Does the Collaboration of Digitalization Foster Regional Green Development?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
INTRODUCTION
- The introduction section should be included the justification for the topic importance.
- The introduction section should be included the aim/objective.
- The introduction section should be included brief information on methods.
- The Introduction should be devoted to the relevance of the research topic and the formulation of the problem in general. There should not be a review of the literature here; it should not be told how the study will be conducted, how the article is structured, what is the purpose of the study and what tasks will be solved by the authors.
- The content of each section/chapter of the article is briefly described in the last paragraph of the introduction.
LITERATURE REVIEW
- The literature review section adds some latest research (2021 to 2023) and critical analysis to summarize the strengths and weaknesses of existing literature. Furthermore, the authors highlight the contribution of this paper on the basis of existing research.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
§The Method section describes in detail how the study was conducted, including conceptual and operational definitions of the variables used in the study.
RESULTS
- Further, the main section of the article is RESULT. Here, not only the results obtained (analytics, systematization, calculations...), but also their economic interpretation, explanation, and justification should be given. If the hypotheses were predicted, then provide the results of their verification.
DISCUSSIONS
- The Discussion section should include a discussion of the results of the study, a comparison with previous ones, a discussion of why the authors have such results, and an indication of future prospects.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer1:
We quite appreciate your favorite consideration and the reviewers’ insightful comments. Now we have revised the manuscript entitled “Does the collaboration of digitalization foster regional green development?” (ID: sustainability-2602961). We have studied the comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope this revision can make our paper more acceptable. Revised portions are marked in red on the paper.
Q1: The introduction section should be included the justification for the topic importance. The introduction section should be included the aim/objective. The introduction section should be included brief information on methods. The Introduction should be devoted to the relevance of the research topic and the formulation of the problem in general. There should not be a review of the literature here; it should not be told how the study will be conducted, how the article is structured, what is the purpose of the study and what tasks will be solved by the authors. The content of each section/chapter of the article is briefly described in the last paragraph of the introduction.
Response: Thanks for your nice suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have added an explanation of importance in the second paragraph of the introduction: “Therefore, compared to the digital development index of a single region, the digital synergy index between regions can more comprehensively and systematically examine the role and effect of digital technology penetration in regional green development. This is conducive to fully evaluating the green momentum that digital technology can unleash in the process of deep integration into economic and social development, and to a greater extent, clarifying the threshold conditions for digitalization to play a role.” , and have made the modification on the objective and study methods in the introduction in this section: “To sum up, this paper will empirically explore the impact of digital collaboration on regional green development, analyze the mediating and moderating effects of the business environment between the them by introducing the Tobit Model, Propensity Score Matching (PSM) Method, Mediation Model, and Moderation Model. ” .
The small amount of literature review in the introduction is to elaborate on the theoretical background of the research, in order to introduce the importance of digital synergy on green development and the research space left by existing literature.
In addition, we have added the content of each section/chapter of the article in the last paragraph in this section: “The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 synthesizes the literature regarding the link between digital collaboration and regional green innovation as well as the literature concerning the mediating and moderating effect of business environment. Section 3 describes the methodalogy, involing the measurement of digital collaborative index and green development level, model setting, data and sampling. Section 4 presents empirical findings and discussions. Section 5 outlines the conclusions, research limitations, and future directions.”
Q2: The literature review section adds some latest research (2021 to 2023) and critical analysis to summarize the strengths and weaknesses of existing literature. Furthermore, the authors highlight the contribution of this paper on the basis of existing research.
Response: We deeply appreciate your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have replaced and updated some literature in the literature review section, and detailed information can be found in the new manuscript. In addition, we have highlight the contribution of our study in this section: “Therefore, compared to the role and effects of digitalization in green development in a single region, such as green total factor energy efficiency, green economic recovery, green innovation performance, and other fields (Gao et al., 2022; Jia et al., 2022; Cai, 2023), the digital synergy between regions is conducive to a more comprehensive and systematic examination of the role and effects of digitalization in these fields. This is conducive to fully evaluating the kinetic energy that digitalization can stimulate in driving regional green development, and clarifying the conditions for digitalization to play a greater role.”.
Q3: The Method section describes in detail how the study was conducted, including conceptual and operational definitions of the variables used in the study.
