Review Reports - Understanding the Nonlinear Impact of Information and Communication Technology on Carbon Emissions in the Logistics Industry of China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

- In figure 1 : Please explain/review what do you mean by CO2 ( 10 thousand tons)? Internet surfers (100 million people) ??

- Please review the English of the paper. It should be formal.

- Please avoid expressions such as "All these reasons motivate us" , "The conclusions of many studies about" ...

- The Review section should not begin with "The conclusions of many studies about the relationship between ICT and carbon emissions are ambiguous, i.e., ICT can harm, benefit or have no impact on the environment." Is is not correct to begin by the conclusion of the section???

- The paper is focused on the Chinese case study. This should be seen in the Title of the paper to not mislead the reader.

Please review the English of the paper. It should be formal.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your positive and constructive comments. Your suggestions are of great help for us to improve the manuscript. We appreciate your efforts and time greatly. We have revised our manuscript according to your comments, and the contents below are the point-by-point responses to the specific critiques. Specially, the changes made in the revised manuscript are highlighted.

Responses to Reviewer:

1. COMMENT: In figure 1: Please explain/review what do you mean by CO2 ( 10 thousand tons)? Internet surfers (100 million people) ??

RESPONSE: 10 thousand tons and 100 million people are the units of CO2 and Internet surfers, which is added as the explanation in footnote 3.

2. COMMENT: Please review the English of the paper. It should be formal.

RESPONSE: We have carefully proofread the paper and improved some English expressions.

3. COMMENT: Please avoid expressions such as "All these reasons motivate us" , "The conclusions of many studies about" ...

RESPONSE: Such expressions and other similar expressions have been modified.

4. COMMENT: The Review section should not begin with "The conclusions of many studies about the relationship between ICT and carbon emissions are ambiguous, i.e., ICT can harm, benefit or have no impact on the environment." It is not correct to begin by the conclusion of the section???

RESPONSE: The expression has been modified.

5. COMMENT: The paper is focused on the Chinese case study. This should be seen in the Title of the paper to not mislead the reader.

Reviewer 2 Report

A few recommendations for improvement are listed below.

1. Title and Abstract:

(1) Title: The terms need to be defined clearly and accurately. Please check and brief introduce the definition of ICT and its relationship with Internet usage (refer to 10.1016/j.energy.2018.03.115), and the coverage of logistics industry and its relationship with express delivery industry, in the Introduction section.

(2) Abstract: The empirical finding are poorly presented. The authors need to present the most significant and interesting results concisely and clearly, i.e., use (1), (2), and (3), respectively. In addition, the authors can highlight the policy implications of the study in the Abstract. Please check that.

2. Introduction and Literature Review:

(1) The first and second paragraph are too cumbersome for readers and can be refined or merged together.

(2) In the penultimate paragraph of the introduction, the author should claim the novelty of this study clearly, separating from the introduction of main work this study has done. For example, the methodology and new evidences from logistics industry. I am not very clear about the differences of the empirical findings between logistics industry and other industries.

(3) The literature review of the study can be improved and enriched. Especially on how ICT/digital technology will affect the carabon emissions, some recently published works had examined the relationship between, energy consumption and carbon emissions in China from a macro-level or meso-level, as the authors claimed. For example, “Carbon-economic inequality in global ICT trade, iScience, 2022”, “A framework to analyze carbon impacts of digital economy: The case of China. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 2022”, , etc. Please review the papers and justify your mechanism analysis and discussions.

(4) Section “3. The Effects of Internet Usage on CELI” looks a bit chaotic and can be merged with the Introduction section. Here, it is better to use “ICT” rather than “Internet Usage” in the title, Since the latter is a proxy of the former.

3. Methodology and Data

(1) The data source and treatment have been somewhat neglected by the authors. Please add literature support for the data and show the data treatment in detail, i.e., how to derive the carbon emissions of logistics data from the China’s statistics yearbooks. As far as I know, The logistics industry is a complex department, and its economic output is not separately recorded in the statistical yearbook, which is the data required for calculating carbon emissions.

(2) The use of serial numbers is somewhat chaotic, for example, 1, 2, and 3 under “4.3 Variables” should be 4.3.1, 4.3.2, and 4.3.3. Furthermore, serial numbers such as (1), (2), and (3) can be used in the following text.

(3) “The period of the sample is from 2000 to 2018.” Please chek the study period and “2000 to 2022” or “2000 to 2020” would be better.

4. Results and discussion:

(1) The authors should analyze and discuss the results thoroughly. The authors could make some comparative analyses with previous studies. Also, some of the Results analysis should be appropriately subdivided into sections, such as mechanism analysis, heterogeneity analysis, and so on.

(2) The section on mechanism analysis should be placed before heterogeneity analysis, as it is more important.

(3) The authors can redraw some Tables and Figures to make a clear and uniform presentation of results. For example, the Figure 3-6 can be presented together in one figure rather than four figures.

(4) In addition, the authors limited their discussions to the results, but not extended to the practical background of other countries’s ICT, carbon emissions, and other industries. This weakens the significance of this study.

5. Conclusions and policy implications

(1) The main findings should be presented more clearly and concisely in conclusions. For example, like policy implications, first, second, third, and so on.

(2) The policy implications can be refined.

