The Influence of the Internet on Regional Economic Development—An Empirical Study Based on China’s Provincial Panel Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic is appealing and interesting, but the authors must work hard on this paper before final publication, especially in the Literature review and Introduction sections. Please, see the file attached. Check your English with external help if needed, and good job!!.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response Letter

Journal Title: Sustainability

Manuscript Reference No. 1885934

Manuscript Title: The Influence of the Internet on Regional Economic Develop- ment— An Empirical Study Based on China's Provincial Panel Data

 

We sincerely appreciate all the detailed comments and suggestions made by the reviewers. All comments are considered carefully and summarized as follows, and all the revisions are marked in Red in the original paper for reviewers’ readability. In addition, the revised manuscript has been sent to Wallace Language Editing Services for cosmetic edit. We believe the presentation of this revised manuscript should be more expressive and more readable than the original manuscript. Please do not hesitate to give us any comments and we also look forward to your further decision.

 

Responses from the authors to Reviewer 1:

Review Report (Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

1）I suggest the authors reorder the Abstract to have the following information in order: Objective, Methodology, Findings, and Conclusions.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The Abstract is modified as follows according to your suggestions:

With the rapid development of the digital economy, the level of Internet development has become increasingly important to the national economy. The development and application of the Internet have brought new impetus to economic development. At present, China's economic growth is slowing down. Finding new support points to maintain high-quality economic growth has become the focus of current research. Therefore, at the moment of Internet economic development, it is of great significance to study whether the Internet development level can promote economic development, how to promote economic development and the size of its influence on economic development. Based on this, this paper constructs an indicator system for evaluating the Internet development level from four dimensions: Internet popularization level, information infrastructure development level, scientific and cultural development level, and industrial development and application level. With the Internet development level as the core explanatory variable, this paper establishes a fixed effect model based on the Hausman test by analyzing China's provincial panel data from 2010 to 2019. The research results show that the Internet development level in all regions of China has risen from 2010 to 2019. The Internet development level has a promoting effect on economic growth, and there are regional differences. The promoting effect on the eastern region is higher than that in the central and western regions. The Internet development level has a significantly higher role in promoting the per capital GDP in the eastern region than in the central and western regions. It is expected to provide valuable ideas for the government to fully play the role of the Internet in promoting economic development.

 

2）Please, note that there are many messages such as “Error! Reference source not found” in the paper.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

We have carefully confirmed that the format problem may be caused when inserting the reference, and the modification has been completed.

 

3）In the Introduction section, the sentences are not clear. Please rephrase or complete

them:

1. “China’s economic growth has entered a new normal, and the downwardpressure on the economy has increased.” What do you mean by “a newnormal”? Sustainable economic growth? And what do you mean by “the downward pressure on the economy”? To achieve reduced inflation rates? Please, clarify.
2. “Finding new kinetic energy has become increasingly prominent to give full playto the positive role of the Internet as an essential medium.” An “essentialmedium” for what? “New kinetic energy”? Please, clarify.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

1. The original "China's economic growth has entered a new normal" is changed to"China's economic growth has slowed".

"...the economy’s downward pressure" means slowing down the growth rate of the economy.

1. "New kinetic energy" refers to the new driving force, new technology, new industry, new business type and new mode of economic and social development formed in the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial reform.

 

4) The authors have not erased the following information in the template: (Rows 51-57) “The Materials and Methods should be described with sufficient details to allow others to replicate and build on the published results. Please note that the publication of your manuscript implicates that you must make all materials, data, computer code, and protocols associated with the publication available to readers. Please disclose at the submission stage any restrictions on the availability of materials or information. New methods and protocols should be described in detail, while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited. Research manuscripts reporting large datasets that are deposited in a publicly available database should specify where the data have been deposited and provide the relevant accession numbers. If the accession numbers have not yet been obtained at the time of submission, please state that they will be provided during review. They must be provided prior to publication. Interventionary studies involving animals or humans, and other studies that require ethical approval, must list the authority that provided approval and the corresponding ethical approval code”. Please, erase it.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

This part has been deleted.