Response: We deeply appreciate your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have made the following modifications to this section 3.1 :
“Based on the previous analysis, this study suggests that urban level digitalization refers to a comprehensive governance system based on the application and development of digital technology, that is, through the construction of digital infrastructure, to achieve the deep integration of digital industrialization and industrial digitization. Considering the diversification and complexity of urban digitalization and its multidimensional impact on local green development. As such, an indicator system is necessary in measuring the city level digitization. Based on the digital economy development framework established by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (2020) and the contributions of Pan et al. (2021), this paper constructs the urban digitalization indicator system from four dimensions: digital infrastructure, digital industrialization, industrial digitization, and digital governance.
Digital infrastructure. The construction of sound digital infrastructure is a prerequisite for the application and development of digital technology, and also the foundation for urban digitization. According to the contribution of Ma and Ning (2020), and Pan et al., (2021), digital infrastructure mainly includes the construction of information infrastructure and the construction of digital and intelligent support platforms;
Digital industrialization. Digital industrialization is the core industry of the digital economy, referring to the provision of digital technology, products, services, infrastructure, and solutions for economic and social development, as well as various economic activities that rely entirely on digital technology and data elements. The digital industrialization characterization of this study is the added value of the information industry characterized by digital technology. According to the "Statistical Classification of Digital Economy and Its Core Industries (2021)" released by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2021, digital industrialization in this paper mainly includes information transmission, computer services and software industry, broadcasting, television, film and film recording production industry, communication, computer and other electronic equipment manufacturing industry, software, information technology service industry, etc.;
Industrial digitization. Also known as digital integration, refers to the results of the integration of digital technology and other industries, such as the increase in output and efficiency improvement brought about by the integration and penetration of ICT products and services in other fields. According to the classification of the digital economy industry by the National Bureau of Statistics, the industry digitization in this indicator system mainly includes digital commerce, intelligent manufacturing, and digital inclusive finance;
Digital governance. Digital governance refers to the widespread application of digital technology in the process of social governance, which is an important guarantee for the smooth implementation of digitalization, emphasizing the governance of public affairs based on digitalization and the governance of the digital process of the economy and society, and is mainly used to evaluate the digital governance capabilities of local governments, covering e-government, smart cities, policy measures, etc. ” and “Considering that the digital development of cities may generate regional spillover effects (Song et al., 2021), which can affect resource allocation between regions and thus affect regional green development. Thus, it is necessary to measure the digital collaboration index between cities. According to the previous analysis, regional digital collaboration in this study refers to a digital governance system based on co construction, co governance, and sharing. Through the construction of digital infrastructure represented by the new generation of digital technology, it achieves the deep integration and development of digital industrialization and industrial digitization between regions, characterized by the synergy of four dimensions: digital governance, digital infrastructure construction, digital industrialization, and industrial digitization. ” to further explain the concept and operational definition of the main variables.
Q4: The main section of the article is RESULT. Here, not only the results obtained (analytics, systematization, calculations...), but also their economic interpretation, explanation, and justification should be given. If the hypotheses were predicted, then provide the results of their verification..
Response: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have added the economic interpretation, explanation, and justification in this section. Such as, “This is possibly because digital collaboration will occupy productive resources during the construction process, squeezing the green development space of regions, and regions are also in a period of adaptation and adaptation, which will have a negative impact on resource collaborative allocation and information sharing. Thus, H1 is supported. This indicates that digital collaboration can enhance regional resource utilization efficiency, form a circular economy system, reduce pollutant emissions, and promote regional green development by strengthening interaction and cooperation between regions. ” in section 4.1, and “The possible reason is that the region has strict requirements for green development of enterprises, which can transmit the positive effect of digital collaboration on regional green development from multiple aspects of business environment construction, such as environmental regulations, market green demand, and public supervision. ”, “According to the conclusions of columns (1) and (2), this may be due to the fact that enterprises have a certain degree of green development self-discipline, which can further obtain stronger driving force for green development from the business environment field on the basis of actively driving regional green development. ” in section 4.3.
Q5: The Discussion section should include a discussion of the results of the study, a comparison with previous ones, a discussion of why the authors have such results, and an indication of future prospects.
Response: Thanks for your nice suggestion again. According to your suggestion, we have make the revision in the new manuscript: “Based on theoretical analysis and empirical research conclusions, this paper obtains the following insights:
Firstly, there is a lagged effect of digital collaboration in promoting regional green development. This conclusion is basically consistent with the research findings of Wu et al. (2023), Hu and Guo (2022), that digitalization can significantly improve green development performance. This indicating that cities need to strengthen digital collaboration between regions from the perspectives of digital infrastructure, digital industrialization, industrial digitization, and digital governance to promote regional green development.
