An Evaluation and Optimization of Green Development Strategy for the Nanjing-Hangzhou Eco-Economic Zone in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 ……. development concepts of "innovation, being green, coordination, openness, and 28 sharing…..”  why not sustainable?

What does the author want to pass the message by “ecological environment?”

( Eco-friendly/ green/ sustainable?)

When investing in the diverse ecological environment (including mountains, streams, fields, forests, and farmhouses) become the first choice for consumption,…..

Line 252 -256 seems to be the method or the process used so they need to be sifted to the method or procedure section and deleted from this.

Table 2 all data are in three decimals except one, so keep uniformity.

Table 2 last column is range or deviation?

The development index for the Years 2013-2015 and 2016-2017 was flat which needs further explanation.

In the table3 last row range is not appropriate.

What is the influence of population flow on the various criteria needs to be described in detail.

The conclusion section needs rewriting: Major conclusions are only mentioned in compressed form.

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

1.  ……. development concepts of "innovation, being green, coordination, openness, and 28 sharing…..”  why not sustainable?

Response:

Thank you for your kind suggestion, After discussion, we decided to delete the above expression and modify it to avoid misunderstanding by readers and further emphasize the concept of green development.

 

2. What does the author want to pass the message by “ecological environment?”

( Eco-friendly/ green/ sustainable?)

Response:

According to this suggestion, Scholars' research shows that protecting the ecological environment is consistent with the concept of green development, and protecting the ecological environment is the premise of sustainable development. Therefore, the word "ecological environment" in the text emphasizes more on protecting the natural environment in the process of economic development.

 

3. When investing in the diverse ecological environment (including mountains, streams, fields, forests, and farmhouses) become the first choice for consumption,…..

Response:

Thank you for your suggestion. In order to avoid readers' misunderstanding, we have deleted the above expressions after discussion.

 

4. Line 252 -256 seems to be the method or the process used so they need to be sifted to the method or procedure section and deleted from this.

Response:

Thank you for your kind suggestion, Line 252-256 is indeed the interpretation of the evaluation process. According to your suggestion, we reorganized this part and incorporated it forward to the interpretation of the research method. The specific amendments are as follows:

First, removes the dimensions of the index, and  applies the extreme value method to better reflect the role of the negative index. apply the entropy weight method to calculate the weight attributes of each item in different years, and weighted the indicators in different years to reflect the comprehensive level of green and high-quality development for each year.

By taking the weight of the j-th index value of the i-th city in Xij, the steps of the entropy weight method used to calculate the comprehensive development level are as follows:

 

5. Table 2 all data are in three decimals except one, so keep uniformity.

Response:

According to this suggestion, we proofread the table 2 by ourselves firstly, and then revise 0.26 in the table to 0.260 for consistency.

 

 

 

6. Table 2 last column is range or deviation?

Response:

According to this suggestion, we have explained the meaning of  RANGE in last column of Table 2, and we believe that the range represents the difference between the maximum and minimum values of the vertical change of the green development index of a city in recent years. The stability of the city's green development is reflected by the dispersion of the distance mean value. So we determine that the last column of Table 2 means range.

 

7. The development index for the Years 2013-2015 and 2016-2017 was flat which needs further explanation.

Response:

According to this proposal, we explained in more detail that the reason for the stable development index is the impact of national macro policy factors, and further pointed out that in 2012 and 2015, the country successively emphasized the comprehensive construction of ecological civilization and the new concept of green development, which led to two long periods of stable green development, 2013-2015 and 2016-2017. Such as:

The development index for the Years 2013-2015 and 2016-2017 was flat, which is the reflection of the stable development period after the national macroeconomic policy regulation and stimulus in the previous year. Since 2012 entered the era of ecological civilization in an all-round way, and 2015 was the first time that green development was put forward as one of the new national development concepts, which became the policy source of green development, the overall development index of Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou experienced an overall leap the next year, and then developed into a stable state. It can be seen that macro policy is an important factor affecting green sustainable development.