 

• No data results are shown in the Literature review that should be included. As a result,comments are very general and vague. For example, the authors have written, 

1. “China’s economic structure and had a tremendous impact on all walks of lifeand fields.” Which fields? How much do the authors consider that a fact has atremendous impact? 20%? 30%?
2. “Salahuddin and Gow Error! Reference source not found., Czernich, Falck, andKretschmer et al. Error! Reference source not found., Alfaro Cortes and AlfaroNavarro Error! Reference source not found., Mallick Error! Reference source not found., Lin Error! Reference source not found., and Yousefi Error! Reference source not found. analyzed the role of the Internet in economic growth from different angles (Which angles?) and agreed that the Internet has a promoting (A promoting what?)
3. (Row 129) “Scholars have researched the above problems and conclude thatInternet development will cause the “digital gap” and regional differences ineconomic development.” Can the authors add some data?

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

1. Ding [11]believed that the rapid development of the Internet has not only brought about changes in China's economic structure but also had a significant impact on the traditional logistics, communication, manufacturing, and catering industries, promoting the development of China's national economy.
2. This may be due to a format problem when inserting a reference, which has now been modified.

Salahuddin and Gow [2], Czernich, Falck, and Kretschmer et al. [6], Alfaro Cortes and Alfaro Navarro [7], Mallick [8], Lin [9], and Yousefi [10] empirically studied the relationship between Internet development and economic growth from the perspectives of Internet penetration, Internet development indicators, Internet resource index, etc., and agreed that the Internet has a promoting effect on economic development.

1. The original paragraph has been modified into: Scholars have researched the above problems and concluded that Internet development would cause the "digital gap" and regional differences in economic development.Chakraborty and Bosman [26]measured the digital divide of American States in terms of race, income, and personal computer ownership. Howell [27] discussed the digital gap between urban and rural areas in New Zealand. Schleife [28] found that there is also a digital divide in Germany, mainly affected by the degree of network construction.

 

6) (Rows 67-126) I suggest the authors think that the Literature review is much more than a mere copy and paste of literature on the chosen research topic. The authors should link ideas from the authors they cite and that they also include specific data on what these authors have discovered and not make vague and very general comments that do not provide information to the reader.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

We agree that the sorting and summary of the literature review need to be further strengthened and improved, and attention will be paid to this issue in the subsequent research.

 

7) (Row 201) The information shown is not clear. 31.5 of what?

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

31.5 is the average value of China's new digital economic infrastructure index.

 

8) (Table 2) How have the numbers that appear in Table 2 been calculated? What do they mean?

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

Table 2 shows the index and distribution of new digital economy infrastructure in China's provinces in 2019.

The new digital economy infrastructure index is calculated by building a comprehensive evaluation index system for the development of digital economy from the four levels of digital economy infrastructure, digital industrialization, industrial digitalization and digital governance, and using entropy method for comprehensive scoring. Since this part is quoted from the public data of the White Paper on China's Digital Economy Development Index in 2020, we did not calculate it in person.

 

9) (Row 226) I suppose 2020 is the edition year of the source cited (China National Bureau of Statistics) in Figure 2. Please, add it.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

We have added data source: National Bureau of Statistics of China (2020)

 

10) (Row 236) Also, I suppose 2020 is the edition year of the source cited (41st-47th China Internet Development Statistics Report) in Table 3. Please, add it.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

We have added the data source: 44-46th Statistical Report on the Development of Internet in China

 

11) (Row 486) Please clarify what the authors mean by “I,” “II,” “III,” “IV,” and “V.” I assume that they refer to Capital investment, Labor Force, Internet development level, R&D intensity, and Urbanization. If so, I suggest the authors include a legend in the Table to explain their meaning.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The regression analysis part of this paper is to introduce independent variables into the model (4.6) one by one. After introducing an independent variable, it is necessary to observe whether the introduction of this variable will cause significant changes in the model, mainly to test whether the coefficient of Internet development level to GDP per capita will become more and more significant. Therefore, "I", "II", "III", "IV" and "V" represent regression models under five different conditions.