Secondly, when strengthening the close connection between digital collaboration and regional green development, it is also necessary to strengthen the construction of a business environment to stimulate and release the radiation and driving effect of digital collaboration on regional green development to a greater extent.
Thirdly, The role of digital collaboration in regional green development varies significantly in the eastern, central, and western regions, which is consistent with the conclusion of Gao et al. (2022), Yang and Liang (2023) that the degree of digitalization in the eastern region is relatively high and can effectively release the positive effects of digitalization to promote green development. the government should accelerate the promotion of digital collaborative construction in the central and western regions, continuously narrow the development gap with the eastern region, and continuously release the "multiplier effect" and "multiplier effect" of digital collaboration on green development in the central and western regions.
Although this paper attempts to conduct a more comprehensive study, there are still the following research limitations: firstly, this paper only examines the role of digital collaboration in regional green development, and does not classify it according to the four dimensions of digital infrastructure, digital industrialization, industrial digitization, and digital governance of digital collaboration to thoroughly examine its effectiveness. Secondly, regional green development only examines green total factor productivity, and further exploration is needed to explore the logical role of digital collaboration in the relationship between regional economic development and environmental development. In addition, this study only examines the situation in different regions of the same country, which may be insufficient. In the future, we will consider using global data for in-depth analysis, and it is necessary to measure digital collaboration more accurately when accumulating and collecting sufficient indicators and data for genuine collaboration between regions. ”
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
Please see attached.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Minor editing of English language required.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer2:
We quite appreciate your favorite consideration and the reviewers’ insightful comments. Now we have revised the manuscript entitled “Does the collaboration of digitalization foster regional green development?” (ID: sustainability-2602961). We have studied the comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope this revision can make our paper more acceptable. Revised portions are marked in red on the paper.
Q1: The authors should clearly mention the novelty of this study.
Response: Thanks for your nice suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have made a modification in the introduction: “ The potential contributions of this paper are as follows:1) Previous literature mainly explores the effects and mechanisms of digitalization of a single region on green development, while digitalization is not an independent behavior of a single entity, but a joint action between entities. Thus, it is necessary to examine the “ Green Dividend Effect” of digitalization from the perspective of digital collaboration. Accordingly, this paper will construct an evaluation system for digital collaboration between regions, and further clarify the impact of digital collaboration on regional green development through theoretical analysis and empirical testing, which deepens the understanding of regional digitization and its role in green development.; 2) Enterprises are considered as an important entity in promoting regional green development, and the business environment can comprehensively reflect the green development environment of enterprises from the perspectives of environmental regulation, green market demand, public supervision, etc. This indicates that it will play an important role in the process of digital collaborative impact on regional green development. Therefore, this study attempts to reveal the internal mechanism of the role of digital collaboration in regional green development from the perspective of both the mediating and regulating effects of the business environment, in order to expand the understanding of environmental regulations and market green demands on which green development relies. This enriches the literature that reveals the impact of digital transformation on regional green development mechanisms.; 3) Analyzing the relationship between digital collaboration, business environment, and green development from the eastern, central, and western regions can ensure the robustness of benchmark regression, and also discover the differences in the green dividend effects of digital collaboration in different regions, thus to some extent confirming the geographical conditions under which digital collaboration exerts its effects. This provides a theoretical extension for the existing literature to explore the differences in the effects of digital transformation on regional green development.”
Q1: The Introduction section should be updated providing a more accurate and informative literature review and the pros and cons of the available approaches and how the proposed method is different comparatively.
Response: Thanks for your nice suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have made a modification in the introduction. Detailed information can be seen in the new manuscript.
Q3: Authors should update the literature section by citing the latest articles published in this area such as
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.129858
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2021.121052
Response: Thanks for your nice suggestion. We have added these latest articles in the new manuscript.
Q4:Authors consider data from the same country (China) in different regions, however, to establish this hypothesis author might investigate it considering global data.
Response: Thanks for your nice suggestion. In this study, we only examines the situation in different regions of the same country (China), which may be insufficient. Although digital collaborative data from around the world can better support our research, due to differences in digital governance, digital industry, digital infrastructure development, statistical caliber, and availability of relevant data across countries and regions, we still use data from China as a single country to complete our research.
Q5:Authors used the Tobit model in this study. The author should discuss in detailed about the Tobit model.
