Regional Differences and Influencing Factors of Green Innovation Efficiency in China’s 285 Cities
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsFirst of all, I want to congratulate you for this paper, which has a very interesting and actual topic. I have the following comments:
- I suggest you proof-read the paper for English language with a native-level speaker. Generally, the English in which the paper is written is good, but there are few errors that lower the paper's structure and coherence quality.
- you should clearly state the purpose of your study (both in the abstract and in the introduction section), as well as the specific research questions that you aim to answer with your study, as well as their link with the existing literature. These research questions can be related to the 3 results that you mention in the abstract.
- the methods employed are thoroughly described and explained
- I suggest you should try to make the figures lower in order not to the exceed the papers margins (line 318,319 - Figure 3)
- the results are well presented and discussed, including the link with other literature which studied the same subject.
- maybe you can expand a bit the future research directions that think are needed in order to further develop the study of green innovation.
Comments on the Quality of English Language- I suggest you proof-read the paper for English language with a native-level speaker. Generally, the English in which the paper is written is good, but there are few errors that lower the paper's structure and coherence quality.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thanks very much for all your kind comments. About each comment, we do read each comment carefully and have modified the manuscript accordingly. Please kind check the specific introductions as follows:
Your comment: I suggest you proof-read the paper for English language with a native-level speaker. Generally, the English in which the paper is written is good, but there are few errors that lower the paper's structure and coherence quality.
Our reply: Dear reviewer, thanks very much four your kind comment, we have invited a native speaker checked the manuscript and corrected some typo showed in the revised version, thanks again for your comment that makes the paper perfecter.
Your comment: you should clearly state the purpose of your study (both in the abstract and in the introduction section), as well as the specific research questions that you aim to answer with your study, as well as their link with the existing literature. These research questions can be related to the 3 results that you mention in the abstract.
Our reply: Dear reviewer, thanks very much for your suggestion, we have added the research purpose in the abstract. And in the introduction section, we have introduced the studying purpose in the fourth paragraph by listing three questions about the evaluation of GIE and its influencing factors.
Your comment: I suggest you should try to make the figures lower in order not to the exceed the papers margins (line 318,319 - Figure 3)
Our reply: Dear reviewer, thanks very much for your comments, we have modified figure 3 as your comment.
Your comment: maybe you can expand a bit the future research directions that think are needed in order to further develop the study of green innovation.
Our reply: Dear reviewer, this is really a nice suggestion, we have added this future research direction in the end of the paper, thanks very much.
Please kindly check the enclosed modified version. Thanks again for your careful reviewing and kind comments, these all contribute well to the study.
Wish you have a nice day.
Best regards,
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper has too many similarities with:
Peiyang Zhao, Zhiguo Lu, Jiali Kou, Jun Du, Regional differences and convergence of green innovation efficiency in China, Journal of Environmental Management, Volume 325, Part A, 2023, 116618, ISSN 0301-4797, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.116618.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479722021910)
especially in the first part. Some sentences are identical: “Faced with both foreign and domestic pressure, China must resolve the dilemma between economy and environment, explore a feasible path of green development”.
The paper
Hou, J.; Lu, X.; Wu, S.; Ke, S.; Li, J. Analysis of the Dynamic Relationship between Green Economy Efficiency and Urban Land Development Intensity in China. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 7960. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19137960
even if with another methodology, used
283 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2019.
Authors do not quote other relevant researches in this field, such as:
Guo, J., Fu, Y. & Sun, X. Green innovation efficiency and multiple paths of urban sustainable development in China: multi-configuration analysis based on urban innovation ecosystem. Sci Rep 13, 12975 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40084-x
Nan Zhao, Xiaojie Liu, Changfeng Pan, Chenyang Wang, The performance of green innovation: From an efficiency perspective, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Volume 78, 2021, 101062, ISSN 0038-0121,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seps.2021.101062.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038012121000549)
It is important to show what is new in this paper as compared to the quoted literature. The section of limitations is too concise. Section 6.2 Policy implications does not bring anything new, the assertions are commonsense statements but nothing scientifically proved in this paper.
There are some inaccuracies, for instance:
- „GDP China's gross domestic product (GDP), which exceeded 18 trillion USD in 2022, made it the second-largest economy in the world” -> GDP at current prices;
- „Technological process has a positive effect on green innovation” -> technological progress;
- “Thiel index method” → Theil index
The methodology is very complex, however the results obtained are too modest. The part of discussion, results and conclusions should be expanded and improved. The contribution to the literature review should be underscored.
Therefore I recommend the reconsideration after major revision.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
There are various errors and mistakes, such as:
"Accordingly, policy implications for improving the balanced development of GIE in China are made" -> "are presented", instead of "are made";
"the impacts of various environmental regulations differs" -> differ;
"The formula is as follow:" -> as follows.
The whole manuscript should be carefully revised and corrected.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thanks very much for your efforts in reviewing this paper since you certainly have done a lot work, including referring to numbers of related researches, which makes this paper more rigorous.