 

12) (Row 476) Please, clarify what the authors mean by “I,” “II,” “III,” and “IV” (and not “V” now?) The authors affirm that these results in Table 13 come from four models, but I find one model only (rows 382-408). Please, clarify.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The regression analysis part of this paper is to introduce independent variables into the model (4.6) one by one. After introducing an independent variable, it is necessary to observe whether the introduction of this variable will cause significant changes in the model, mainly to test whether the coefficient of Internet development level to GDP per capita will become more and more significant. Therefore, "I", "II", "III", "IV" and "V" represent regression models under five different conditions.

 

13) (Row 559-561) Please, erase “In this section, you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments)”.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The paragraph has been deleted.

Reviewer 2 Report

1.       Introduction

-Lines 28 -33 = Premier Li Keqiang pointed 28 out in his government work report in 2020 that "online e-commerce shopping, online ser- 29 vices, and other new formats have played an important role in fighting the COVID-19 30 epidemic, and it is necessary to continue to introduce support policies, comprehensively 31 promote the' internet plus,' and create new advantages in the digital economy – please try to not mention name of politicians. You can refer to the message as being a declaration made of a ,,unpersonal,, actors on the political scene, e.g.  you could be formulate ,,the political actors decare that…..etc etc….,,

2. Literature review

Lines 51-65 =– what is the sense of these paragraphs ???

-Line 66 = 2.1 Can Internet development promote economic development

and

-Line 127 = 2.2 Whether there are regional differences between Internet development and economic development

– these are general themes/issues debated in the quoted titles within the text? maybe a short text before these subchapters which represent the literature review section would be useful for clarify the author’s intention in terms of structure specific for this section.

 

3. China's Internet Development Status and Characteristics

-Line 186, Table 1, 818133 correct is 818,133 etc..etc..etc.. 27763.7 correct is 27,763.7 etc..etc…

-Line 183 = IPv4  - everybody knows that IPv4 means Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) ? please mention all the abbreviations with their meanings.

-Line 188 = Figure 1 – inside the graph is mention ,,Number of Internet Users (ten thousand people).. please put 10,000 pers. According to your own  Table 1

-Line 205 = Table 2.  – maybe not all the readers knows the location of Chinese regions. Being a graph with regional/geographical differences ,,weigh,,. We suppose that is important to know where the regions are located within the Chinese national territory. Maybe a map it will solve this issue, transforming the Table 2 into a map with four intervals (echelons) mirroring the Index of New Digital Economic Infrastructure in China.

-Line 226 = Figure 2 – it will be useful to mention a par

-Line 235 = Table 3. Same observation as in Table 1

 

4. Empirical Analysis

 

-Line 289 = Table 4. - 5. Number of domain names (10,000) 6. Number of websites (10,000) 10,000 of what ?

-Line 468 = Table 12 – I suppose that  I, II, III and IV  are the Primary index from Table 4 . but it is not mentioned within the text or table. It will be better to mention it.

Author Response

Response Letter

Journal Title: Sustainability

Manuscript Reference No. 1885934

Manuscript Title: The Influence of the Internet on Regional Economic Develop- ment— An Empirical Study Based on China's Provincial Panel Data

 

We sincerely appreciate all the detailed comments and suggestions made by the reviewers. All comments are considered carefully and summarized as follows, and all the revisions are marked in Red in the original paper for reviewers’ readability. In addition, the revised manuscript has been sent to Wallace Language Editing Services for cosmetic edit. We believe the presentation of this revised manuscript should be more expressive and more readable than the original manuscript. Please do not hesitate to give us any comments and we also look forward to your further decision.

