The Effect of Local Government Environmental Concern on Corporate Environmental Investment: Evidence from China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is an example of a very, very well-conducted study. Thank you for the opportunity to review such a work. The article is written in a logical and transparent manner, the methodology is understandably; the set research hypotheses and the presented logical framework for the paper always attract more attention and simplify the perception of the study, the conclusions are logical and are based on the study. The authors also observed the entire structure inherent in this kind of article. The subject of the manuscript is essential and worthy of discussion.  However, I would like to make such suggestions for improvement:

Point 1: A literature review is sufficient; however, there is a lack of recent research on this topic (2022-2023); for example, concerning social responsibility, it can be used https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.136317; human capital maybe this one will be useful https://doi.org/10.3390/en15134701

Point 2: underline article limitation;

Point 3: if possible, mention the ways for further research.

 

Point 4: should be added a comparison with existing studies, in which it is necessary to emphasize the novelty of the study and its practical/theoretical / methodological contribution and highlight how the author's research differs from them. It could be a separate section or mentioned in  section “7. Conclusion and Implications”

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

There are a few issues that need to be improved:

1.     The title of the manuscript.  In the actual version of the manuscript, its title consists of three keywords: “government environmental concern, corporate resources, and corporate environmental investment”.

a/ The title should be formulated in accordance with the conducted study.

b/ If authors analyzed Chinese data, the end of the title may be “on the example of China” or similar.

2.     Part “1. Introduction”. In the actual version, it is a continuation of the "Abstract". Such parts as: “In summary, the relationship between common environmental regulations and corporate environmental investment has been clarified, providing a valuable reference for government policy formulation and evaluation”; “The research findings provide valuable implications for policy formulation and behavioral choices of various entities in environmental governance”; “The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 analyzes the theoretical framework and proposes the research hypotheses. Section 3 explains the sample selection, data sources, variables, and the research model. Section 4 presents and analyzes the empirical results. Section 5 performs various robustness tests to verify the reliability of the research results. Section 6 presents and analyzes the empirical results of further research. Section 7 summarizes the conclusions and implications of this research” and similar, should be removed.

3.     Lack in the “References”:

a/ the source mentioned in line 148: “2021 Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS)”,

b/ data sources used in the research and mentioned in “3.1. Sample selection and data sources”.

4.     Figure 2. The quality of the map is very low. The state border of China is seriously misshapen. It is not clear:

a/ What is the purpose of the repeated section of the map in the lower right corner of Figure 2?

b/ What are the data sources for calculations on this map?

c/ Who is the author of this map? In line 331 is written: “Based on each Chinese prefecture-level city's average government environmental concern (ER20) value during the research period, this paper draws a map reflecting the environmental concern strength of Chinese local governments, as shown in Figure 2”. In accordance with this statement, the author of this map is “this paper”?

5.     The article concerns "central government environmental concern" or/and "local/ regional government environmental concern"? The difference between levels of public authority is important in this research. In the actual version of the manuscript, there is a mix of issues about central and local government.

6.     Lack of information about the language in which authors elaborated “environmental word set” – Chinese or/and English?

The quality of English in the manuscript is quite good, with minor exceptions like "this paper draws a map". 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors ,

This study is very interesting; however, it lacks in the presentation of results. The results of the regressions are not clear, and the authors should only consider the values of the significant determination coefficients according to the management area they are studying. On the other hand, I believe that it will be more interesting and conclusive for the reader to observe the regression model rather than the values in tables 3 to 9. In point 6 of the study, I think the authors could have provided a discussion of their results, drawn conclusions, and finally addressed future research directions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Compared to the previous version of the manuscript, the authors applied changes in the minimum required scope which make the current version of the manuscript better understandable and informative. The current title of the manuscript is precisely formulated and unambiguous. Chosen by the authors the second, prefectural level of local government in China is appropriate. Due to the focus of research on local governments in China, the graphical presentation of research results for prefectural governments becomes even more important. These results can be presented in the form of a table or cartogram or map diagram. The authors chose a cartogram. A map diagram is strongly recommended. The quality of the cartogram in Figure 2 is still too low to be published. For a better understanding, an example of an appropriate quality map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_China#/media/File:China_prefectural-level_divisions_and_administrative_divisions_(PRoC_claim).png.

Author Response

First of all, thank you for the positive feedback on my revisions. Secondly, based on the map you provided as well as your suggestions, the first author of this paper studied for a week and did his best to revise the map to meet the publication requirements. Originally, this map was only intended to show the environmental concern of local governments in China, but since drawing maps is not our profession, we apologize for not being able to provide a map that met the requirements before. The new map is placed in the attachment for your review, thanks again for the suggestion you gave. Have a good day.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors, I still consider the models to be overly forced. Did you consider too many variables?

I consider that there haven't been significant changes in the article, and I still have doubts about the applied methodology as well as the obtained results.

 

In Table 4, the caption should contain appropriate information related to the content of the table, which is currently lacking.

In table 5 and 6 , the R-squared values should be adjusted, but besides that, they are very weak. So , the models remain unclear.

Best Regards

 

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions and following them, we have substantially revised this paper. First, we cut down the number of variables under your guidance, removing some redundant variables to prevent negative effects on the results. Second, we changed the measures of the explained variable in the model and put the original data in the robustness test section. After that, we corrected the R-square to adjusted R-square according to your request, and through the new adjusted R-square we can see that the explanatory power of the new model has been essentially enhanced. Finally, we deleted some of the data results that were too repetitive or had serious sample size loss or could not reflect the causality at the suggestion of our tutor, in order to emphasize the most important data results of the paper. Thank you for your suggestions, the credibility of our paper has been strengthened through the above modifications. In the new version, in addition to the benchmark regression, we have re-validated the conclusions of the paper by changing the explained variable as well as the explanatory variable, and by using the time-individual mixed fixed-effects model and the double-difference model. This overall revision process also proves the validity of the paper's conclusions, and I hope this revision will receive your approval. Have a good day and thank you again.

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Author's 

Congrats