8. In the table3 last row range is not appropriate.

Response:

According to this suggestion, after research and discussion, we believe that the statistical significance of extreme difference reported here is not significant, so this line is deleted from Table 3.

 

9. What is the influence of population flow on the various criteria needs to be described in detail.

Response:

According to this problem, we believe that from the perspective of urban function composition and its relationship with population structure and population characteristics, population mobility is an important indicator reflecting the functional connectivity of cities between cities or within urban agglomerations. We further explained the specific impact of population mobility on urban functions. Such as:

Population mobility is an important indicator to reflect the functional relationship between cities or within urban agglomerations. Population mobility brings about social exchanges and innovative resource sharing, which extends to information interconnection, industrial cooperation, ecological conservation, transportation and other infrastructure co construction between cities, thus constantly strengthening the connectivity between cities. However, based on the statistics of population mobility data of Tencent platform, it can be seen that the population mobility between cities along the Nanjing Hangzhou Economic Belt (Nanjing and Hangzhou, Hangzhou and Huzhou, Nanjing and Changzhou) is significantly less than that between cities along the Shanghai Nanjing Economic Belt (Shanghai and Suzhou, Suzhou and Wuxi) and between cities along the Shanghai Hangzhou Economic Belt (Hangzhou and Jiaxing, Hangzhou and Shaoxing), which also affects the coordinated development and green development of cities along the Nanjing Hangzhou Economic Belt.

 

10. The conclusion section needs rewriting: Major conclusions are only mentioned in compressed form.

Response:

According to this suggestion, we rewrote the content of the conclusion, focusing on the construction of the evaluation index system, the evaluation results of the overall level of the green development index in the Yangtze River Delta region, the evaluation results of the subsystems and the corresponding characteristics, which further enhanced the directivity of the content of the conclusion, that is, strengthened the correlation and matching between the conclusion and the problem, and ensured the consistency of the conclusion and the argument and argument. Such as:

This paper studied the Nanjing-Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone and constructed a green development evaluation system in the context of the regional integration of the Yangtze River Delta. Based on a comparative analysis and evaluation of the green development functions of different urban development axes in the Yangtze River Delta, the paper highlights the shortcomings in the green development process of the Nanjing-Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone, and proposes corresponding spatial optimization strategies based on the spatial mapping of the problems. The paper’s main conclusions are as follows:

（1）This paper build a green development evaluation system in the context of regional integration from the five dimensions of industry, employment, science and technology, ecology, and people's livelihood, evaluated and analyzed the economic performance, social welfare, innovation drive, environmental load, green governance and other green development levels of different urban development axes and their green development in the Yangtze River Delta region. The results show that，On the whole, benefiting from the implementation of the national macro policy of green development and the new development concept, the overall green and high-quality development level of the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou urban agglomeration in the Yangtze River Delta region is increasing year by year. In particular, under the implementation of the new policy, the green development performance of urban agglomeration has increased significantly, and with the reduction of the policy effect, the overall green development performance remains at a high and stable state.The level of green and high-quality development of each city is distributed in a step-like and hierarchical manner, and the overall level of green development in the Nanjing-Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone is lower than the Shanghai-Nanjing Golden Axis and the Shanghai-Hangzhou Silver Axis.Based on the evaluation results of the green development subsystem, The green development index in the Yangtze River Delta region is affected by significant differences in the effects of factors, among which the innovation driving factor has the most significant impact, the economic benefit factor has the least impact, and the social welfare factor has an irregular fluctuation.Based on the perspective of spatial and temporal characteristics of each urban belt in the Yangtze River Delta, the Nanjing-Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone performs significantly better than the Shanghai-Nanjing and Shanghai-Hangzhou development axes in terms of environmental load control and green governance index. However, the three indicators of driving innovation, economic performance, and social welfare are weaker compared to the "Gold edge" of Shanghai-Nanjing and the "Silver edge" of Shanghai-Hangzhou. This is spatially manifested as structural problems, such as the strong stems and weak branches of the urban structure in the Nanjing-Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone; an industrial structure approach that focuses on Nanjing rather than Hangzhou; and an emphasis on quantity rather than quality with respect to urbanization.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The following recommendations, in my opinion, can improve the article.
1. The introduction should strengthen the relevance of the problem with reference to sources and analytical information. Introduction is presented in the style of not scientific argumentation, but descriptive journalism.
In the introduction, it is also advisable to formulate the purpose and objectives of this study. In general, the author gives neither the goal, the tasks, nor the hypothesis. It is advisable to add all these moments.

