Evaluating the Sustainable Development Performance of China’s International Commercial Ports Based on Environmental, Social and Governance Elements

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors are to be commended for exposing an interesting application of ESG techniques, indeed the paper

provides a valuable approach for the quantitative analysis of sustainable development of China ports.

It is suggested to explain the intended audience because some section , especially the mathematical one might

be difficult to understand for non-specialized people Maybe it would be useful to move the mathematics to an

appendix and keep in the text only the basic notions .

It is suggested to spend some words about methodology in the abstract (a few lines)

It is recommended to improve the readability of the language, some sentences are convoluted or not properly

closed or lack of a conclusion.

In relation to Table 2 it is suggested to explain the meaning of unit of measurements that have been used and

ESG Rating (sources?)

Detailed comments are included in the attached file

To summarize the paper is quite interesting in the application of ESG methodology that may be the basis for

further in depth examination of port sustainability

It is recommended the publication of the paper

 

43 While it is summarized the concept of ESG, it is introduced an “Index” that is not explained

55 It would be better to avoid any political reference to Government model

62 Please briefly explain the carbon to peak concept, maybe as a foot page note

117 ÷ 118 Explain better the text

122 ÷ 133 A bit convoluted sentence

136 ÷ 137 Clarify whether super slack based measure is an enhanced or extended version of the

traditional slack-based measure, perhaps with additional features or capabilities? Please explain

 

175 Which ESG scores?

177 Least square is not a test but is used to perform tests

180 Explain a bit more correlation with gender of board members

186 ÷ 187 Please explain briefly the referred method

216 output-oriented efficiency) or input-oriented efficiency ?

298 Please highlight a bit more the use of non-oriented non-radial model" in this context

336 Clarify g and s

Page 10 Please clarify (in terms of unit of measure) the significance of environmental social and governmental performance

375 Table two, which area the measurement units

424÷425 Please rephrase the concept

528÷530 The phase looks not complete, maybe it lacks a “but” after the “not only”

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing needed

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your letter and comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Evaluating the Sustainable Development Performance of China's International Commercial Ports Based on ESG Elements” (ID: sustainability-2916638). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches.

We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the revised manuscript. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments are as follows:

 

• The authors are to be commended for exposing an interesting application of ESG techniques, indeed the paperprovides a valuable approach for the quantitative analysis of sustainable development of China ports.

Response：

Thank you for your recognition of our research, and thank you for your valuable advice.

 

• It is suggested to explain the intended audience because some section , especially the mathematical one mightbe difficult to understand for non-specialized people Maybe it would be useful to move the mathematics to an appendix and keep in the text only the basic notions .

Response：

Thank you for your reminding. Considering that this research is an applied research, we did not focus on the presentation of mathematical models. Only the core contents of some models were presented in Section3. If this part of the content is weakened, it will worry that other readers will think that the content of the study is insufficient.

 

• It is suggested to spend some words about methodology in the abstract (a few lines)

Response：

Thank you for your comments. We have added a description of the selected research model to the abstract. “Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is considered to be a non-parametric performance evaluation method that can effectively solve multi-criteria, so this study mainly selects DEA model for the performance evaluation.”(Line 24-28)

 

• It is recommended to improve the readability of the language, some sentences are convoluted or not properlyclosed or lack of a conclusion.

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. We have invited a native English speaker to help us edit the full text in English writing, hoping to enhance the readability.

 

• In relation to Table 2 it is suggested to explain the meaning of unit of measurements that have been used andESG Rating (sources?)

Response：

Thanks for your comments. The research variables we screened were respectively queried by the China Port Yearbook and the official ESG score results of 2023. ESG evaluations are found in an open official web. We have added this web in our manuscript.

“The study variables, including infrastructure input data and annual output data of each port, were primarily sourced from the China Port Yearbook. ESG performance data was obtained from official releases in 2023.(https://www.wind.com.cn/portal/zh/ESG/index.html)”(Line 409-415)

 

• 43 While it is summarized the concept of ESG, it is introduced an “Index” that is not explained

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. “The index is a useful indicator that can be used to measure a company's sustainability and long-term social value. It integrates a company's environmental, social and governance responsibilities and aims to help investors understand the company's social and environmental impact, as well as the effectiveness of the company's internal governance.” 

In fact, “The index” denotes the ESG evaluation index here. To avoid this confusion, we have changed it to "The new ESG index".

