dependent variable—crisis learning effect, where we argue that the ultimate effect of crisis learning is reflected in the death rate of safety accidents, we have elaborated in the article as follow:

“From this perspective, this article measures the effect of crisis learning in terms of the relative concept of the death rate of safety accidents, as similar studies have applied the same rate for computing the accident rate [76-78], while the absolute concept of the number of safety accident death is used for robustness testing.”

At the same time, to ensure a pure causal effect of major accidents and crisis learning effect of local government, we controlled for other variables affecting the accident rate as much as possible. we also cite some of the recent literature to support the relationship between the variable measures and hypotheses in our article, as follows：

[76] Kim, E.; Rhee, M. Learning from Alliance Membership: An Empirical Study of Learning from the Failure of Their Alliance Members, Liability and Environmentally Sustainable Airline. Sustainability 2021, 13, 11794.

[77] Jia, J.; Liang, X.; Ma, G. Political hierarchy and regional economic development: Evidence from a spatial discontinuity in China. Journal of Public Economics 2021, 194, 104352.]

[79]Wang Rongjuan, W.J. What makes the environmental protection interview system effective? --A qualitative comparative analysis of fuzzy sets based on 29 cases. China Population Resources and Environment 2019, 29(12), 103-111.

[84] Musaji, S.; Schulze, W.S.; De Castro, J.O. How long does it take to get to the learning curve? Academy of Management Journal 2020, 63, 205-223.

[85] Wang, F.-F.; Deng, W.-J.; Cheng, H.; Gao, Q.; Deng, Z.-W.; Deng, H.-C. The Impact of Local Economic Growth Target Setting on the Quality of Public Occupational Health: Evidence From Provincial and City Government Work Reports in China. Frontiers in Public Health 2021, 9.

In addition, we revised each of the minor correction suggestions in this section:

(1)-'...we made previous studies...': add the references

Page 7, Line 333: we refer to previous studies and add 0.01 to the model before taking the logarithm, which did not affect the final results[62].

[62] Shi, X.; Xi, T. Race to safety: Political competition, neighborhood effects, and coal mine deaths in China. Journal of Development Economics 2018, 131, 79-95.

(2) -insert ref to tables within the text

Tables and figures throughout the article are referenced in this article, including six tables and two figures.

Point 6: Empirical results and Discussion. Are the hypothesis confirmed or not? Furthermore, there are many typo errors.

 

Response 6: Thanks for the reminding of reviewers, we reformulate whether the hypothesis confirmed in the Results section, as follows：

“Either spatial distance indicates a positive effect of the neighboring region's accident mortality rate on the region's accident mortality rate, initially confirming that the cri-sis learning effect of local government has a spatial spillover effect, Hypothesis 1 is confirmed”;

“With the frequency of major accidents, major accidents first have a dampening effect on the local accident mortality rate and then turn to a worsening effect, implying that the crisis learning effect of local governments changes from a positive to a negative effect, Hypothesis 2 is confirmed”;

“political pressure moderates the "U" shaped relationship between the frequency of major accidents and local crisis learning effect, Hypothesis 3 is initially confirmed.”

All of these statements clearly express whether the research hypotheses we presented earlier are confirmed, Also, based on the reviewer's comments, we have proofread this section for typo errors, the complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript.

Point 7: Conclusions. There are not limitations of the study and suggestions for future research

Response 7: Thanks to the suggestions, according to this, we have added the limitations of this article as follows：

“However, there are certain limitations to this study. First, due to data availability, the measurement of crisis learning effect of local governments in this article needs to be further tested; Second, this article is based on provincial panel data in China, and whether there is still a spatial spillover effect on crisis learning of municipal and even grassroots governments needs to be tested; Third, this article mainly explores the crisis learning of local governments at the macro quantitative level, and the specific patterns and details of the crisis learning process need to be explored.”

We have also added suggestions for future research based on the established work and limitations of the article, as follows:

“Future research could also focus on a few specific areas. On the one hand, explor-ing the spillover effects of local government crisis learning by expanding the sample data and variables, such as at a broader level (grassroots government), and the impact of more factors such as variables other than political factors on crisis learning. On the other hand, the crisis learning process of local governments should be deeply depicted in conjunction with case researches to side-by-side validate and complement the quantitative research on crisis learning.”