Response: We deeply appreciate your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have made the following modifications to this section: “Considering that the efficiency value is a constrained dependent variable greater than 0 and there may be left merging at 0, a Tobit model is constructed to solve the problem of inconsistent regression estimates for the constrained dependent variable. The Tobit model refers to a type of model in which the dependent variable, although approximately continuously distributed on a positive value, contains a portion of observations with a positive probability value of 0, which, also known as the censored regression model or censored regression model, belongs to a type of limited dependent variable regression. A limited dependent variable refers to a dependent variable whose observations are continuous, but subject to certain limitations, the obtained observations do not fully reflect the actual state of the dependent variable.”
Q6:The "Discussion" section should be added in a more highlighting, argumentative way.
Response: We deeply appreciate your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have made the following modifications to this section: “Based on theoretical analysis and empirical research conclusions, this paper obtains the following insights:
Firstly, there is a lagged effect of digital collaboration in promoting regional green development. This conclusion is basically consistent with the research findings of Wu et al. (2023), Hu and Guo (2022), that digitalization can significantly improve green development performance. This indicating that cities need to strengthen digital collaboration between regions from the perspectives of digital infrastructure, digital industrialization, industrial digitization, and digital governance to promote regional green development.
Secondly, when strengthening the close connection between digital collaboration and regional green development, it is also necessary to strengthen the construction of a business environment to stimulate and release the radiation and driving effect of digital collaboration on regional green development to a greater extent.
Thirdly, The role of digital collaboration in regional green development varies significantly in the eastern, central, and western regions, which is consistent with the conclusion of Gao et al. (2022), Yang and Liang (2023) that the degree of digitalization in the eastern region is relatively high and can effectively release the positive effects of digitalization to promote green development. the government should accelerate the promotion of digital collaborative construction in the central and western regions, continuously narrow the development gap with the eastern region, and continuously release the "multiplier effect" and "multiplier effect" of digital collaboration on green development in the central and western regions.
Although this paper attempts to conduct a more comprehensive study, there are still the following research limitations: firstly, this paper only examines the role of digital collaboration in regional green development, and does not classify it according to the four dimensions of digital infrastructure, digital industrialization, industrial digitization, and digital governance of digital collaboration to thoroughly examine its effectiveness. Secondly, regional green development only examines green total factor productivity, and further exploration is needed to explore the logical role of digital collaboration in the relationship between regional economic development and environmental development. In addition, this study only examines the situation in different regions of the same country, which may be insufficient. In the future, we will consider using global data for in-depth analysis, and it is necessary to measure digital collaboration more accurately when accumulating and collecting sufficient indicators and data for genuine collaboration between regions. ”
Q7:Keywords should be organized in alphabetical order.
Response: We deeply appreciate your suggestion. We have reorganized the keywords in this part as “Keywords: Business Environment; Digital Collaboration; Mediating and Moderating effect; Regional Green Development”
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Objective and fit in the journal’s scope
This article addresses an interesting topic, completely relevant to present concerns related to digital and green transition, besides being well fit in this Special Issue main scope and objectives.
Moreover, it follows a regional perspective, which is not so frequent, given common data availability issues when dealing with regions.
Quality of English Language
The whole text requires moderate editing of English language.
Generic comments – positive aspects
Research hypotheses are clearly established and supported by relevant literature.
Several new variables are constructed by the authors, including an interesting composite index of urban digitalization development.
Methods of analysis are robust and it is provided a clear explanation of all variables: dependent, independent and related variables.
Negative aspect – needs clearer explanation
Digital collaboration is the main focus of this paper. According to the paper’s authors, regional digital collaboration refers to the sharing and coordination of infrastructure construction, digital industrialization, industrial digitation and digital governance among regions through digital channels.
However, when it comes to measure digital collaboration through an indicator that may be integrated in the model as an independent variable, it seems that the developed indicator is more an indication of coordination (in time?...) between regions rather then real collaboration among them.
If my understanding is correct, this should be emphasized as a limitation of the study.
In many cases there are errors in grammar and sentence structure. Moderate English language editing is required.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer3:
We quite appreciate your favorite consideration and the reviewers’ insightful comments. Now we have revised the manuscript entitled “Does the collaboration of digitalization foster regional green development?” (ID: sustainability-2602961). We have studied the comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope this revision can make our paper more acceptable. Revised portions are marked in red on the paper.
Q1: The whole text requires moderate editing of English language. In many cases there are errors in grammar and sentence structure. Moderate English language editing is required.
Response:Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have polished the entire language and corrected grammar errors in the new manuscript.
Q2: However, when it comes to measure digital collaboration through an indicator that may be integrated in the model as an independent variable, it seems that the developed indicator is more an indication of coordination (in time?...) between regions rather then real collaboration among them. If my understanding is correct, this should be emphasized as a limitation of the study..