 

• 55 It would be better to avoid any political reference to Government model

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. We have deleted the content of “Government model”, and rewrote it as follows: “In China, high-quality development has always been the top priority for the country to build a modern socialist country in an all-round way.” (Line 58-61)

 

• 62 Please briefly explain the carbon to peak concept, maybe as a foot page note

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. We have deleted some content to describe this new concept. “Carbon to peak” means that at a certain point, the growth of carbon dioxide emissions no longer peaks, and then gradually falls back. It is the historical turning point of carbon dioxide emissions from growth to decline, marking the decoupling of carbon emissions and economic development. (Line 69-74)

 

• 117 -118 Explain better the text

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. We have reformulated the role of this policy, not only as an added responsibility to the enterprise, but also as a propeller to help the enterprise transformation.

“Since the country has proposed the strategic goals of "carbon peak" and "carbon neutrality", energy conservation and emission reduction have not only become the responsibilities that enterprises should assume for environmental and social reasons, but also an important driving force to assist enterprises in low-carbon process innovation and digital transformation.”(Line 117-123)

 

• 122 -133 A bit convoluted sentence

Response：

Thanks for your comments. According to your suggestion, we have made some long sentences simpler to make them easier to understand. In fact, the International Port Organization requires all enterprises to participate in ESG scoring, but in fact, some enterprises have not cooperated with this work.

“After years of development in the international transportation industry, most traditional businesses have reached a bottleneck. In China, Listed companies in this field have been exploring sustainable development by expanding and integrating into the supply chain, as well as actively constructing green, low-carbon, and smart ports. However, among the 30 listed companies in China's A-share international transportation industry, only about 70% disclose their ESG reports, indicating room for improvement to align with international standards.” (Line 124-133)

 

• 136 -137 Clarify whether super slack based measure is an enhanced or extended version of the traditional slack-based measure, perhaps with additional features or capabilities? Please explain

Response：

Thanks for your comments. In fact, among the rules along the line before DEA construction efficiency, the traditional SBM-DEA model can only allow all points to be within the envelope, and the efficiency value of all evaluated points cannot exceed 1. Therefore, the efficiency value of many efficient points is 1, and it is impossible to continue to sort them. In this case, super-SBM DEA model breaks the original rule, allowing the efficient evaluation point to fall outside the envelope, and then measuring the position relationship between the point and the envelope, so that the efficiency value can exceed 1, and ranking all efficient points. Therefore, it can be seen that the super SBM model is an extended version of the traditional model.

 

• 175 Which ESG scores?

Response：

Thanks for your comments. ‘ESG scores’ here refers to the rating and scores of the company selected by the official institution for the research of Uyar et al.(2020) in that year.

 

• 177 Least square is not a test but is used to perform tests

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. Because in the abstract of the study, the original authors state that they used these two methods to examine the relationship. To avoid errors, we have removed this method. Thanks for reminding.

 

• 180 Explain a bit more correlation with gender of board members

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. Their research shows that corporate boards with only male members tend to score poorly on social responsibility. Therefore, their research conclusion is that the more gender composition of board members, the higher the CSR performance may be.

 

• 186-187 Please explain briefly the referred method

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. The proposed method of Murillo and Fábio (2022) is a quantitative–qualitative multiple-case study with exploratory purposes and three units of analysis, using a large amount of data collected at semistructured interviews, in-person observation, technical visits, and meetings. Those technical visits were conducted in three different ports selected by the similarities between its cargo and tonnage throughput and the importance of the primary hinterland.

 

• 216 output-oriented efficiency) or input-oriented efficiency ?

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. In fact, in order to take into account both the input-level waste of each revenue assessment unit and the input-level deficiency, we use the non-oriented super efficiency model, see the model (7-9). This is also an important reason why we choose this model, which will not ignore the advantages or disadvantages of any level, so as to make the evaluation results more comprehensive.

 

• 298 Please highlight a bit more the use of non-oriented non-radial model" in this context

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. We have emphasized that the models used in this paper are non-oriented non-radial model. (Line 327, 354)

 

• 336 Clarify g and s

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. g is a clerical error, we have deleted in the study. And s represents the number of output variables.

 

• Page 10 Please clarify (in terms of unit of measure) the significance of environmental social and governmental performance

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. We have added some content to clarify the significance in Table 1.

