Exploring the Role of Environmental Regulation and Technological Innovation in Financial Performance: Evidence from Chinese Heavy-Polluting Industry
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
MS_ Sustainability-1853090
The current manuscript by Zhu and Zhao describes the involvement of various environmental regulations on economic performance in China’s heavy metal industry perspectives. After a careful review, I found this work interesting, well-written, and timely. However, I have pointed out some grey points which should be addressed in the revised version by the authors. The manuscript suitable for minor revision.
My specific comments are:
1. The abstract is not written scientifically. Use this format: Problem, Study design, Results, Major outcome, and future recommendations as a single paragraph.
2. The historical background of China’s heavy metal industry can be provided as a timeseries figure annotated with major years and developments.
3. Poor keyword selection, better to rewrite. Do not repeat those that appeared in the title.
4. Introduction: more emphasis should be given to the role of the heavy metal industry in the economic growth of China. The information provided is too general despite having a big role in today’s era.
5. I suggest the authors reduce the length of the conclusion section, maybe max 300 words, focusing on the major outcome of this study.
6. The recommendation should be moved before the conclusion.
7. Check the whole manuscript for typos and grammatical errors.
8. Reference should be provided for all methods and equations. Currently, they are baseless. Add references for the description of each statistical method too.
9. Provide software name used for data analysis.
10. In the introduction: the path of production………………….and realize sustainable development. Add the citation.
11. China's environmental regulation………………..instead of sewage charges. Add the citation.
Author Response
Reviewer #1: Comments
1. The abstract is not written scientifically. Use this format: Problem, Study design, Results, Major outcome, and future recommendations as a single paragraph.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, the author revised the abstract and added problem, major outcome and further recommendations.The modified section has been expressed in red font.
2.The historical background of China’s heavy metal industry can be provided as a timeseries figure annotated with major years and developments.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, this revision adds with time series figure (with table 1) annotated with major years and developments.The modified section has been expressed in red font.
3.Poor keyword selection, better to rewrite. Do not repeat those that appeared in the title.
Response: According to the reviewer’s recommendations, keywords have been rewrite. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
4.Introduction: more emphasis should be given to the role of the heavy metal industry in the economic growth of China. The information provided is too general despite having a big role in today’s era.
Response: According to the recommendations of reviewers, the paper adds heavy metal industry in the economic growth of China in table1 and in the introduction.The specific development of heavy industry is the basic of study. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
5.I suggest the authors reduce the length of the conclusion section, maybe max 300 words, focusing on the major outcome of this study.
Response: Thank you very much for the reviewer’s advice. The outcome of this study is most important. The regression results and discussion part has been modified to show more outcome. And the conclusion section has been reduced. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
6.The recommendation should be moved before the conclusion.
Response: Thank you very much for the reviewer’s advice. The recommendation has moved before the conclusion. Thank you for helping me restructure my paper. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
7.Check the whole manuscript for typos and grammatical errors.
Response: According to the recommendations of reviewers, the whole manuscript for typos and grammatical errors have been revised. Please re-review the language editor of the paper.
8.Reference should be provided for all methods and equations. Currently, they are baseless. Add references for the description of each statistical method too.
Response: According to the recommendations of the reviewers, more references of the statistical method are added. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
9.Provide software name used for data analysis.
Response: According to the recommendations of the reviewers, software name for data analysis is provided. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
10.In the introduction: the path of production………………….and realize sustainable development. Add the citation.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, the author added the citation. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
11.China's environmental regulation………………..instead of sewage charges. Add the citation.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, the author added the citation. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
Reviewer 2 Report
The article deals with a very important and interesting research problem. The research sample is good and the results are clearly presented. I would just like the Authors to refer more precisely to the influence of other factors on the examined financial results. Apart from the examined factors, the financial result is susceptible to the influence of many other internal and external factors. How to exclude these factors from the analysis so that it is possible to make conclusions about the hypotheses presented in the article.
Author Response
Reviewer #2: Comments
The article deals with a very important and interesting research problem. The research sample is good and the results are clearly presented. I would just like the Authors to refer more precisely to the influence of other factors on the examined financial results. Apart from the examined factors, the financial result is susceptible to the influence of many other internal and external factors. How to exclude these factors from the analysis so that it is possible to make conclusions about the hypotheses presented in the article.
Response: Thank you very much for the comments of the experts. Your comments can greatly improve the quality of the paper. According to the comments of the experts, the paper has revised in three parts. First, in the selection of variables, added the external and internal factors which influence financial performance, and give the reason for selecting factors. Secondly, in the selection of variables, added the references of variable selection. Thirdly, in the conclusion section, combined with the analysis of other influencing factors, the conclusion is more specific and easier to plain. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper aims to explore the role of environmental regulation and technological innovation in financial performance. I think this paper is an interesting topic. Some modifications should be conducted.
