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Article
Peer-Review Record

China’s River Chief Policy and the Sustainable Development Goals: Prefecture-Level Evidence from the Yangtze River Economic Belt

Sustainability 2022, 14(6), 3357; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063357
by Yufeng Wang 1, Tao Wu 2,* and Mengke Huang 2
Reviewer 1:
Reviewer 2: Anonymous
Reviewer 3: Anonymous
Sustainability 2022, 14(6), 3357; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063357
Submission received: 22 February 2022 / Revised: 10 March 2022 / Accepted: 11 March 2022 / Published: 13 March 2022

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The comments are in the attached file. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks very much for your affirmation. We have checked language typos all thorough the paper and corrected some typos using the “Track Changes” function in the revised manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

While this topic is interesting and potentially useful for China's river chief policy, there are some points not well illustrated and hence more discussions and information should be provided. First, the contributions are not clearly stated in the introduction section. Please add a concise paragraph to indicate how this study benefit existing literature. Second, please provide more insights about figure 1 and 2, as they are the key results of this study. More information should be provided and elaborated. Third, the authors should separate the discussion from conclusion because the conclusion should only contain the most important findings and remain concise.

Author Response

  1. First, the contributions are not clearly stated in the introduction section. Please add a concise paragraph to indicate how this study benefit existing literature.

Response: Thanks very much for your constructive comment. A paragraph to indicate how this study benefit existing literature has been added in Page 3: “The possible contributions of this paper are: first, evaluating RCP from the perspective of SDGs can give us a richer understanding of the results generated by RCP; second, it can deepen our understanding of the behavior of local governments in China under environmental regulation; third, to provide evidence for the different trade-offs of different types of local governments in RCP.”

 

  1. Second, please provide more insights about figure 1 and 2, as they are the key results of this study. More information should be provided and elaborated.

Response: Thanks for your constructive comment. We have modified Figure 2 and included the information of 11 cities that adopted RCP in 2018 in Page 7 and added more explanation of Figure 2 in Page 6.

 

  1. Third, the authors should separate the discussion from conclusion because the conclusion should only contain the most important findings and remain concise.

Response: Thanks very much for your helpful comment. We have added an new paragraph in Page 16 to discuss the comparison of our paper and existing literature, separating the discussion from conclusion: ”Some of the findings of this paper are consistent with the conclusions of the existing literature, and some can extend the existing literature. Li et al. [11] believed that local governments did not sacrifice their pursuit of economic growth for environmental governance. Although the findings of this study did not negate this conclusion, this study shows that local governments are able to reconcile the conflict between economic development and pollution by adjusting its direction to promote economic development, under the new environmental regulation. The heterogeneity of local pollution control in China are shown in some literature [9, 29], the evidence of this study also shows that the responses of regions with different economic development levels under RCP have similarities (efforts to encourage innovation) and differences (promotion of education, consumption and wage levels). Many literature [8, 9, 11, 12] found a reduction in water pollution in rivers under RCP, but our evidence suggests that RCP did not improve drinking water quality.”

Reviewer 3 Report

Suggestions to authors:

 

In abstract it is mentioned that the data are from 91 cities while in figure 2 there are only 80 cities in 2017.

It is not very clear which of the variables in Table 2 are included in the SDG index. There should be a more clear concordance between the variables mentioned in Table 1 and those from Table 2. 

The notation like dur#1.cohort#c.D from table 3 are not very clearly explained.

The Conclusion and Discussion section should include comparison (ex. with other indices, other comparisons with literature).

Author Response

  1. In abstract it is mentioned that the data are from 91 cities while in figure 2 there are only 80 cities in 2017.

Response: Thanks very much for pointing out that.  Our data include 11 cities that adopted RCP in 2018, which was not shown in Figure 2 of last version of manuscript. We have modified Figure 2 and included the information of 11 cities that adopted RCP in 2018 in Page 7 and added more explanation of Figure 2 in Page 6.  

 

  1. It is not very clear which of the variables in Table 2 are included in the SDG index. There should be a more clear concordance between the variables mentioned in Table 1 and those from Table 2. 

Response: Thanks very much for your constructive comment. We have made modifications in Table 2 in Pages 8 and 9, make sure that the variables mentioned in Table 1 are in concordance with those from Table 2. 

 

  1. The notation like dur#1.cohort#c.D from table 3 are not very clearly explained.

Response: Thanks very much for your helpful opinion. “dur#cohort#D” represents the interaction term of  three dummy variables “dur“, “cohort“, and “D“, where “dur” is the categorical variable of the treatment duration; “cohort“ is the categorical variable of the treatment cohort; “D“ is the dummy variable of treatment group. We have added this explanation to the note of Table 3 in Page 11.

 

  1. The Conclusion and Discussion section should include comparison (ex. with other indices, other comparisons with literature).

Response: Thanks very much for your insightful comment, we have added an new paragraph in Page 16 to discuss the comparison of our paper and existing literature: ”Some of the findings of this paper are consistent with the conclusions of the existing literature, and some can extend the existing literature. Li et al. [11] believed that local governments did not sacrifice their pursuit of economic growth for environmental governance. Although the findings of this study did not negate this conclusion, this study shows that local governments are able to reconcile the conflict between economic development and pollution by adjusting its direction to promote economic development, under the new environmental regulation. The heterogeneity of local pollution control in China are shown in some literature [9, 29], the evidence of this study also shows that the responses of regions with different economic development levels under RCP have similarities (efforts to encourage innovation) and differences (promotion of education, consumption and wage levels). Many literature [8, 9, 11, 12] found a reduction in water pollution in rivers under RCP, but our evidence suggests that RCP did not improve drinking water quality.”

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