The Effect of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Green Technology Innovation: Evidence from China’s Enterprises
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper entitled ”How does economic policy uncertainty affect enterprise green technology innovation? Evidence from China” discusses the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on green technology innovation (GTI) of enterprises. The subject of the paper is very interesting. However I see the following major issues that should be resolved.
The authors should describe the components of EPU index for readers to understand what economic policy uncertainty refers to.
The methodology section should be implemented with some adjustments. The authors should give more details on the method used for the analysis and for data collection by referring to the scientific literature on methodology. However, to better clarify the analysis carried out I suggest to elaborate a figure representing the research design. Also, the authors should clearly describe the sample used, clarifying the procedure for data extraction and processing. A table can help in defining the details of this process (eg. total number of companies in the database, companies extracted, extraction criteria).
Another important aspect that should be clarified and explained refers to the type of regression that was used.
Regarding the variables, the fact that the dependent variables refer only to green patents makes the research results questionable if we make a correlation with the title of the paper. There are numerous innovation measurements, if you have access to such data. However, I must mention that "technological innovation" is not the same as "number of patents".
Conclusions can be compared with other articles in the literature; this revision can help to understand what evidence is already present and how this study contributes to the scientific literature on the issue.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors:
The paper's topic and conducted research are very important and justified to be presented in a high-quality Journal. The subject is very important for the literature. The paper is informative, but some issues need to be addressed carefully. My decision is – a major revision, with some amendments. Please see my comments and suggestions below.
Point 1. There are some overlaps between the introduction and literature review, which need further sorted out by the authors. The following paper can be a good example to help you improve your paper:
-Qing, L.; Chun, D.; Ock, Y.-S.; Dagestani, A.A.; Ma, X. What Myths about Green Technology Innovation and Financial Performance's Relationship? A Bibliometric Analysis Review. Economies 2022, 10, 92. https://doi.org/10.3390/economies10040092
Point 2. The authors should have more literature to support the proposed hypotheses, such as hypothesis 2, hypothesis 3, and hypothesis 4.
Point 3. There is some confusion about the writing process in Part 4. Data and Models, please further improve the writing paradigm. For example, the first step introduces sample and data, and the second introduces dependent and independent variables. The following papers can be good examples to help you improve your paper:
- Qing, L.; Chun, D.; Dagestani, A.A.; Li, P. Does Proactive Green Technology Innovation Improve Financial Performance? Evidence from Listed Companies with Semiconductor Concepts Stock in China. Sustainability 2022, 14, 4600. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084600
- Yang, Z., Ali, S.T., Ali, F., Sarwar, Z., & Khan, M.A. (2020). Outward foreign direct investment and corporate green innovation: An institutional pressure perspective. South African Journal of Business Management, 51(1), a1883. https://doi.org/10.4102/ sajbm.v51i1.1883
Point 4. The authors should explicitly write which hypotheses are used for testing in model 3.
Point 5. Please add 5.2. Correlation analysis in Section 5. In addition, in 5.2.3. Test hypothesis 3 section, the authors seem to "only report the results". I suggest that authors use the viewpoints of several representative studies (2 or 3) in this area to interpret and enrich the results.
Point 6. The authors should add theoretical contributions, limitations, and future research in the conclusion.
Point 7. I hope this feedback can be valuable to the author(s) in their possible endeavors to improve reference Citations Style. Please, read "MDPI Reference List and Citations Style Guide": https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions#references
Good luck for your work!
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper entitled as "How does economic policy uncertainty affect enterprise green technology innovation? Evidence from China", submitted to the Sustainability is evaluated.
The paper is sound to the audience. However, it has many issues. It is my decision that te paper should go through a major revision and I also suggest doing the revision very carefully, it necessitates it.
See the comments below.
1. The title is not clear. Check Grammar.
2. Abstract is not precise. Example (first sentence): line 8: Which enterprises? Businesses? Firms? Which sectors? Or public enterprises? ordinary enterprises? Give details more on findings. make it focused as approach to the last sentence. As of it is, the last sentence is very general as well. Make the abstract more precise. Make it clear.
3. Avoid words: etc., so on, Now, Anyways...I suggest revising with academic wording.
4. Critiques to Baker et al 2016 methodology from the literature should be extended.
5. The study is mainly based on the EPU and GTI relation and transmission between them. The search in academic literature on measuring uncertainty is also discussed in the intro. I suggest using another index in addition to EPU. PRS group has policy instability index. Revising the application section with a secondary index would produce baseline in addition to improvement.
6. Revise sentences such as So we wondered will the influence mechanism of EPU on enterprise investment be transferred to enterprise technological innovation?" for wording. Also, avoid question marks.
7. The written line: "He et al. (2020) found that economic policy uncertainty is generally positively correlated with enterprise innovation" is opposite. See the original source.
8. The sample size is questionable in terms of the method given the title focuses on EPU. Epu is stated that it was converted to yearly. For the sample of the enterprises, it is stated that "sample consists of 8190 enterprise-year observations from 2010 to 2018". In this case, it is understood that since EPU is country-specific, the total n=t=years from 2010 to 2018, so, n=9 only. But, it is converted to match the enterprise data and stated that n for EPU is 8190. The authors may have write same values of EPU for each enterprise. If this is the case, econometrically, they create a strong level of cross-sectional dependence. If the study were a study of GTI and EPU only, this paper should be directly subject to rejection. However, it is seen that there are many more variables used as explanatories regarding the financial situation of the firms such as ROA, cashflow etc. Accordingly, I suggest one solution. Change title, to "the relations between EPU, GTI and financial structures of enterprices and green innovation...". Afterwards, relevant literature and the intro should be updated to cover these in a little more detail.
9. Overall, the positive relation is observed in the last tables. It could occur since the EPU and GTI both follow an upward trend? I repeat my suggestion to replicate with PRS group's policy uncertainty index.
10. The conclusion and the paper stated that there is a positive relation between EPU and GTI. All EPU parameters are around 0.001 and 0.003. This is almost zero. In addition, even after addition of all these financial and macroeconomic variables, R squares are also very close to zero. Simply put, the explanatory variables fail to explain the variations in the dependent variable. The overall result is, the determinants of green innovation is associated with other factors not analyzed in the study. Therefore, even statistically significant, the paper and findings should emphasize this. The main finding should be that the association is very low.
11. The similarity report provided similarity of 23%. Paper should be revised for similarity.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I appreciate the authors' effort to improve the paper. The explanations and the information added give a broader meaning of the content.
I can recommend the publication of this research.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is accepted in present form.
Reviewer 3 Report
The critiques are met by the authors and they made the necessary changes. One note is, in references, there is one "error not found" msj. I suggest correcting in the fnal proof stage.
My decision is positive.