Point 8: References. Update with the latest research (only two articles dated 2020 and two articles dated 2021 in 44 references)

Response 8: Following your suggestion, we have updated and reorganized the references throughout the text, also the content of the corresponding text has also been adjusted, and check spelling, correct punctuation, and fix grammatical errors and so on. it may not be possible to list them all, the complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript.

Thank you again for your approval of our article and your valuable comments.

 

[1] Nordin S M, Rizal A R A, Rashid R A, et al. Incidents and disaster avoidance: the role of communication management and the organizational communication climate in high-risk environments[J]. Sustainability, 2021, 13(18): 10138.

[2] Edwin K W, Nilsen M, Albrechtsen E. Why Is the Construction Industry Killing More Workers Than the Offshore Petroleum Industry in Occupational Accidents?[J]. Sustainability, 2021, 13(14): 7592.

[3] Hoelscher, K.; Geirbo, H.C.; Harboe, L.; Petersen, S.A. What Can We Learn from Urban Crisis? Sustainability 2022, 14, 898.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear author/s

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read your manuscript. Your manuscript partially follows the instructions of the journal. However, the manuscript needs significant/major changes. Below you will find some points in the manuscript which need clarification, refinement, reanalysis, rewrites and/or additional information and suggestions for what could be done to improve it.

First of all, you need to read the instructions for authors’ [ https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions ] very carefully, and format your manuscript just like the template.

 

Unfortunately, the introduction to your manuscript looks more like an abstract. A lot of information and / or points are missing or unclear and should be included or be rewritten better (e.g., objectives of the study and/or hypotheses or research questions, etc.-which would be good to be numbered). The research topic is somewhat placed in context, but without clearly stating the gap in the research and how you are looking to fill. To help you, here is a list of items that can be included in this section:

-What is the importance of making this research/contribution that it brings to the literature in the field?

-Why should readers be interested?

-What problem/ gap resolve/fill this research?

-To fill this gap (resolve this problem) what solution/intervention/benefits does this research bring? (In other words, how the proposed study will remedy this deficiency/gap/problem and provide a unique contribution to the literature)

-What is the research question which addresses the purpose of the research?

 

Also, if you consider it necessary, you can further expand this section (or other sections) with more literature data to support it. Please make the necessary adjustments.

 

Additionally, certain sections of the manuscript begin or end abruptly, which may reduce the reader's attention or interest. I would suggest you could consider including some introductory paragraphs regarding the content of each section, in order to give the reader an idea of what to expect. In addition, many discrepancies were observed between the present manuscript and the required template. References are missing in several parts of your manuscript. Please add the relevant references where needed, otherwise they will be considered plagiarism. Kindly read your manuscript again with a clear mind and make the necessary corrections. You may need to move some parts to other sections for there to be a logical flow. Also, kindly check for grammatical errors, and new publications that could form part of the manuscript. Please cite more of the journal papers published by MDPI where possible.

 

After the revision of your manuscript (in all sections), you may need to revise or re-edit the abstract or even the title. I think the title of the manuscript should be changed.

 

As a final comment, I recommend an in-depth revision of your manuscript.

Author Response

 

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Thank you very much for your thorough review of our paper and your many thoughtful suggestions. We have revised the manuscript accordingly. Our responses to your specific concerns and suggestions are as follow.

Point 1: First of all, you need to read the instructions for authors’ very carefully, and format your manuscript just like the template.

 

Response 1：Based on your suggestions, First, we rearranged the structure of the full text to strictly follow the journal's template, including introduction、literature review、theoretical background and research hypothesis、research design、results and conclusions. Second, we rewrote the section of the introduction to clarify and add the research questions, research hypotheses, and theoretical framework. At the beginning of the Introduction, we discuss the importance of crisis learning for the sustainable development of local governments; then we present the situation of safety accident trends in the Chinese context, next we argue that crisis learning is an important tool for accident prevention and lead to the two research questions of this article, Finally, we add the theoretical framework of this paper and describe the methodology used to do this study, and also explain the theoretical contribution of this paper. the specific modifications are as follows:

(1)in Introduction “Reducing workplace accidents is crucial for overall sustainability, especially major accidents are not conducive to a safe and healthy working environment, and they can stymie local governments' sustainable development [1]…”

(2)Identify the research question and the approach to the research question，as follows:

“Thus, this study attempts to address two specific questions: (i) Can there be spatial spillover effects on crisis learning of local governments in major accidents？That’s mean, can local government of non-incident places conduct effective crisis learning to avoid similar accidents in the region;（ii）What factors influence the spatial spillover effects on crisis learning of local governments from major accidents？To respond to our research questions, we tested the model presented in Figure 1 and examined our model on a panel using 2006-2017 for 30 provinces in China. Therefore, this article aims to remedy the spatial spillover effect, which has been relatively neglected in previous crisis learning researches, and discuss the crisis learning relationship among local governments in the context of major accidents.”