“ESG stands for Environment, Social, and Governance, and it assesses the sustainability of a company's operation and its impact on social values from three dimensions: the environment, society, and corporate governance. Environmental aspects refer to carbon emissions, waste pollution and management policies, energy use/consumption, natural resource use and management policies, biodiversity, compliance, and employee environmental awareness. Social aspects refer to gender balance policies, human rights, community health and safety, labor norms, product responsibility, and supply chain responsibility management. Governance refers to corporate governance policies, anti-corruption and anti-bribery measures, risk management, tax transparency, fair labor practices, ethical codes of conduct, board independence and diverse organizational structures. ESG is also concerned with investor relations.”

 

• 375 Table two, which area the measurement units

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. In fact, we introduce the unit of each variable in Table 1, such as: X1 is Length of shoreline of the port (kilometre), Y1 is Throughput (hundred million tons), and Y2 to Y4 are the scores of ESG rating. Now we have also added in Table 2.

 

• 424-425 Please rephrase the concept

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. We have modified the description. “The analysis results have identified the target that should be met for each variable in future production, and the extent of suitable adjustment (expressed as an adjustment rate) in the optimal trade-off.” (Line 459-463)

 

• 528-530 The phase looks not complete, maybe it lacks a “but” after the “not only”

Response：

Thanks for your kind comments. “ESG evaluation, as an investment approach, takes corporate social responsibility and sustainability into account. It focuses not only on monetary returns, but also on the environmental, social, and governance impacts of the company.”

 

 

Thank you for your thorough and thoughtful review of our manuscript. Your feedback will be incredibly valuable for guiding our future research and improving our work. Thank you again for your help, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Thanks so much!

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author:

Name: Guoya Gan 

E-mail: [email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Evaluating the Sustainable Development Performance of China's International Commercial Ports Based on ESG Elements

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) evaluation systems can focus on the value of enterprises more comprehensively and better scrutinize the development premise of enterprise. While I notice that this study has several shortcomings that must be addressed.

1. Abstract Lines 14 -20 need to be rewritten and revised accordingly.

2.  Introduction needs revised especially lines 35-42. Also, lines 52-55 need to be revised and added references. Authors failed to make an introduction based on a scientific research perspective. While the authors focused on the essay type’s introduction. It is recommended to revise the introduction accordingly. 

3. Theoretical foundation, The authors failed to make a theoretical foundation that makes a consistency among all variables.  It is suggested to add one section and make a theoretical foundation that must be aligned with consistency.

4. It is recommended to add references to Table 1 The definition of variables selected in this study.

5. It is recommended to provide evidence that data was collected for this study. Also, Descriptive strategies is required. Furthermore, analysis I noticed that the authors didn’t make a stronger analysis that attracted readers.  It is recommended to reanalyze and revise the overall analysis.

6.  Authors failed to provide research contributions and policy implications. Why this study is more significant for policymakers? What is new idea in this study? Why need to focus on ESG?

7. This study needs to be revised based on the study contents, and structure.

 

8. Overall, I suggest a major revision.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English very difficult to understand/incomprehensible

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your letter and comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Evaluating the Sustainable Development Performance of China's International Commercial Ports Based on ESG Elements” (ID: sustainability-2916638). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches.

We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the revised manuscript. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments are as follows:

 

• Abstract Lines 14 -20 need to be rewritten and revised accordingly.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. We have rewritten and revised this content in our abstract. 

“With the implementation of "carbon peak", "carbon neutral" and other national strategies, an increasing number of transportation enterprises in China's international commercial ports have started to focus on the role of ESG evaluation. This not only facilitates self-examination and correction within enterprises but also helps in adjusting the strategic direction towards sustainable development. This shift towards ESG evaluation is crucial for promoting environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility within the transportation industry.” (Line 14-22)

 

• Introduction needs revised especially lines 35-42. Also, lines 52-55 need to be revised and added references. Authors failed to make an introduction based on a scientific research perspective. While the authors focused on the essay type’s introduction. It is recommended to revise the introduction accordingly. 

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. According to your suggestion, we have modified these content.