2. In the section, the technique - it is advisable to clearly state the general algorithm of the study, to specify the stages. The authors list the methods, and it is advisable to give the advantages and disadvantages of basic methods and to explain those used.

Author Response

The following recommendations, in my opinion, can improve the article.
1. The introduction should strengthen the relevance of the problem with reference to sources and analytical information. Introduction is presented in the style of not scientific argumentation, but descriptive journalism.
In the introduction, it is also advisable to formulate the purpose and objectives of this study. In general, the author gives neither the goal, the tasks, nor the hypothesis. It is advisable to add all these moments.

Response:

According to this suggestion, we rewrote introduction. First of all, it points out that regional coordinated development is an important national development strategy, which leads to the driving force of the integration development of the Yangtze River Delta and the development of the Nanjing Hangzhou Economic Belt from the national strategic support. It is further pointed out that green development, as one of the new national development concepts, is an important part of promoting the construction of ecological civilization. The Nanjing Hangzhou Economic Belt should summarize past experience, constantly improve the green development model, and accelerate the formation of the "Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone".Finally, in the introduction, it is pointed out that the current research on regional green development is more qualitative than quantitative, and the research on the green development of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone is still blank, which leads to the research purpose and task of this paper, that is, to build a green development evaluation index system, and carry out a quantitative evaluation study on the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone to analyze the model, experience and existing problems of green development in the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone, Further put forward strategic suggestions for green development. such as:

Regional coordinated development is a balanced concept of development that encouraged the coordination of factors among regions and achieves regional cooperation, sharing, and win-win results. This new development concept includes promoting the integrated development of national major regional strategies with urban agglomerations, establishing a new model whereby central cities lead the development of urban agglomerations and urban agglomerations drive regional development, and promoting integrated and interactive development among different regions and sectors ^[1,2]. Early in 2010, the Chinese State Council approved the implementation of the Yangtze River Delta Regional Planning, proposed to vigorously build the Nanjing-Hangzhou Economic Belt. And the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta became part of a national strategy in 2018. The continuously increasing national strategic orientation provided a steady stream of external power to construct the Nanjing-Hangzhou Economic Belt.

Nowadays, China is committed to green development which is an ecological concept of sustainable development that focuses on people's livelihoods and ever-growing needs for a better life. It is widely recognized that green development is an effective way to address the relationship between economic development and environmental protection, to promote the harmonious co-existence of the economy and natural systems, and to transform the natural system from being in an ecological deficit to being in a surplus ^[3]. And the green development of urban agglomerations is based on the actual carrying capacity of the natural resources and ecological environment. By optimizing the economic structure and transforming the mechanisms driving development, the ecological civilization and economic development are equally emphasized, supplemented by powerful policy guarantees. This ensures a balance among regional resources, the environment, the population, and economic development, which building a sustainable model that features common, coordinated, and equitable development ^{[4, 5]}. Nanjing-Hangzhou Economic Belt is in the economically developed Yangtze River Delta region. This zone is taking the lead in implementing important actions that reflect the practice of green development concept and provides an advanced model for developing regional ecological and economic development ^[6]. To further develop this ecological civilization, Nanjing-Hangzhou Economic Belt should summarize the past experience and continuously improve the green development model, so as to accelerate the formation of the "Nanjing-Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone" and improve the functional quality of Nanjing-Hangzhou urban agglomerations.