(3) We have added a theoretical model diagram to show the research questions and hypotheses of the article more clearly, as follows：

 

（4）Next we pointed out the shortcomings of existing studies on crisis learning of local governments in major accidents based on a literature review, there are three aspects, as follows：

“But there is room for further expansion as follows: First, from a methodological perspective, most of the existing crisis learning research is based on discursive induction and case-based deduction [51,52]…”

(5) And we have added to how this study fills a gap in established research that focuses less on crisis learning in non-accident local governments, the detailed revisions are as follows:

“This article adds several contributions to the literature: First, it clarifies local crisis learning effects and mechanisms from spatial effects, which not only complements the public sector observation perspective for developing organizational learning theory, but also provides a new growth point for cross-sectional researches of emergencies. Second…”;

(6)After that we also have added a description of how to go about doing this study, as follows：

“To this end, this study focuses on the crisis learning effect of local governments from major accidents, and uses quantitative data to explore the crisis learning effect and spatial spillover of local government based on practical work on safety production accidents in China…”;

At the same time, we cited more references to support the content of our article, as can be seen from the increase in references from 44 to 90；

Due to the large number of changes involved, it may not be possible to list them all, and the above list is only part of the changes made in our manuscript. However, we have done a thorough and detailed review of our manuscript and completed the revision of the full text following the modification mentioned above ideas. The complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript.

Point 2：Additionally, certain sections of the manuscript begin or end abruptly, which may reduce the reader's attention or interest. I would suggest you could consider including some introductory paragraphs regarding the content of each section, in order to give the reader an idea of what to expect.

 

Response 2: Based on your suggestions, we have added some introductory paragraphs or sentences to each section, some of them are listed below：

In Lntroduction:“Reducing workplace accidents is crucial for overall sustainability, especially major accidents are not conducive to a safe and healthy working environment, and they can stymie local governments' sustainable development [1]”

“Crisis learning is seen as an important tool to curb the occurrence of major accidents [12-14].”

“This article adds several contributions to the literature...”

In Literature Review:“A government that is unable to reflect on and adjust itself after the crisis is not learning well [21]. Crisis learning is the expansion and enhancement of organizational learning theory in the field of modern crisis management research.”

“Existing crisis learning research can be summarized in three basic areas:”

“Research in the area of crisis learning is emerging [47-50] and relevant prior research has provided an important foundation for this study, but there is room for further expansion as follows…”

In Theoretical Background：” When a major accident occurs in China, the government will conduct crisis learning based on three processes”

In Research Hypothesis: “The occurrence of major accidents, while causing huge losses of life and property safety, also creates a crisis learning field.”

“Political pressure is an important factor in the non-linear relationship between major accidents and the crisis learning effects of local governments.”

In Results: “To examine the robustness of the adopted models, this article reports Non-Spatial OLS, Non-Spatial Plain Panel and Spatial Durbin Models.”

“We try to explain the U-shaped effect of crisis learning from practice in China.”

“To ensure the reliability of the above results, this article further employs three approaches for robustness testing”

In Conclusions: “Our findings have many policy implications, it helps to solve the dilemma of crisis learning failure among local government and build a long-term crisis learning mechanism.”

Point 3：In addition, many discrepancies were observed between the present manuscript and the required template. References are missing in several parts of your manuscript. Please add the relevant references where needed, otherwise they will be considered plagiarism. Kindly read your manuscript again with a clear mind and make the necessary corrections. You may need to move some parts to other sections for there to be a logical flow. Also, kindly check for grammatical errors, and new publications that could form part of the manuscript. Please cite more of the journal papers published by MDPI where possible.

 

Response 3: Based on your suggestions, we have made a number of changes to the article.

First, as mentioned earlier, we adjusted the overall layout of the article according to the template, including introduction、literature review、theoretical background and research hypothesis、research design、results and conclusions；

Second, we resupply the references in each section, especially adding the most recent studies related to crisis learning of local government, to support our relevant ideas, it can be seen from the increase in references from 44 to 90.