• “ESG is an abbreviation for Environmental, Social, and Governance, which encompasses the impact of production and operations on the environment (environmental considerations), a company's support for employees and the community (societal aspects), as well as internal management and supervision within a company, along with communication and cooperation between the enterprise and its shareholders and stakeholders (corporate governance).”(Line 41-48)
• In China, high-quality development has always been the top priority for the country to build a modern socialist country in an all-round way.(Line 58-61)

 

• Theoretical foundation, The authors failed to make a theoretical foundation that makes a consistency among all variables.  It is suggested to add one section and make a theoretical foundation that must be aligned with consistency.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. In fact, Data enveloping analysis is a non-parametric performance evaluation method suitable for solving multi-objective problems. This theory was established in 1978 and has been applied to performance evaluation in many fields (such as industrial production, finance, education, medical care, etc.). Our corresponding authors have been focusing on the expansion of DEA models in recent years. However, this study aims to use the DEA method to carry out application research on the recently popular ESG issues. For this reason, Chapter 3 shows the reasons and advantages of choosing the model for this study.

Secondly, as for the application process of DEA, we only showed Figure 1 before. According to the comments of other reviewers, we have supplemented the specific process in Section 3. The key point of DEA theoretical model is the selection of variables, the selection of models and the choice of assessed objects. Changes in any of them may affect the results, because they will change the environment of data analysis. In general, through the literature review, we find that in previous studies on performance evaluation of China's international ports, only annual throughput is usually considered, because this factor is closely related to port revenue. But, this study considers both throughput and ESG scores, which also emphasizes that enterprises should also consider environment, social responsibility and corporate governance when obtaining economic benefits. This is also the highlight of this study compared with previous studies. At the same time, we also elaborate the specific reasons why these research variables were selected in this study in detail in Table 1.

To sum up, our research is not to develop a theoretical framework for DEA method, but to use this tool to solve the practical problems of performance evaluation of Chinese listed port enterprises. Therefore, this research has certain application value and practical management significance.

 

• It is recommended to add references to Table 1 The definition of variables selected in this study.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. According to your suggestions, we have added some literature to support the screening of variables. It can also be found through literature review that some port performance evaluations only consider variables related to port operations. However, ESG element is chosen as the evaluation variable, and it does not focus on the international port transportation field.

• Rodseth, K. L. ,  Schoyen, H. , Wangsness, P. B.Decomposing growth in norwegian seaport container throughput and associated air pollution. Res. Part D Transp. Environ. 2020, 85: 102391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2020.102391.
• Gan, G. Y., Su, J. Y.A new reclassification in international container transport market based on the impact of "One Belt And One Road" initiative.  Mar. Sci. Technol. 2021, 29(1): Article 2.  https://doi.org/10.51400/2709-6998.1001
• Liu, J., Wang, X., Guo, J. Port efficiency and its influencing factors in the context of pilot free trade zones. Trans.Policy 2021, 105: 67-79.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2021.02.011
• Gan, G. Y., Lee, H. S., Lee, L., Wang, X. M., Wang, Q. F. Network hierarchical DEA with an application to international shipping industry in Taiwan. Oper. Res.Soc. 2020, 71(6): 991-1002.  https://doi.org/10.1080/01605682.2019.1603792 
• Jo, A. H., Chang, Y. T. Environmental efficiency of seaports correcting estimation biases: Weak disposability and bootstrapping method. Res. Part D Transp. Environ.2023, 122: 103884.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2023.103884

 

• It is recommended to provide evidence that data was collected for this study. Also, Descriptive strategies is required. Furthermore, analysis I noticed that the authors didn’t make a stronger analysis that attracted readers.  It is recommended to reanalyze and revise the overall analysis.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. First of all, the research data related to port characteristics are queried and collected by us through the China Port Yearbook, while the ESG score is the latest score of 2023, which we query one by one through the official website. We have also added a website to the article for readers' convenience.“The study variables, including infrastructure input data and annual output data of each port, were primarily sourced from the China Port Yearbook. ESG performance data was obtained from official releases in 2023(https://www.wind.com.cn/portal/zh/ESG/index.html).”(Line 409-415)

Secondly, the empirical conclusion analysis of this study is mainly carried out through the following three steps:

Step I: We evaluated the performance of 17 listed port enterprises through the selected DEA model (models 7 and 8), and presented the evaluation results and ranking in Table 3. It was also stated that the evaluated units with efficiency value greater than 1 were relatively efficient, and a total of eight effective units were generated.