According to your kind comments, we have modified the manuscript, please kindly check the modified version.
About the paper named “Regional differences and convergence of green innovation efficiency in China”, with which our research have some similarities, we do refer to this study during our research. However, we do some expansion of that study since it is based on provincial analysis, and our research expanded the research scale into prefecture level, and we get some inconsistent findings, such as the Western and Central has the largest between-region differences which has been further discussed in the paper. And we further explored the heterogeneity of the effect of factors compared with existing researches. We are sorry about not presenting all these clearly in the previous version. And thanks for your comments, we do add all these into the paper to avoid misunderstandings.
About the listed literature you suggest us to quote, we have read these studies carefully and quoted them into the manuscript, please kindly check the revised version.
About the comment you suggest us to modify the result, discussion, conclusion, and policy implications, we have modified these parts one by one, especially the results part focused on the dynamic trend of the GIE, we further analyzed the results and the reasons behind it. Thanks very much about your comment, we do find it essential to modify these sections since they are the key sections of the study. However, this paper may still need to be further modified, so if you have any comments, please feed back, we will try our best to make it perfecter.
About the inaccuracies you listed, we have modified one by one, and have checked through the whole manuscript and modified further typos.
All in all, thanks very much for your complete and rigorous review of the research. We do learned a lot from your comments not only in this paper but also in further researches.
Thanks again for your efforts.
Wish you have a nice day.
Best regars,
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
The manuscript has an interesting topic both from environmental and economic sustainability point of view. Your results maybe interesting for the average reader from all over the world (but definitively interesting for the readers from China).
Let me show some of the possible weaknesses of the manuscript, that I think you should upgrade.
1. Your manuscript is centered on the concept of GIE, that it seems to be some Chinese statistical indicator. It is not as widely known as you suggest in the paper, however it might be really relevant to study the Chinese industrial and economic environment. Most of the cited references show this. Please ensure the readers that your findings are relevant in many other economic contexts (if so). How your results can be used for policy makers on global level, or for scientific purposes?
2. You apply mathematical and statistical instruments during the research to study the proposed topic. I don't feel qualified to judge if the Gini coefficient decomposition method is the most suitable to achieve the proposed goal of the research. Still, I think the variables you decided to choose (based on literature [13],[17],[20]), narrows the findings to the Chinese economic environment. Even so, you should try to explain, how findings may be valid in more general context.
3. Regarding the conclusions and policy implications, I'd like to draw more conclusion based on your data. You mention only 3 conclusions, most of them are obvious (we knew these without applying scientific formulae and mathematics to prove it). I'm definitively positive, that you have found something that is not so really obvious. You should emphasize them. This is even more valid, for the policy implications. Your recommendations, based on your findings, could be formulated by most of the high-school students. There is nothing specifically linked to your data. You should propose some more detailed, less generic, proposals. Your work could be an important instrument for local, regional and national policy makers in China. But you should provide specific tools for them.
4. Analyze more deeply the trends, the influence of the global economical context comparatively to the data collected in 2019. We are 5 years behind, a period which includes a Covid pandemic, a strong energy crisis, wars which may have a strong influence on the Chinese green innovation policies.
Best regards!
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thanks very much for your efforts in reviewing this manuscript. We have read all your comments carefully and modified the paper accordingly.
About the concept of GIE, which is an index to evaluate the green innovations, is quite widely used since China is facing big pressure of energy consumption and CO2 emission. So, actually GIE has been previously evaluated on different perspectives. And you mentioned whether GIE can be further used in other economic contexts, I think it is really a prospective comment since nations with similar economic or industrial characteristic with China may get implications from this study, and I have added this opinion in the modified version.
About the conclusion and discussion section, you reminded us to further emphasize them. We appreciate this comment very much since the previous conclusion and discussion was too concise to completely show our findings. And we also present more policy implications according to your comments. We have modified these sections, please kindly check the modified version.
About the research period, we have tried our best to update the data by checking all the open source database, however, due to the data unavailability of most cities after 2019, we failed in updating the research into the latest years. About the factors you mentioned, they surely had affected the green innovation even the development of China’s enterprises. We are sorry about failing to have all these factors involved in the study. And thanks again for your comments, we have expanded our research limitations by adding your comments, shown as the modified manuscript.
All in all, we appreciate all your comments those make the paper more rigorous. Thanks very much for your effort in this work.
Wish you have a nice day.
Best regards,
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript is very interesting and informative.
My only concern relates to the methodology:
- Why do you need a super-efficiecny index in this analysis?
- How do you manage the temporality of your dataset? Are the GIE indexes evaluated for each year? If yes, how can you compare your GIE indexes as the reference set is different each year? If no, how do you take into account the time dimension of your dataset in your approach?
- Same question for the other indexes. How time is taken into account as you provide indexes at the regional level without showing any trend for these indexes.
- What is the dependent variable of the SEM model? If it is GIE, are you sure that the estimation is not biased as the GIE indexes and the SME model use the same set of data?