Response:Thank you very much for your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have made the following modifications to this section: “ In addition, this study only examines the situation in different regions of the same country, which may be insufficient. In the future, we will consider using global data for in-depth analysis, and it is necessary to measure digital collaboration more accurately when accumulating and collecting sufficient indicators and data for genuine collaboration between regions. ”
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
This article examined the role of digital collaboration in regional green development.
Comments and suggestions for the authors:
The paper has potential, but it needs a few minor improvements. My comments are provided below. I strongly recommend that you review your article taking these remarks into account.
General questions:
1) To build a system of indicators for the digital development of cities, a total of 4 primary indicators and 13 secondary indicators have been selected in Table 1, which require further justification, as the selected indicators of 'Content' are not sufficiently clear;
2) It is necessary to justify the difference between 4 primary indicators and 13 secondary indicators, as well as why exactly 4 primary indicators were chosen instead of 5, 6, 7, etc. In this article, it is very important to provide a more detailed justification for the selected indicators and their measures in empirical research.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer4:
We quite appreciate your favorite consideration and the reviewers’ insightful comments. Now we have revised the manuscript entitled “Does the collaboration of digitalization foster regional green development?” (ID: sustainability-2602961). We have studied the comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope this revision can make our paper more acceptable. Revised portions are marked in red on the paper.
Q1: To build a system of indicators for the digital development of cities, a total of 4 primary indicators and 13 secondary indicators have been selected in Table 1, which require further justification, as the selected indicators of 'Content' are not sufficiently clear.
Response:Thank you very much for your suggestion. We deeply appreciate your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have made the following modifications to this section 3.1 :
“Based on the previous analysis, this study suggests that urban level digitalization refers to a comprehensive governance system based on the application and development of digital technology, that is, through the construction of digital infrastructure, to achieve the deep integration of digital industrialization and industrial digitization. Considering the diversification and complexity of urban digitalization and its multidimensional impact on local green development. As such, an indicator system is necessary in measuring the city level digitization. Based on the digital economy development framework established by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (2020) and the contributions of Pan et al. (2021), this paper constructs the urban digitalization indicator system from four dimensions: digital infrastructure, digital industrialization, industrial digitization, and digital governance.
Digital infrastructure. The construction of sound digital infrastructure is a prerequisite for the application and development of digital technology, and also the foundation for urban digitization. According to the contribution of Ma and Ning (2020), and Pan et al., (2021), digital infrastructure mainly includes the construction of information infrastructure and the construction of digital and intelligent support platforms;
Digital industrialization. Digital industrialization is the core industry of the digital economy, referring to the provision of digital technology, products, services, infrastructure, and solutions for economic and social development, as well as various economic activities that rely entirely on digital technology and data elements. The digital industrialization characterization of this study is the added value of the information industry characterized by digital technology. According to the "Statistical Classification of Digital Economy and Its Core Industries (2021)" released by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2021, digital industrialization in this paper mainly includes information transmission, computer services and software industry, broadcasting, television, film and film recording production industry, communication, computer and other electronic equipment manufacturing industry, software, information technology service industry, etc.;
Industrial digitization. Also known as digital integration, refers to the results of the integration of digital technology and other industries, such as the increase in output and efficiency improvement brought about by the integration and penetration of ICT products and services in other fields. According to the classification of the digital economy industry by the National Bureau of Statistics, the industry digitization in this indicator system mainly includes digital commerce, intelligent manufacturing, and digital inclusive finance;
Digital governance. Digital governance refers to the widespread application of digital technology in the process of social governance, which is an important guarantee for the smooth implementation of digitalization, emphasizing the governance of public affairs based on digitalization and the governance of the digital process of the economy and society, and is mainly used to evaluate the digital governance capabilities of local governments, covering e-government, smart cities, policy measures, etc. ” to further support the explanation of these indicators.
Q2: It is necessary to justify the difference between 4 primary indicators and 13 secondary indicators, as well as why exactly 4 primary indicators were chosen instead of 5, 6, 7, etc. In this article, it is very important to provide a more detailed justification for the selected indicators and their measures in empirical research.