Step II: Many studies may only stay in the previous step, while the author of this study believes that providing performance results can only find the ranking of enterprises with better operation and management in the industry, and does not specifically analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different enterprises. The Suitable adjustment analysis (Trade-off Analysis) was further carried out in Chapter 4.4, the fundamental purpose of which is to provide quantitative reference opinions for all enterprises to make their future operation management strategies. This also reflects that this research is of certain practical significance and research value. At the same time, we also carried out a case analysis of the best performing port enterprise Qingang in Table 3 (Line 480-488), and explained that other enterprises can also find their relative advantages and disadvantages one by one, so as to facilitate the formulation of customized opinions and rectification measures for different enterprises.

Step III: Finally, we consider that a total of eight benchmarking enterprises in the industry have been evaluated in this study, and the learning cost of inefficient enterprises is high. This study aims to further deepen the findings and screen the groups with the best overall performance. Therefore, the third work is carried out in this study. Based on the comprehensive performance results of this study and the official ESG evaluation, group analysis was carried out for all the evaluated units, and four different groups were generated (e.g., Benchmark type, Operational-oriented type, Social-oriented type, and Learning type). Only the companies in group 1 are truly benchmarking groups in the entire industry. After this analysis, the number of benchmarking companies has been reduced from eight to four.

 

• Authors failed to provide research contributions and policy implications. Why this study is more significant for policymakers? What is new idea in this study? Why need to focus on ESG?

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments.

First of all, the first chapter of this study mainly introduces the concept and significance of ESG. In particular, foreign investment institutions will pay special attention to the achievements of enterprises at the ESG level to help them evaluate the experience ability of an enterprise. In recent years, this research craze has also spread to China, and the Chinese government has been introducing policies to promote the practice of "carbon peaking" and "carbon neutrality" policies. However, through literature review, this study finds that there are few studies that take this factor into consideration in the performance evaluation of China's listed port companies, and there is room for further research.

Secondly, we believe that this study can be used as a reference for the managers of listed port companies in China to find out the potential problems in their operation process and provide quantitative suggestions for improvement. This also reflects the research significance of this study.

Finally, we also sorted out the main contribution points of this research to emphasize the practical value of this research:

• Compared with previous studies, this study no longer considers the variables mainly based on port operation characteristics, nor takes ESG variable as the main variable, but combines the two to conduct a more comprehensive performance evaluation study on China's listed port enterprises.
• Through the comprehensive evaluation of multi-criteria and multi-objectives, we conducted a quantitative ranking of all the evaluated enterprises in the entire industry, and selected eight port enterprises that will perform relatively well in 2023 operation.
• For eachevaluated enterprise, we conducted a further suitable adjustment analysis (namely, trade-off analysis). It is designed to help all efficient companies understand their strengths in the industry as a whole, while helping all inefficient companies understand their weaknesses (such as wasted investment or poor output). Through this study, we find out that in the whole industry, efficient enterprises tend to perform better in throughput and berth utilization efficiency. However, inefficient enterprises often have great disadvantages in social responsibility performance and environmental performance in ESG rating. These conclusions of this study may provide reference suggestions for the relevant port managers when formulating strategic rules.
• Group analysis help us reduce the benchmarking enterprises  from eight to four. This also emphasizes that a truly excellent enterprise should be an important embodiment of comprehensive results.

 

• This study needs to be revised based on the study contents, and structure.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. Based on the comments of all reviewers, we have strengthened the contents that are not clearly expressed in the full text. And some of the content are supported by some new literature. At the same time, we also invited a native English scholar to help us edit the English writing, and rewrite many complex sentences, hoping to improve the readability of this study.

 

Thank you for your thorough and thoughtful review of our manuscript. Your feedback will be incredibly valuable for guiding our future research and improving our work. Thank you again for your help, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Thanks so much!

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author:

Name: Guoya Gan 

E-mail: [email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors - The authors should clarify in the Abstract the method used to evaluate the sustainable development performance of China's ports.
- Line 75, “policy making” is written together.
- Lines 80,86, 94, 112, 113, 123, 129 “international” is written in a wrong way.
- Authors should include the reference used in the paragraph starting at line 113.
- Paragraph starting at line 122 states that this study hopes to evaluate China international transport and do a benchmarking with industries, but do not mention port. Enterprises are being used to refer to ports? At the conclusion section it refers to 17 ports. Those were the referred industries? Adjust it on the text. - Section 3 about Method presents literature review about different variations of DEA models. The presented text  fits better as section 2.3. - A lot of equations from different variations of DEA models were presented but the authors mentioned all of them as Model 1, Model 2. I strongly recommend numerate separately each equation. - Considering the information above, it is strongly recommended to re-do the section about the method used on this research, as, - how was performed the literature review? which database was used? what was the considered range of date of the search? EX: use prisma methodology. The authors should also explain which DEA model was chosen and where it was implemented. Which industries were selected and which were the criterias? Figure 1 should be better explained. - Table 1 contains the definition of the selected variables for the research. It was expected to see this kind of information on section 2, checking on academic papers what have been used as variables to analyse port efficiency. There are a lot of studies about it. Instead of it, section 2 basically defined ESG and its importance nowadays in companies. - Table 2 must contain the unit of measure of the variables. - Section 4.2 presents the results of DEA analysis through the "models 7-9", but the authors did not explained why they chose these model and not the others. Also, all the results should be detailed, explored, explaining what was obtained through the method DEA as in line 382 ..." nearly half of the port's daily operations are efficient. " What exactly is "nearly half?" This kind of information do not add anything important. The authors also informed 9 DMU´s are inefficient. In these case it´s necessary to explain the correlation between the inputs/outputs and the efficiency result, trying to understand what lead to such results. This kind of information is expected in an academic paper. - Line 401-419 tradeoff must be written correctly. - Line 419 the authors states " To input variables, the adjustment ratio was calculated 419 by subtracting the original resource value from its target scores..." How these target were defined? it´s not clear in the  text and semas do not make sense.   - Section 5.3 suggest the use of other DEA model but do not explain why. Is it really necessary? what is expected as results with this suggestion? It is also suggested to combine other methods. Why? Let it clear to the readers. Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor revision should be done as informed in the list of commentaries.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your letter and comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Evaluating the Sustainable Development Performance of China's International Commercial Ports Based on ESG Elements” (ID: sustainability-2916638). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches.

We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the revised manuscript. The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the comments are as follows:

 

• The authors should clarify in the Abstract the method used to evaluate the sustainable development performance of China's ports.

Response：

Thank you for your comments. We have added a description of the selected research model to the abstract. “Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is considered to be a non-parametric performance evaluation method that can effectively solve multi-criteria, so this study mainly selects DEA model for the performance evaluation.”(Line 24-28)

 

• Line 75, “policy making” is written together.

Response：

Thank you for your kind notice. We have modified it.

 

• Lines 80,86, 94, 112, 113, 123, 129 “international” is written in a wrong way.

Response：

Thank you for your kind notice. We have modified these mistakes.

• Authors should include the reference used in the paragraph starting at line 113.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. In fact, we have already started to refer to the literature from line 43, because some of the arguments or knowledge points are taken from the literature. In addition, some opinions were obtained by the researcher through expert interviews or his own work experience, rather than from literature, so the literature was not labeled.

 

• Paragraph starting at line 122 states that this study hopes to evaluate China international transport and do a benchmarking with industries, but do not mention port. Enterprises are being used to refer to ports? At the conclusion section it refers to 17 ports. Those were the referred industries? Adjust it on the text.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. The research objects identified in this study are mainly listed port companies in the field of international transport in China (described in Section 4.2). In line 122, the enterprises are used to denote the 17 evaluated ports companies in this study. In order to avoid confusing the reader, we have unified the description of the previous and subsequent articles, by using the description “port enterprises of Chinese A-share listed companies”.（Line 130, 409-410, 590）

 

• Section 3 about Method presents literature review about different variations of DEA models. The presented text  fits better as section 2.3.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. Considering that this research is an applied research, we did not focus on the presentation of mathematical models. Only the core contents of some models were presented in Section 3. If this part of the content is weakened, it will worry that other readers will think that the content of the study is insufficient. Our corresponding author mainly focused on the research of DEA model and it’s application, these are the basic model transformation in Section 3, thus introducing the advantages of the model adopted in this study. In fact, this is not a literature review of DEA methods, but the reasons for the selection of models in this study and the main methods to be adopted.

 

• A lot of equations from different variations of DEA models were presented but the authors mentioned all of them as Model 1, Model 2. I strongly recommend numerate separately each equation.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. Perhaps this is a common writing in DEA applications, in order to avoid the misunderstandings, we change models (5) into equation (5). (Line 327)

 

• Considering the information above, it is strongly recommended to re-do the section about the method used on this research, as, - how was performed the literature review? which database was used? what was the considered range of date of the search? EX: use prisma methodology. The authors should also explain which DEA model was chosen and where it was implemented. Which industries were selected and which were the criterias? Figure 1 should be better explained.