 

Responses from the authors to Reviewer 2:

Review Report (Reviewer 2)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Introduction

-Lines 28 -33 = Premier Li Keqiang pointed 28 out in his government work report in 2020 that "online e-commerce shopping, online ser- 29 vices, and other new formats have played an important role in fighting the COVID-19 30 epidemic, and it is necessary to continue to introduce support policies, comprehensively 31 promote the' internet plus,' and create new advantages in the digital economy – please try to not mention name of politicians. You can refer to the message as being a declaration made of a ,,unpersonal,, actors on the political scene, e.g.  you could be formulate ,,the political actors decare that…..etc etc….,,

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The name of "Li Keqiang" has been deleted and changed to indicate in the 2020 Chinese Government Work Report.

2. Literature review

Lines 51-65 =– what is the sense of these paragraphs ???

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

51-65 rows have been deleted.

 

-Line 66 = 2.1 Can Internet development promote economic development

And -Line 127 = 2.2 Whether there are regional differences between Internet development and economic development – these are general themes/issues debated in the quoted titles within the text? maybe a short text before these subchapters which represent the literature review section would be useful for clarify the author’s intention in terms of structure specific for this section.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

-Line 66 = 2.1 Can Internet development promote economic development And -Line 127 = 2.2 Whether there are regional differences between Internet development and economic development It is to sort out the literature related to the research theme of this paper from two research perspectives, laying a theoretical foundation for the follow-up research of this paper.

 

3. China's Internet Development Status and Characteristics

-Line 186, Table 1, 818133 correct is 818,133 etc..etc..etc.. 27763.7 correct is 27,763.7 etc..etc…

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

Modify Table 1 as follows：

Time	Long-distance optical cable line length (km)	Number of domain names (10,000)	IPv4    (10,000)	Internet access ports (10,000)
2010	818,133	865.6	27,763.7	18,781.1
2011	842,341	774.8	33,044.0	23,239.4
2012	868,175	1,341.2	33,053.5	32,108.4
2013	890,018	1,843.6	33,030.8	35,945.3
2014	928,398	2,059.6	33,198.8	40,546.1
2015	965,283	3,101.4	33,652.0	57,709.4
2016	994,092	4,227.6	33,810.3	71,276.9
2017	1,044,998	3,848.0	33,870.5	77,599.1
2018	994,130	3,792.8	33,892.5	86,752.3
2019	1,084,937	5,094.2	33,909.3	91,578.0

 

-Line 183 = IPv4  - everybody knows that IPv4 means Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) ? please mention all the abbreviations with their meanings.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The full name of IPv4 is (Internet Protocol version 4), also known as the fourth version of Internet communication protocol. IPv4 is to assign a unique 32 bit identifier to each interface of each host (or router) on the Internet.

 

-Line 188 = Figure 1 – inside the graph is mention ,,Number of Internet Users (ten thousand people).. please put 10,000 pers. According to your own  Table 1

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

Modify Figure 1 as follows:

 

-Line 205 = Table 2.  – maybe not all the readers knows the location of Chinese regions. Being a graph with regional/geographical differences ,,weigh,,. We suppose that is important to know where the regions are located within the Chinese national territory. Maybe a map it will solve this issue, transforming the Table 2 into a map with four intervals (echelons) mirroring the Index of New Digital Economic Infrastructure in China.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments. We added the figure as follow:

Figure 2. Index Distribution of New Digital Economy Infrastructure in China's Provinces in 2019

It can be seen from Figure 2 that the distribution of the new digital economy infrastructure index in China's provinces is divided into four echelons in the order of high to low. The red area represents the first echelon (the new digital economic infrastructure index is 45-60), including Guangdong, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shandong. The blue area represents the second tier (the new digital economic infrastructure index is 32-45), including Fujian, Shanghai, Henan, Sichuan, Hebei, Liaoning, Hunan, and Hubei. The yellow area represents the third echelon (the new digital economic infrastructure index is 25-32), including Anhui, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Chongqing, Guangxi, Tianjin, and Heilongjiang. Green areas represent the fourth echelon (the new digital economic infrastructure index is below 25), including Yunnan, Jilin, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Hainan, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Qinghai, and Tibet. It can be seen that except for Tianjin and Hainan, the eastern region of China is in the first and second gradients. In particular, the new digital economic infrastructure index in Beijing, Guangzhou, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang is far higher than the national average of 31.5. The central and western regions are basically in the third and fourth gradients, most of which are lower than the national average. This reflects the large gap between China's east and central and western regions, and the Internet infrastructure needs to be further strengthened.