Although many studies have focused on the regional green development, most of them have qualitatively discussed the regional green development strategy, and have not paid attention to the green development status of the Nanjing Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone, nor have they made a quantitative evaluation of the green development status of the Nanjing-Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone. To this end, this study optimizes the evaluation indicators of regional green development, and uses these indicators to quantitatively evaluate the green development status of the cities in Nanjing Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone. On this basis, this study systematically analyzes the mode, experience and existing problems of green development in Nanjing Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone, and puts forward strategic suggestions for further development.

2. 
   In the section, the technique - it is advisable to clearly state the general algorithm of the study, to specify the stages. The authors list the methods, and it is advisable to give the advantages and disadvantages of basic methods and to explain those used.

Response:

Thank you for your suggestions. The green development evaluation of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt in this paper is based on methods used in previous studies. It points out that the shortcomings of existing research methods, such as fuzzy evaluation method and Delphi method, are greatly affected by the subjective will of the evaluator, which is easy to cause deviation in the research results; Mean square error, etc., is too dependent on the data while ignoring the particularity, collectability, reliability and validity of the data, which also causes the research results to deviate from the reality. Therefore, the author combines the characteristics of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt, such as wide spatial scope, many administrative subjects, many data sources, and rich data types. On the one hand, the author constructs an indicator system that matches the characteristics of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt. For example, the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt includes two national independent innovation demonstration areas, namely, South Jiangsu and Hangzhou. The evaluation indicators add science and technology expenditure, education expenditure, and the number of 10000 college students to measure the regional innovation driving force, Provide sustainable "intellectual support" for green development; On the other hand, the idea of combining subjective and objective weighting is adopted, the analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight method are integrated, and the linear weighting method is used to comprehensively evaluate the regional green development level, so as to reduce the deviation of results caused by human factors and data sources.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for very interesting article. Unfortunately, the aim, research questions and hypotheses are not clearly formulated. In addition, the literature refers to methods. Authors should identify a research gap based on a solid study of the literature. Please find some minor remarks below:

1. What is the main question addressed by the research? The main idea of the article is contained in the last paragraph of the introduction. But the research questions are not clearly defined. 2. Do you consider the topic original or relevant in the field? Does it address a specific gap in the field? and 3. What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material? The main problem of the article is the lack of a solid literature study. Based on such research, the authors should identify a gap in the field. If the problem is new, it should be described. In addition, authors should specify the type of article. 4. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the methodology? What further controls should be considered? The methodology is clear and it is based on methods used in previous studies. Controls are sufficient. 5. Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented and do they address the main question posed? Compared to the main part of the article, the conclusions are too condensed and should be expanded. 6. Are the references appropriate? Data sources (p. 3-4) are not listed in the references. 7. Please include any additional comments on the tables and figures. Table 1 unnecessarily repeats 'The Green High-quality Development System of the Nanjing-Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone' in the title and first column. Figures 2a and 2b as well as 3 should have the same scale on the y-axis. It would be better to follow the differences between them.

Author Response

1. What is the main question addressed by the research? The main idea of the article is contained in the last paragraph of the introduction. But the research questions are not clearly defined.
   
   Response:

According to this suggestion, we further reviewed the literature and pointed out that previous research objects of green development paid little attention to the Nanjing Hangzhou Economic Zone, and even less to the quantitative evaluation of the green development status of the regional urban agglomeration. The main work of this study is to optimize and improve the green development evaluation index system, and carry out quantitative evaluation and research on the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone. On this basis, further analyze the green development model, experience and existing problems of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone, Put forward strategic suggestions for green development in the region.

2. Do you consider the topic original or relevant in the field? Does it address a specific gap in the field? and

Response:

Thank you for your suggestions. Our research work belongs to the research field of regional green development. For the first time, we used quantitative assessment methods to quantitatively assess the current status of green development in the Nanjing Hangzhou Economic Belt, which filled the gaps in the research field and provided quantitative evidence for the decision-making of green development in the region.