1. The introduction section does not clearly give the main contributions of this paper, and the differences with the other literature. Authors should give the main contributions of this paper in this section. You can refer to the following papers.
2. In the literature section, authors should cite some recent papers, you can find more related papers in the famous journals, such as energy economics, JEEM. For example:
Wen et al 2022, How does fiscal policy uncertainty affect corporate innovation investment? Evidence from China's new energy industry, energy economics
Zhang et al. 2022. Is government regulation a push for corporate environmental performance? Evidence from China. Economic Analysis and Policy.
3. Authors should summary literature and find out the knowledge gaps, instead of listing literature.
4. I suggest authors emerge the literature section and the 3.1 section. Because the 3.1 section does not belong to methods.
5. In the section 3.2, please clearly give the models for this paper.
6. In the 4.1 section, please cite some reference to support the selection of variables, you can refer to the paper: Liu SY. 2021. Innovation quantity or quality? The role of political connections. Emerging Markets Review.
7. The section 4.2 can be emerged with 3.2 section.
8. Please unify the decimal places in the table 2.
9. I think this paper do not need to test whether fe or re, in contrast, you should directly use the firm and year fixed effects.
10. In empirical application section, authors should give some discussion and analysis, rather than a brief report of the results.
11. Authors should give some policy suggests in the last section according to the conclusion.
12. Authors need to check the full text.
13. I suggest delete some old references, and revise the format of all references.
Author Response
Reviewer #3: Comments
1.The introduction section does not clearly give the main contributions of this paper, and the differences with the other literature. Authors should give the main contributions of this paper in this section. You can refer to the following papers.
Response: Thank you very much for the reviewer comments of the experts. According to the comments of the experts, the main contributions have been added in the last introduction section. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
2.In the literature section, authors should cite some recent papers, you can find more related papers in the famous journals, such as energy economics, JEEM. For example:
Wen et al 2022, How does fiscal policy uncertainty affect corporate innovation investment? Evidence from China's new energy industry, energy economics
Zhang et al. 2022. Is government regulation a push for corporate environmental performance? Evidence from China. Economic Analysis and Policy.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, the author added the provided references and some more related references. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
3.Authors should summary literature and find out the knowledge gaps, instead of listing literature.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, the author has given the literature a review and rewrite instead of listing literature and added a literature commentary part. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
4.I suggest authors emerge the literature section and the 3.1 section. Because the 3.1 section does not belong to methods.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, the author has set the third part as hypothesis development, and the section methods are moved before the models. After adjustment, the structure is more reasonable. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
5.In the section 3.2, please clearly give the models for this paper.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, the author has given the models and the models are adjusted with the firm and year fixed effects model. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
6.In the 4.1 section, please cite some reference to support the selection of variables, you can refer to the paper: Liu SY. 2021. Innovation quantity or quality? The role of political connections. Emerging Markets Review.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, the author has added references to support the selection of variables. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
7.The section 4.2 can be emerged with 3.2 section.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, this section has been adjusted to models part. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
8.Please unify the decimal places in the table 2.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, table 3 is original table 2 because a table has been added .The modified section has been expressed in red font in table 3.
9.I think this paper do not need to test whether fe or re, in contrast, you should directly use the firm and year fixed effects.
Response: According to the reviewer’s suggestions, and i also looked up more literature and found that there are different opinions on whether to conduct the hausman test. And I have deleted the hausman test. The sequence numbers of other tables have been adjusted. And I use the firm and year fixed effects to test the relationship of environmental regulation on financial performance. The data of table5 has changed to the firm and year fixed effects regression outcome. And the outcome is better than before. Thank you very much for your great help to the improvement of the quality of the paper.
10.In empirical application section, authors should give some discussion and analysis, rather than a brief report of the results.
Response: Thank you very much for the reviewer’s advice. The outcome of this study is most important. The regression results and discussion part has been modified to show more outcome. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
11.Authors should give some policy suggests in the last section according to the conclusion.
Response: Thank you very much for the reviewer’s advice. More suggestions are added according to the conclusion. The modified section has been expressed in red font.
12.Authors need to check the full text.
Response: Thank you very much for the reviewer’s advice. The whole manuscript for typos and grammatical errors have been revised. Please re-review the language editor of the paper.
13.I suggest delete some old references, and revise the format of all references.
Response: Thank you very much for the reviewer’s advice. I have deleted some old references and revised the format of all references according to request of the sustainability. Thank you very much for your great help to the improvement of the quality of the paper.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Thanks for the authors' careful revision. I think this revised manuscript has met the standard of this journal and can be accepted.