Also, we cited the journal papers published by MDPI whenever possible，such as:

[14] Hoelscher, K.; Geirbo, H.C.; Harboe, L.; Petersen, S.A. What Can We Learn from Urban Crisis? Sustainability 2022, 14, 898;

[52]  Toubes, D.R.; Araújo-Vila, N.; Fraiz-Brea, J.A. Organizational Learning Capacity and Sustainability Challenges in Times of Crisis: A Study on Tourism SMEs in Galicia (Spain). Sustainability 2021, 13, 11764;

[76]  Kim, E.; Rhee, M. Learning from Alliance Membership: An Empirical Study of Learning from the Failure of Their Alliance Members, Liability and Environmentally Sustainable Airline. Sustainability 2021, 13, 11794.

Finally, we invited a professor who had been a visiting scholar in the UK to guide us in polishing the manuscript. We also used the paid service "Grammarly," an online grammar correction and proofreading tool, to check spelling, correct punctuation, and fix grammatical errors and so on. it may not be possible to list them all, the complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript.

Point 4：After the revision of your manuscript (in all sections), you may need to revise or re-edit the abstract or even the title. I think the title of the manuscript should be changed.

 

Response 4: We reworked and reorganized the article title and abstract according to the content of the revised article:

Abstract: “Accident prevention is an important prerequisite for achieving sustainable development, and effective crisis learning is a necessary path to accident prevention. This article focuses on whether local governments in non-accident areas learn from crisis in accident areas, that is "learn from the mistakes of neighbors" and "grow their own wisdom"? Using panel data from 2006-2017 for 30 provinces in China…”

Title: ” Learning from Neighbors: The Spatial Spillover Effects of Crisis Learning of Local Government”

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

There are many different ways of managing and assessing risk and, consequently, different strategies for dealing with risk. The case study presented here is a good case study for examining the spillover effects associated with industrial accidents. The learning process following a risk analysis linked to sustainability, backed up by mathematical statistical analysis and econometric analysis, is forward-looking. Its usefulness can be felt primarily in the preparation of strategic plans, especially in areas exposed to industrial risks or in their immediate vicinity. I agree with the conclusions reached. That local authorities should develop common learning processes and information sharing. Normally this should be a planned risk prevention management activity. Flexible adaptation to regulations and the organisation of a collaborative learning process based on top-down, top-to-top impact assessment can contribute to accident prevention, with the combined effect of creating a safer environment.

 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 4 Comments

Response: Thank you very much for your positive recommendation and greatly appreciate your comments. This paper is modified according to the comments of reviewers, and the language is embellished. we invited a professor who had been a visiting scholar in the UK to guide us in polishing the manuscript. We also used the paid service "Grammarly," an online grammar correction and proofreading tool, to check spelling, correct punctuation, and fix grammatical errors. The revisions we have made are as follows:(1) Replace overused words;(2) Replace the phrase with a strong adjective;(3)We have rephrased some sentences to make them more accurate and fluent in expression and to enhance the readability of the manuscript;(4)We thoroughly and carefully reviewed the manuscript, correcting spelling errors, singular and plural changes, tense changes, punctuation, and other fundamental grammar issues.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I recognize the serious review work by the authors. In my opinion the paper is now suitable for publication

Author Response

Thank you very much for your positive recommendation and greatly appreciate your comments.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear author/s,

I have read again with much interest your revised manuscript.

The manuscript has been significantly improved!

However, your manuscript lacks "discussion" or is not clear.

I would suggest that instead of writing a new section, you include the discussion in the results section (Section 5) or in the conclusions section (Section 6), making a minor revision to the corresponding section.

The discussion should be done from the perspective of previous studies and/or of the working hypotheses. Please cite more of the journal papers published by MDPI where possible.

Finally, kindly check again for grammatical errors, and new publications that could form part of the manuscript. 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Thank you very much for your thorough review of our paper and your many thoughtful suggestions. We have revised the manuscript accordingly. Our responses to your specific concerns and suggestions are as follow.

Point 1: However, your manuscript lacks "discussion" or is not clear. I would suggest that instead of writing a new section, you include the discussion in the results section (Section 5) or in the conclusions section (Section 6), making a minor revision to the corresponding section. The discussion should be done from the perspective of previous studies and/or of the working hypotheses. Please cite more of the journal papers published by MDPI where possible.