 

-Line 226 = Figure 2 – it will be useful to mention a par

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

Amend the title of Figure 3 to read: “Figure 3. China's E-commerce Turnover from 2011 to 2019. Source: China National Bureau of Statistics (2020).”

 

-Line 235 = Table 3. Same observation as in Table 1

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

Modify Table 3 as follows:

	2017		2018		2019
	Size of users (million)	The utilization rate of internet users	Size of users (million)	The utilization rate of internet users	Size of users (million)	The utilization rate of internet users
Instant messaging	72,023	93.3%	79,172	95.6%	98111	99.2%
search engine	63,956	82.8%	68,132	82.2%	76,977	77.8%
netnews	64,689	83.8%	67,472	81.4%	74,274	75.1%
online shopping	53,332	69.1%	61,011	73.6%	78,241	79.1%
Online delivery	34,338	44.5%	40,601	49.0%	41,883	42.3%
Online payment	53,110	68.8%	60,040	72.5%	85,434	86.4%

 

 

4. Empirical Analysis

 

-Line 289 = Table 4. - 5. Number of domain names (10,000) 6. Number of websites (10,000) 10,000 of what ?

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

Number of domain names (10000) means that the number of domain names registered is 10000. Number of websites (10000) means that the number of websites is 10000.

 

-Line 468 = Table 12 – I suppose that  I, II, III and IV  are the Primary index from Table 4 . but it is not mentioned within the text or table. It will be better to mention it.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The regression analysis part of this paper is to introduce independent variables into the model (4.6) one by one. After introducing an independent variable, it is necessary to observe whether the introduction of this variable will cause significant changes in the model, mainly to test whether the coefficient of Internet development level to GDP per capita will become more and more significant. Therefore, "I", "II", "III", "IV" and "V" represent regression models under five different conditions.

Reviewer 3 Report

I have read this paper, entitled by “The influence of the internet on regional economic development- An empirical study based on China’s provincial panel data”, which is to try to evaluate the effects of internet on local economy. This is surely an important issue to understand the relationship between internet usage and regional economic development in this internet era. More importantly, this paper tries to set up an index of internet development based on four dimensions via principal component analysis (PCA) and then estimate the impacts of internet using panel data over 29 provinces (aggregating three regions) from 2010-2019.

As a whole, this paper is still not good enough and I provide some comments as follows.

 

Specific comments:

1.     As I see the abstract, this is a bad beginning and this is not well-written. Your abstract must be reorganized, simplified and clarified. More importantly, you never tell us what is your estimation results and conclusion.

2.     In section 1, you should offer more information to prove that internet is fast-growing sector, which is critical to regional economy in the case of China. If not, the readers have no incentive to reading this paper. Maybe, you can move section 3.1.

3.     In section2, you talk about the impacts of internet from national to regional economy and this is a good order. However, your reference must be consistent with the official format of this journal.

4.     In section 3, I suggest that subsections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 can be combined into section 3.1. Similarly, section 3.2 is outlined by combining subsections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2. At the same time, section 4.1 can be renamed by section 3.3 to focus more on the topic of internet.

5.     Section 4.1 is the first core of this paper to derive an index of internet development, rather than using internet penetration rate or other indicators However, you never tell us why your index system is better than other indicators and this is the key to this paper. Second, I agree that you apply PCA to find a weight-average index. However, among four components, the latter two components (Scientific and cultural development; Industrial development and application) seem to be unrelated to internet development. Can you offer some cited research or paper to support your view?

6.     Section 4.2 is another core of this paper. First, please tell us why the coefficient of lnPEO is negative? (In fact, your estimation results, namely Tables 12 and 13 indicate the positive sign). Second, please tell me whether your GDP is real? If not, you must re-run estimation by use of real GDP. Third, your panel unit root test should adopt more individual-effect unit root test, for example, IPS, Fisher …..). Fourth, what is your type of panel data estimation: fixed or random effect?