There are some grammar and typo mistakes in this manuscript. Please ask some native English writers to help you improve this paper.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Responses to Reviewer:

A few recommendations for improvement are listed below.

1.COMMENT: Title and Abstract:(1) Title: The terms need to be defined clearly and accurately. Please check and brief introduce the definition of ICT and its relationship with Internet usage (refer to 10.1016/j.energy.2018.03.115), and the coverage of logistics industry and its relationship with express delivery industry, in the Introduction section.(2) Abstract: The empirical findings are poorly presented. The authors need to present the most significant and interesting results concisely and clearly, i.e., use (1), (2), and (3), respectively. In addition, the authors can highlight the policy implications of the study in the Abstract. Please check that.

RESPONSE: We use the new title, “Understanding the Nonlinear Impact of information and communication technology on Carbon Emissions in the Logistics Industry of China”, to make it more clear and accurate. A brief definition of ICT and its relationship with Internet usage are shown in the second paragraph of the Introduction section referring to the study of Zhou et al. (2018). In addition, the coverage of logistics industry and its relationship with express delivery are introduced in the footnote 1 and 2 respectively. Finally, Abstract is rewrote according to the advices.

2. COMMENT: Introduction and Literature Review:(1) The first and second paragraph are too cumbersome for readers and can be refined or merged together.(2) In the penultimate paragraph of the introduction, the author should claim the novelty of this study clearly, separating from the introduction of main work this study has done. For example, the methodology and new evidences from logistics industry. I am not very clear about the differences of the empirical findings between logistics industry and other industries.(3) The literature review of the study can be improved and enriched. Especially on how ICT/digital technology will affect the carbon emissions, some recently published works had examined the relationship between, energy consumption and carbon emissions in China from a macro-level or meso-level, as the authors claimed. For example, “Carbon-economic inequality in global ICT trade, iScience, 2022”, “A framework to analyze carbon impacts of digital economy: The case of China. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 2022”, etc. Please review the papers and justify your mechanism analysis and discussions.(4) Section “3. The Effects of Internet Usage on CELI” looks a bit chaotic and can be merged with the Introduction section. Here, it is better to use “ICT” rather than “Internet Usage” in the title, Since the latter is a proxy of the former.

RESPONSE: The first paragraph is deleted and other contents of the Introduction section are rewrote. However, the differences of the empirical findings between logistics industry and other industries are presented in the Results section. Additionally, some literature are added into the Introduction and Literature Review section, including the two studies mentioned above. Finally, “Internet Usage” is replaced with ICT in the title of section 3.

3. COMMENT: Methodology and Data(1) The data source and treatment have been somewhat neglected by the authors. Please add literature support for the data and show the data treatment in detail, i.e., how to derive the carbon emissions of logistics data from the China’s statistics yearbooks. As far as I know, The logistics industry is a complex department, and its economic output is not separately recorded in the statistical yearbook, which is the data required for calculating carbon emissions.(2) The use of serial numbers is somewhat chaotic, for example, 1, 2, and 3 under “4.3 Variables” should be 4.3.1, 4.3.2, and 4.3.3. Furthermore, serial numbers such as (1), (2), and (3) can be used in the following text.(3) “The period of the sample is from 2000 to 2018.” Please check the study period and “2000 to 2022” or “2000 to 2020” would be better.

RESPONSE: We use equation (3) in the Variables section to measure CELI. In equation (3), E refers to the amount of energy consumption from different fuel types (emission factors), and is replaced by the energy consumption of the transportation, storage and postal sector published in the China Energy Statistical Yearbook. NCV refers to the net calorific value of different fuel types and CEC refers to the carbon emissions coefficient. The specific information of NCV and CEC are shown in Table 1. This approach has been adopted by many literature to measure CELI, including the studies of Chen and Wu (2022) and Guo and Wang (2022). Additionally, the serial numbers are modified according the advices. For the period of the sample, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019 resulted in poor quality data on the logistics industry, we set the sample period from 2000 to 2018 to avoid the impact of "black swan event" on the conclusions of this study.

4. COMMENT: Results and discussion:(1) The authors should analyze and discuss the results thoroughly. The authors could make some comparative analyses with previous studies. Also, some of the Results analysis should be appropriately subdivided into sections, such as mechanism analysis, heterogeneity analysis, and so on.(2) The section on mechanism analysis should be placed before heterogeneity analysis, as it is more important.(3) The authors can redraw some Tables and Figures to make a clear and uniform presentation of results. For example, the Figure 3-6 can be presented together in one figure rather than four figures.(4) In addition, the authors limited their discussions to the results, but not extended to the practical background of other countries’ ICT, carbon emissions, and other industries. This weakens the significance of this study.

RESPONSE: The structure of the Results section is adjusted according to the advices and the Figure 3-6 are presented together in one figure. As for the results analysis and discussion, we also added some contents. For example, we compare our results with the findings of Li and Wang (2022), and the economic intuition behind the results and how they are connected with the existing evidence are added in the Results section.

5. COMMENT: Conclusions and policy implications(1) The main findings should be presented more clearly and concisely in conclusions. For example, like policy implications, first, second, third, and so on.(2) The policy implications can be refined.

RESPONSE: The policy implications are refined according to the advices.