Response 1: Following your suggestion, we clarified the content of the discussion and placed the” discussion” in the conclusions section (Section6). Specifically, we first added a dialogue with previous researches, while illustrating the extension and expansion of this article based on previous researches, as follows:

“Although sustainable development is more concerned with environmental issues[91], according to the official UN definition “human beings are at the center of concern for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature …”[92], sustainable development is not only green, but also concerned with human sustainability[93]. In contrast to the ecological and economic development dimensions of sustainability, the social dimension of sustainability, especially safety, is often neglected[94], but it’s often an important basis for the other dimensions to be realized. Therefore, this paper focuses on accidents and safety under the topic of sustainability, while accidents undermine safe and healthy work environments, they also open a window of policy opportunity for safe and sustainable transformation through crisis learning. On the one hand, more lessons can be generated and learned from accidents with severe consequences (e.g., major accidents) than from similar accidents with limited consequences (e.g., attempted accidents)[95], and it’s also more likely that crisis knowledge will be available for sustainable development; On the other hand, crisis learning researches are still deficient regarding the learning process at the local level[20]. Local governments can learn through plans and policies, coordination and networks, and knowledge of local leaders for emergency preparedness [96,97], this also means that the important role played by local governments in the crisis learning process, cannot be ignored.”

 Secondly, we also made subtle additions to the conclusion elaboration section, such as:

“As we discussed earlier, this provides solid evidence for a shift from organizational learning to inter-organizational learning[53,54], in particular, the crisis learning effect between governments (site of non-accident and site of accident) is confirmed.”

“This is consistent with the findings of previous studies on the multidirectional nature of factors influencing crisis learning[45,46], and this article builds on the former by providing specific pathways and mechanisms of influence.”

Also, it can be seen that we have cited some new literature, to highlight our discussions that build on previous research and the working hypotheses. Such as [91-97],[20,45,46,54], and so on, we also cite more of the journal papers published by MDPI where possible.

Point 2: Finally, kindly check again for grammatical errors and new publications that could form part of the manuscript. 

Response 2: Thanks for the reminding of reviewers. We re-checked each part of the paper carefully for grammatical errors in several main areas：(1) Delete some redundant words; (2) Proofread some punctuation; (3) Replace overused words; (4) Replace the phrase with a strong adjective; (5)We have rephrased some sentences to make them more accurate and fluent in expression and to enhance the readability of the manuscript; (6)We thoroughly and carefully reviewed the manuscript, correcting spelling errors, singular and plural changes, tense changes, punctuation, and other fundamental grammar issues. Some of the revisions we have made are as follows:

Page3, line116: “their own crisis incidents,”→“ their crisis incidents,”

Page4, line141:“rules serve as essential catalysts for crisis learning, which leads to organizational culture change [41,42].”→“rules are essential for crisis learning, leading to organizational culture change [41,42].”

Page4, line148: ”Research in the area of crisis learning is emerging [47-50] and relevant prior research has provided an important foundation for this study, but there is room for further expansion as follows:”→“Research in crisis learning is emerging [47-50], relevant prior research has provided an important foundation for this study. Still, there is room for further expansion as follows:”

Page6, line200:“there is uncertainty risk in all types of industries and better accident learning options” →“there is uncertainty risk in all industries and better accident learning options”

Page6, line223:“This is mainly due to the local government will immediately set up a special investigation team to investigate the cause of the specific production safety accident, and summarize the lessons learned from the accident, and interpret the accident investigation report in detail and spread it to other regions [63].”→“The local government will immediately set up a special investigation team to investigate the cause of the specific production safety accident, summarize the lessons learned from the accident, interpret the accident investigation report in detail, and spread it to other regions [63]”

Page7, line286: “Especially in our post-disaster political environment, such as leadership directives and policy texts [74]” →“ Especially in our post-disaster political environment, leadership directives and policy texts [74]”

Page16, line623:“First, the findings of this article show that there is a significant spatial spillover effect on the crisis learning effect of local governments, implying that to effectively conduct crisis learning, local governments must construct a collaborative learning mechanism between regions.”→“First, this article's findings show a significant spatial spillover effect on the crisis learning effect of local governments, implying that to conduct crisis learning effectively, local governments must construct a collaborative learning mechanism between regions”

Due to the large number of changes involved, it may not be possible to list them all, and the above list is only part of the changes made in our manuscript. The complete revision is provided in our revised manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear author/s,

I consider the current version to be suitable for publication.

Congratulations on the effort made to improve the work!