7.     This paper is still not good-structured and please invite an English editor to punish carefully this paper to meet the requirement of this good-quality journal.  

  To sum up, there is clearly a big gap from present to accepted form of this paper. If you can reply to the above comments, this paper can maybe be considered again.

Author Response

Response Letter

Journal Title: Sustainability

Manuscript Reference No. 1885934

Manuscript Title: The Influence of the Internet on Regional Economic Develop- ment— An Empirical Study Based on China's Provincial Panel Data

 

We sincerely appreciate all the detailed comments and suggestions made by the reviewers. All comments are considered carefully and summarized as follows, and all the revisions are marked in Red in the original paper for reviewers’ readability. In addition, the revised manuscript has been sent to Wallace Language Editing Services for cosmetic edit. We believe the presentation of this revised manuscript should be more expressive and more readable than the original manuscript. Please do not hesitate to give us any comments and we also look forward to your further decision.

 

Responses from the authors to Reviewer 3:

Review Report (Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. As I see the abstract, this is a bad beginning and this is not well-written. Your abstract must be reorganized, simplified and clarified. More importantly, you never tell us what is your estimation results and conclusion.

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The Abstract is modified as follows according to your suggestions:

With the rapid development of the digital economy, the level of Internet development has become increasingly important to the national economy. The development and application of the Internet have brought new impetus to economic development. At present, China's economic growth is slowing down. Finding new support points to maintain high-quality economic growth has become the focus of current research. Therefore, at the moment of Internet economic development, it is of great significance to study whether the Internet development level can promote economic development, how to promote economic development and the size of its influence on economic development. Based on this, this paper constructs an indicator system for evaluating the Internet development level from four dimensions: Internet popularization level, information infrastructure development level, scientific and cultural development level, and industrial development and application level. With the Internet development level as the core explanatory variable, this paper establishes a fixed effect model based on the Hausman test by analyzing China's provincial panel data from 2010 to 2019. The research results show that the Internet development level in all regions of China has risen from 2010 to 2019. The Internet development level has a promoting effect on economic growth, and there are regional differences. The promoting effect on the eastern region is higher than that in the central and western regions. The Internet development level has a significantly higher role in promoting the per capital GDP in the eastern region than in the central and western regions. It is expected to provide valuable ideas for the government to fully play the role of the Internet in promoting economic development.

2. In section 1, you should offer more information to prove that internet is fast-growing sector, which is critical to regional economy in the case of China. If not, the readers have no incentive to reading this paper. Maybe, you can move section 3.1.

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

In order to prove that the Internet is a rapidly growing industry, we hereby introduce the public data published in the 47th Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet. As of December 2020, the number of Internet users in China has reached 989 million, an increase of 85.4 million over March 2020, and the Internet penetration rate has reached 70.4%, an increase of 5.9 percentage points over March 2020.

3. In section2, you talk about the impacts of internet from national to regional economy and this is a good order. However, your reference must be consistent with the official format of this journal.

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The redundant content has been deleted from the original text.

4. In section 3, I suggest that subsections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 can be combined into section 3.1. Similarly, section 3.2 is outlined by combining subsections 3.2.1 and 3.2.2. At the same time, section 4.1 can be renamed by section 3.3 to focus more on the topic of internet.

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

It has been modified in the original text.

5. Section 4.1 is the first core of this paper to derive an index of internet development, rather than using internet penetration rate or other indicators However, you never tell us why your index system is better than other indicators and this is the key to this paper. Second, I agree that you apply PCA to find a weight-average index. However, among four components, the latter two components (Scientific and cultural development; Industrial development and application) seem to be unrelated to internet development. Can you offer some cited research or paper to support your view?

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The measurement method of Internet development level is comprehensively set by referring to the existing research results of other scholars, including 4 primary indicators and 14 secondary indicators, of which the secondary indicators already include Internet penetration rate and other indicators.

