The Impact and Internal Mechanism of Environmental Decentralization on Green Total Factor Production

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for inviting me to read and evaluate the paper entitled “Research on the Impact and Internal Mechanism of Environmental Decentralization on Green Total Factor Production”. 

Overall the paper is good written paper. As far as I understand this paper constructs a new research framework of environmental decentralization—technological innovation—green total factor productivity (GTFP), and investigates the effect and mechanism of environmental decentralization on GTFP. Interestingly, the authors found that environmental decentralization can reduce the quality of environmental information disclosure and inhibit the innovative output of enterprises, ultimately it will lead to the decrease of GTFP. In general, it’s an interesting paper, I hope that the following comments help the authors to improve it:

 

1) Authors may modify the title a bit. They may remove the words “Research on” from

the title and the title should start with “the Impact and Internal Mechanism of Environmental Decentralization on Green Total Factor Production”.

2) The abstract is ok.

3) Where are the “Keywords”? Authors should add 5/6 keywords after abstract.

4) The first paragraph should be split into two paragraphs. More

recent relevant papers should be cited. Authors should follow the journal authors’

guidelines for citations format. Most importantly, the authors should add and discuss the paper contribution to Environmental Decentralization and Green Total Factor Production literature. What we learned from the paper and how the paper enriches our environmental knowledge? 

5) In the “Literature Review” sections, more relevant papers should discussed with

citations that reflects the main objectives of the papers. Literature review section

should be explained more in relation to study constructs and their relationships.

6) “3. Methodology/Models” is ok.

7) “4. Results” is ok.

8) Authors should add “implications of the study”. Also they should add “Limitations

and future directions of the study”.

9) Authors should follow the author guidelines for referencing style. They should

recheck the citations in relation to references list.

10) Authors should undergo editing the paper properly.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper enriched the research results of traditional environmental federalism theory, Porter Hypothesis, and growth pole theory, and provided a solution to the difficult problem of corporate financing constraints.

The quality of environmental information disclosure is used instead of environmental tax to measure the actual impact of environmental regulations on enterprises, which provides a new perspective for studying the impact of environmental regulations on enterprises' technological innovation.

But there are still some points that need to be improved.

1. This article is highly theoretical and difficult to understand. Please combine the reality to improve the article.

2. Please ensure that your manuscript meets Sustainability's style requirements, including those for file naming. 

3. Please update the references to the last five years.

4. Please add countermeasures and suggestions.

5. Introduction is extremely long. Please simplify the introduction.

6. Please reduce repeated descriptions. 

7. Please recheck and reconfirm all the formulas and their relative signs in this paper are correct.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper constructs a new research framework of environmental decentralization—technological innovation—green total factor productivity, and investigates the effect and mechanism of environmental decentralization on GTFP. And the proposed scheme outperforms the state of the art and can provide scientific and effective policy suggestions for improving the ecoenvironmental supervision mechanism. This paper is in line with the research direction in this field, makes a slightly innovative contribution, has a more complete structural framework. However, there are still some problems:

 

1. Some words that appear suddenly are not explained accordingly, and the corresponding meaning cannot be logically deduced from the preceding text. For example, "echo effect" and "diffusion effect".

2. Formatting details need further adjustment. Firstly, the comma is not all in English state; secondly, there are spaces after punctuation and some without; also, there are multiple confusing hyphens in the spelling of words, which is not supposed to be; futhermore, there are some extra blank lines before and after the formula in the third and fourth part; finally, the numbering format of formulae and formulas is not uniform, some are left-aligned and some are right-aligned. It is recommended to check the whole text and unify the format.

3. Did not see a description of the growth pole theory. Since you have enriched the growth pole theory research results as an innovation point, you definitely need to present the original growth pole theory research. Suggest adding a relevant description in the introduction.

4. Lack of references since the last three years. It is suggested to add references from the last three years and increase the authority of the source of the references to improving the credibility of your study.

5. This paper lacks a summary of the practical applications. What is mentioned in the introduction “The research results provide scientific and effective policy suggestions for improving the ecoenvironmental supervision mechanism and the incentive mechanism of pollution control in various regions” is only sketched in 4.2, and there is no systematic summary in the final conclusion.

6. Lack of diagrams. Because of the length of the mechanism analysis in this article, it is suggested that a complete mechanism diagram can be added to this section to make it more convenient for readers to understand the study.

 

I think the paper should be revised and resubmitted.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

no