3. What does it add to the subject area compared with other published material? The main problem of the article is the lack of a solid literature study. Based on such research, the authors should identify a gap in the field. If the problem is new, it should be described. In addition, authors should specify the type of article.

Response:

Thank you for your suggestions. We have consulted a large number of documents in this field, such as:

Although many studies have focused on the regional green development^[7-10], most of them have qualitatively discussed the regional green development strategy, and have not paid attention to the green development status of the Nanjing Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone, nor have they made a quantitative evaluation of the green development status of the Nanjing-Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone.

[7] Alrasheedi, M., Mardani, A., Mishra, A.R., Streimikiene, D., Liao, H.C., Al-nefaie, A.H. 2021. Evaluating the green growth indicators to achieve sustainable development: A novel extended interval‐valued intuitionistic fuzzy‐combined compromise solution approach. Sustainable Development, 29(1): 120-142.

[8] Tian, Y., Wang, R., Liu, L.Q., Ren, Y. 2021. A spatial effect study on financial agglomeration promoting the green development of urban agglomerations.Sustainable Cities and Society, 70: 102900.

[9] Beatley, T. Green urbanism: learning from European cities[M]. Island Press, 2000.

[10] Enderwick, P. 2018. The economic growth and development effects of China's One Belt, One Road Initiative. Strategic Change, 27(5): 447-454.

but we found that previous studies on regional green development tended to be qualitative rather than quantitative, and the research on green development in Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt is still blank. Therefore, the research purpose and task of this paper is to optimize and improve the green development evaluation index system, and carry out quantitative evaluation research on the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone, so as to analyze the model, experience and existing problems of green development in the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone, and further put forward strategic suggestions for green development.

4. What specific improvements should the authors consider regarding the methodology? What further controls should be considered? The methodology is clear and it is based on methods used in previous studies. Controls are sufficient.

Response:

According to this suggestion, The green development evaluation of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt in this paper is based on methods used in previous studies.It points out that the shortcomings of existing research methods, such as fuzzy evaluation method and Delphi method, are greatly affected by the subjective will of the evaluator, which is easy to cause deviation in the research results; Mean square error, etc., is too dependent on the data while ignoring the particularity, collectability, reliability and validity of the data, which also causes the research results to deviate from the reality. Therefore, the author combines the characteristics of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt, such as wide spatial scope, many administrative subjects, many data sources, and rich data types. On the one hand, the author constructs an indicator system that matches the characteristics of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt. For example, the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt includes two national independent innovation demonstration areas, namely, South Jiangsu and Hangzhou. The evaluation indicators add science and technology expenditure, education expenditure, and the number of 10000 college students to measure the regional innovation driving force, Provide sustainable "intellectual support" for green development; On the other hand, the idea of combining subjective and objective weighting is adopted, the analytic hierarchy process and entropy weight method are integrated, and the linear weighting method is used to comprehensively evaluate the regional green development level, so as to reduce the deviation of results caused by human factors and data sources.

5. Are the conclusions consistent with the evidence and arguments presented and do they address the main question posed? Compared to the main part of the article, the conclusions are too condensed and should be expanded.

Response:

According to this suggestion, we re sorted out the current situation and existing problems of green development of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt in the paper, and proposed to optimize regional division of labor, strengthen the radiation driving function of central cities, cultivate new driving forces, promote the development of regional green economic industries, and explore new urbanization models in response to the shortcomings and problems of green development of the Nanjing Hangzhou Ecological Economic Belt in three aspects of innovation drive, economic performance and social welfare, Policy suggestions such as expanding the supply of social welfare are targeted as problem-solving strategies.

This further highlights the consistency between the research conclusions and the previous arguments and arguments. At the same time, the conclusion was rewritten to further clarify the research content and results.

The above revisions have been presented in the revised article.