Response: Thanks for your nice suggestion again. In the new manuscript, we further elaborated on the connotation of each indicator and the reasons for its selection. That is, digitalization in our study refers to the integration of digital industrialization and industrial digitization through the construction of digital infrastructure represented by the new generation of digital technology, based on a digital governance system. It is characterized by four dimensions: digital governance, digital infrastructure construction, digital industrialization, and industrial digitization. Among them, digital governance is an important guarantee for the smooth implementation of digitalization, emphasizing the governance of public affairs based on digitalization and the governance of the digital process of the economy and society; Digital infrastructure is an infrastructure system driven by data innovation, based on communication networks, and centered around data computing facilities. It mainly covers new generation information and communication technologies such as 5G, data centers, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and various digital platforms formed based on such technologies; Digital industrialization refers to the provision of digital technology, products, services, infrastructure, and solutions for the digital development of industries, as well as various economic activities that rely entirely on digital technology and data elements. It is the core industry of the digital economy; Industrial digitization refers to the process of digital upgrading, transformation, and reconstruction of all factors in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, with data as the key element, value release as the core, and data empowerment as the main line.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 5 Report
The article titled “Does the collaboration of digitalization foster regional green 2 development? ” is a nice article with a clear aim which the authors have strongly argued. The subject is actual and exciting. An interesting article that seems very valid for a regional research, but without claiming, from my point of view, universal applicability of the conclusions reached by the authors. It is well-written and articulated. The paper is also well-referenced.
However, in my opinion, there are some small suggestions to enhance the quality of the paper. I hope that my comments will help the authors to improve the further presentation of the paper.
A first suggestion concerns the part of the abstract. This is a bit too long because it does nothing but repeat, with roughly the same words, the final conclusions part. I think that a stronger compression of the ideas described is required.
The second suggestion refers to the conclusions part. I think the beginning part: i.e. ”This paper explores the relationship between digital collaboration and regional green development, as well as the moderating and mediating effects of the business environment between the two. 285 prefecture level cities in China from 2008 to 2021 were selected as research samples for empirical testing, and the following conclusions were drawn:” should be removed because it is very redundant. The authors have already mentioned 3 times in the text of the article about the target group of the research, that is, ”the 285 prefecture level cities in China from 2008 to 2022”.
After reviewing this paper, I believe that if small changes are made according to the suggestions received from the reviewers, the research is useful and suitable for publication. I believe that the research effort was beneficial, and I urge the authors to continue this endeavor, fleshing it out in future research. Also, I congratulate the authors for the scientific approach undertaken.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer5:
We quite appreciate your favorite consideration and the reviewers’ insightful comments. Now we have revised the manuscript entitled “Does the collaboration of digitalization foster regional green development?” (ID: sustainability-2602961). We have studied the comments carefully and have made corrections which we hope this revision can make our paper more acceptable. Revised portions are marked in red on the paper.
Q1: A first suggestion concerns the part of the abstract. This is a bit too long because it does nothing but repeat, with roughly the same words, the final conclusions part. I think that a stronger compression of the ideas described is required.
Response: We deeply appreciate your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have made the following modifications to this section: “The collaboration of digitalization refers to a comprehensive digital governance system that achieves cross regional digital industrialization and deep integration of industrial digitization through the construction of digital infrastructure, which paves the way towards the regional sustainability. However, little is known about whether and to what extent regional digital collaboration contribution to green development. Besides, the specific role of digital collaboration in greening the regional economy and society remains unexplored. Thus, this paper tests the relationship between digital collaboration, business environment, and regional green development by using data from 285 prefecture level cities in China from 2008 to 2022. The findings suggest that:1) the hysteresis phenomenon of“green dividend effect ” response to regional digital collaboration is found; 2) digital collaboration in eastern cities positively (but lagged) greening their economy and society, but cities in central and western regions negatively impact this process; 3) the business environment mediating the relation between the lagged digital collaboration and regional green development, and positively moderate the relation between both the current and lagged digital collaboration and regional green development. By elucidating the relationship between digital collaboration, business environment, and regional green development, contributions have been made to previous digital innovation literature, and management insights have been provided for how regions can promote green development in the digital age.”
Q2: The second suggestion refers to the conclusions part. I think the beginning part: i.e. ”This paper explores the relationship between digital collaboration and regional green development, as well as the moderating and mediating effects of the business environment between the two. 285 prefecture level cities in China from 2008 to 2021 were selected as research samples for empirical testing, and the following conclusions were drawn:” should be removed because it is very redundant. The authors have already mentioned 3 times in the text of the article about the target group of the research, that is, ”the 285 prefecture level cities in China from 2008 to 2022”.
Response: We deeply appreciate your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have revised this part in the new manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Previous comments have been solved so that this paper will be accepted.