In summary, the manuscript needs to provide more information about the ways the methodology has been implemented, both for clarifying what has been done but also for allowing the reproducibility of the study in different contexts.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
There are some typos in the text that need to be corrected.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thanks very much for your efforts in reviewing this research.
We have read all your comments carefully and modified the paper accordingly, for questions you listed in the comments, we want to make some explainations, please kindly check as follows:
Your question: Why do you need a super-efficiecny index in this analysis?
Our reply: About this question, we employed the super-efficiency model because there are 285 observed samples in this study, which means maybe dozens of cities may fell on the front edge based on traditional DEA method. To further discover the difference of these efficient cities in GIE, we introduced the super-efficiency model, because it can well illustrate the efficient DMUs by setting the efficiency value more than 1 based on the input-output performance of these DMUs.
Your question: How do you manage the temporality of your dataset? Are the GIE indexes evaluated for each year? If yes, how can you compare your GIE indexes as the reference set is different each year? If no, how do you take into account the time dimension of your dataset in your approach?
Our reply: Dear reviewer, this is really a professional question, we have evaluated the GIE during the whole research period but not one year by one year. About the time dimension you mentioned, we evaluated it by setting all samples during the research period as a whole, and then tested whether each sample on certain year is efficient or not compared with others, then the time dimension of each sample can also be presented since it’s GIE values in different years are based on the same standard.
Your question: What is the dependent variable of the SEM model? If it is GIE, are you sure that the estimation is not biased as the GIE indexes and the SME model use the same set of data?
Our reply: Dear reviewer, this is a really professional question. In the regression analysis, GIE, which has been evaluated by the undesirable super-efficiency SBM model based on the index shown as Table 1,is the dependent variable. And, my understanding of your question is that there may cause endogeneity since similar indexes are used in both the evaluation and regression analysis. About this, we have fully taken this into consideration, and please let us make explanations as follows: LnGDP is the similar explaining variables with the built index which involves Per Capital GDP as the desirable output, however they are quite different since LnGDP indicates the increase rate of GDP while Per Capital GDP represents the economic status statically. So, we finally finish the evaluation and regression analysis shown as the paper.
Please kindly check the enclosed version after modification, if further modification is needed, please kindly let us know, we will appreciate it very much.
Wish you have a nice day.
Best regards,
Yingshi Shang
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear colleagues,
The new version of the paper is an improved one. However, editing of English language is required. Please avoid the formulation "undesirable SBM model", you can use instead an acronym SBM Model with Undesirable Outputs (U-SBM). Argumentation should be more compelling. Please read once again the whole manuscript and provide an improved text.
All the best!
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageThe whole text should be revised and improved, all grammar/typographical errors should be eliminated.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thanks very much for your effort in reviewing the modified version of this manuscript.
We have provieded the revised version as attached according to your comments. The presentation of the method "undesirable super-efficiency SBM model"has been replaced according to your kind comment. And about the editing of the English, I have worked a whole afternoon together with a native English speaker, hope you can find this version better editted.
Hope you have a nice weekend, and thanks again for your comments.
Best regards,
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
after re-reading the manuscript I succeed to better comprehend your topic. Still, my major concerns presented during the previous lecture remained. I suggest to further improve the manuscript.
Still, even in this form, could be indeed interesting for the average reader.
Congrats! I wish you all the success, and look forward to see your article in the journal.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thanks very much for your effort in reviewing this manuscript.
We have provieded the revised version as attached according to all reviewers' comments.
We have learned a lot from your kind comments from the last review and the second round. If the manuscript is finally published, it is the result of our joint effort.
Wish you have nice weekend.
Best regards,
Yingshi Shang
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
Thank you very much for the efforts made in improving your manuscript.
I just have minor comments. Otherwise, I am fine with the manuscript as it is.
- page 3 line 137 - you introduced KDE without developing its meanig. It is only done page 6 line 227 for the first time. Please, could you develop this acronym the first time it appers in the text?
- There are still a lot of typos in the text. Please, could you check the manuscript carefully?
- The use of the term "samples" is confusing. It is quite difficult to understand what you mean. Do you refer to cities, prefectures, both or the 3 regions under investigation? As for instance in page 6 line 252. As this term is repeated several times in the text. It is important to help an external reader grasp what you are refeering to when you use the term "samples".
Could you clarify this ?
The quality of English is good, but there are a lot of typos left in the manuscript that should be corrected before publication.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thanks very much for your effort in reviewing the modified version of this manuscript.
We have provieded the revised version as attached according to your comments. About the method KDE, we first presented it in page 2 line 84, and used the abbreviation then, hope this will not bother you. We replced the word "samples" into cities in this version since it is really a confusing word inspired by your comments.
And about the editing of the English, I have worked a whole afternoon together with a native English speaker, hope you can find this version better editted.
Hope you have a nice weekend, and thanks again for your comments.
Best regards,
Yingshi Shang