Yu, Zhou, and Zhong [43] and He, Lai, and Liao [44] selected scientific and cultural development levels, industrial development, and application levels to build an indicator system of Internet development.

 

Added references:

Yu, L.; Zhou, S.; Zhong, Y. Analysis of the Factors Affecting China's Internet Development Based on PANEL DATA. China Soft Science, 2007,197 (5): 138-141.

He, J.; Lai, S.; Liao, X. Empirical Analysis of Factors Affecting the Development of the Internet Industry. Management Review, 2015, 27 (1): 138-147.

6. Section 4.2 is another core of this paper. First, please tell us why the coefficient of lnPEO is negative? (In fact, your estimation results, namely Tables 12 and 13 indicate the positive sign). Second, please tell me whether your GDP is real? If not, you must re-run estimation by use of real GDP. Third, your panel unit root test should adopt more individual-effect unit root test, for example, IPS, Fisher …..). Fourth, what is your type of panel data estimation: fixed or random effect?

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

First, in order to make the test results robust and persuasive, this paper uses the LLC test method of homogeneous unit roots instead of IPS, ADF Fisher and PP Fisher methods of heterogeneous unit roots. In the analysis results, we mainly observe the observation value and P value corresponding to the adjusted t *. The test results show that the original hypothesis is rejected, indicating that the panel data is stable.

Second, the GDP data used in this paper is true, and the data is cited from the China Statistical Yearbook over the years.

Third, the P value of Hausman Test results in this paper is less than 0.01. Because the original hypothesis is rejected, the fixed effect model is adopted,

7. This paper is still not good-structured and please invite an English editor to punish carefully this paper to meet the requirement of this good-quality journal.  

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

The revised manuscript has been sent to Wallace Language Editing Services for cosmetic editing.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Congrats on your work. Please, note rows [77] and [92], as the format problem (Error! Reference source not found) continues. Please, correct it before the final publication.

Author Response

Response Letter

Journal Title: Sustainability

Manuscript Reference No. 1885934

Manuscript Title: The Influence of the Internet on Regional Economic Develop- ment— An Empirical Study Based on Chinese Provincial Panel Data

 

We sincerely appreciate all the detailed comments and suggestions made by the reviewers. All comments are considered carefully and summarized as follows, and all the revisions are marked in Red in the original paper for reviewers’ readability. In addition, the revised manuscript has been sent to Wallace Language Editing Services for cosmetic edit. We believe the presentation of this revised manuscript should be more expressive and more readable than the original manuscript. Please do not hesitate to give us any comments and we also look forward to your further decision.

 

Responses from the authors to Reviewer 1:

Review Report (Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Congrats on your work. Please, note rows [77] and [92], as the format problem (Error! Reference source not found) continues. Please, correct it before the final publication.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

We have carefully confirmed that the format problem may be caused when inserting the reference, and the modification has been completed.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear all

I am pleased to see this revised version. This version has replied to my all comments. I think that you have finished a great work and I have no any further question.

 

Author Response

Response Letter

Journal Title: Sustainability

Manuscript Reference No. 1885934

Manuscript Title: The Influence of the Internet on Regional Economic Develop- ment— An Empirical Study Based on Chinese Provincial Panel Data

 

We sincerely appreciate all the detailed comments and suggestions made by the reviewers. All comments are considered carefully and summarized as follows, and all the revisions are marked in Red in the original paper for reviewers’ readability. In addition, the revised manuscript has been sent to Wallace Language Editing Services for cosmetic edit. We believe the presentation of this revised manuscript should be more expressive and more readable than the original manuscript. Please do not hesitate to give us any comments and we also look forward to your further decision.

Responses from the authors to Reviewer 3:

Review Report (Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear all
I am pleased to see this revised version. This version has replied to my all comments. I think that you have finished a great work and I have no any further question.

 

Response: Many thanks for your comments.

Thank you for your affirmation and encouragement. It is precisely because you put forward valuable suggestions for revision that we found the shortcomings in our work. We will continue to improve the writing level of the paper according to your suggestions and make more achievements. Thanks again for your guidance and help!