6. Are the references appropriate? Data sources (p. 3-4) are not listed in the references.

Response:

Thank you for your suggestion. The data quoted in this article are all annual statistics and relevant information published by the government, and there is no problem of embezzlement. We have listed the references of relevant data sources in the references. such as:

The study uses data for 2018 about cities in the Yangtze River Delta. More specifically, the data of China's administrative divisions came from the 1:1 million basic geographic database provided by the National Geographic Information Resource Directory Service System.  Social and economic statistical data were obtained from the China City Statistical Yearbook ^[11] and China Regional Statistical Yearbook^[12], 2018. Some missing data were found by querying statistical yearbooks of provinces and cities and national economic and social development bulletins, or were processed using the interpolation method. Environment index data were drawn from China's Environmental Statistics Yearbook ^[13], and were combined using the crawler to obtain real-time data about fine particles (PM2.5) and the air quality index (AQI) from the query platform. The time-sequenced evolutionary trends were determining using MySQL database cleaning, data sorting, and data summaries of the historical environmental data for major cities along the Nanjing-Hangzhou line. The same time period was used for each city section.

Population migration data were collected from the 2018 Spring Festival migration database within the Tencent location big data website . Population flow was spatially visualized for the Yangtze River Delta region using the XY-to-line tool of GIS. The Gephi social network analysis software was used to construct a hierarchical network illustrating the degree of connection between population nodes for prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Delta region. The "core-periphery" theory was used to clarify the spatial structure characteristics of population flow in the Yangtze River Delta region. The traffic commuting data were collected in a batch format through the map interface developed by Baidu. Based on the comprehensive traffic travel mode, we calculated the time needed to travel between the centroids of counties and cities along the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou line, and visualized the OD connection using GIS.

 [11] Urban Social and Economic Investigation Department of the National Bureau of Statistics. China City Statistical Yearbook(2018). China Statistics Press.

[12] National Economic Comprehensive Statistics Department of the National Bureau of Statistics. China Regional Economic Statistics Yearbook(2018). China Statistics Press.

[13] National Bureau of Statistics. China Environmental Statistics Yearbook(2018). China Statistics Press.

 

7. Please include any additional comments on the tables and figures. Table 1 unnecessarily repeats 'The Green High-quality Development System of the Nanjing-Hangzhou Eco-economic Zone' in the title and first column. Figures 2a and 2b as well as 3 should have the same scale on the y-axis. It would be better to follow the differences between them.

Response:

There is indeed a problem of duplication between the header and the content. The content of the first column "target level" has been changed to " Green  High-quality Development System ", which is more specific and easier to read and understand.

Figures 2a and 2b have the same proportion on the Y-axis. The two figures are indexes to evaluate the overall green development level of the Yangtze River Delta region and the Nanjing-Hangzhou Economic Belt region respectively, and they are comprehensive evaluation of the overall green development level of the five dimensions. Figure 3 is a specific evaluation of the green development subsystem of Shanghai-Nanjing Economic Belt, Shanghai-Hangzhou Economic Belt and Nanjing-Hangzhou Economic belt, as well as a horizontal comparison among the three economic belts. The research objects and contents of Figure 3 and Figure 2 are not of the same dimension, and the scale sizes are also inconsistent. Therefore, if the proportions of Figure 2 and Figure 3 are the same on the Y-axis, it will be difficult to clearly understand the longitudinal changes of green development level because the scale is too small.

We also made the picture again according to the suggestion. It is found that the picture after modifying the y-axis is difficult to identify the trend of changes over the years due to the small range of the vertical range.

Figure 2. Evaluation of the Green Expected Development of the Nanjing-Hangzhou Ecological Economic Zone and Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou Urban Agglomeration

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for clarifying the doubts, as well as reconsidering and incorporating the suggestions in the text where necessary. Based on this, it can be assumed that the article can be published. In subsequent studies, it is worth comparing this study with analogous studies around the world.

Author Response

Thank you for the suggestions. We will compare this study with analogous studies in the following research.