Response：

Thank you very much for your advice. In Chapter 3, we mainly want to introduce the DEA model chosen by this study and why we do not adopt the traditional basic DEA model or SBM model. It is because we hope that this study can simultaneously measure the performance of each revenue and evaluation unit in terms of investment waste and output deficiency, so as to obtain a comprehensive evaluation result. It can make our research conclusions more comprehensive, and provide more realistic value.

As for the question of which databases were used as mentioned by you, in the fourth chapter of empirical research, we specifically described the criteria and reasons for the selection of variables in this study (Table 1), as well as the specific sources of data (Section 4.2).

At the same time, based on your kind suggestions, we have added a detailed description of the steps in Figure 1, in the hope of helping other readers to follow the method and apply it to other studies in the future (Line 361-385).

 

• Table 1 contains the definition of the selected variables for the research. It was expected to see this kind of information on section 2, checking on academic papers what have been used as variables to analyse port efficiency. There are a lot of studies about it. Instead of it, section 2 basically defined ESG and its importance nowadays in companies.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. In fact, through the literature review in Chapter 2, we find that more and more business operations and management begin to pay attention to the consideration of ESG evaluation, because it is an important factor that many venture capital experts will give priority to.In recent years, more and more scholars have begun to incorporate this variable into their research, but there are few studies focusing on international port transportation. In general, through literature review, we find that in previous studies on performance evaluation of China's international ports, only annual throughput is usually considered, because this factor is closely related to port revenue. However, this study considers both throughput and ESG scores, which also emphasizes that enterprises should also consider environment, social responsibility and corporate governance when obtaining economic benefits. This is also the highlight of this study compared with previous studies.

 

• Table 2 must contain the unit of measure of the variables.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. In fact, we introduce the unit of each variable in Table 1, such as: X1 is Length of shoreline of the port (kilometre), Y1 is Throughput (hundred million tons), and Y2 to Y4 are the scores of ESG rating. Now we have also added in Table 2.

 

• Section 4.2 presents the results of DEA analysis through the "models 7-9", but the authors did not explained why they chose these model and not the others. Also, all the results should be detailed, explored, explaining what was obtained through the method DEA as in line 382 ..." nearly half of the port's daily operations are efficient. " What exactly is "nearly half?" This kind of information do not add anything important. The authors also informed 9 DMU´s are inefficient. In these case it´s necessary to explain the correlation between the inputs/outputs and the efficiency result, trying to understand what lead to such results. This kind of information is expected in an academic paper.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. First of all, the description in Line 385 is indeed wrong, not ‘more than half ’ of the enterprises, but close to half of the enterprises are in an efficient state. Because we evaluated a total of 17 listed port companies, 7 of which had an evaluation value of more than 1. The description in Line 388-389 is right (“In other words, nearly half of the port's daily operations are efficient.”)

Secondly, when we discussed the method in Chapter 3, we explained the reason why we chose model (7) and (8), mainly because it is an non-oriented model, which can simultaneously consider the advantages and disadvantages of input and output variables and calculate them in the efficiency value. And equation (9) is the algorithm rule for the final calculation of the efficiency value.

Finally, as for the correlation between input/output and efficiency results, and the reasons leading to such results, we have presented all the research results in Table 3, and included the advantages and disadvantages of all evaluated units. Due to the performance value algorithm rules based on equation (9), the advantages and disadvantages of these variables are closely related to final performance value of the evaluated DMUs. In other words, the more advantages presented by a certain assessment unit in Table 3, the greater its efficiency value will be. Further, the higher the relative efficiency of its operation in the entire industry. We have also explained the reasons for the high performance of the best performing enterprises of Qingang in Chapter 4.3: “Therefore, all of the positive change rate in Table 3 can denote the advantage of each variable, and while the negative ones denote the disadvantage.  For example, to the top-ranked Qingang, it shows its perfect advantages in both input and output levels, especially in the input variables, which are as high as 60.91%(X2) and 30.77%(X1), respectively.  Of course, it also presents a relatively perfect performance in outputs as well, including: Throughput (Y1, 4.10%), Governance performance (Y4, 2.16%), and Social performance (Y3, 1.91%), respectively.”(Line 477-486)

 

• Line 401-419 tradeoff must be written correctly.

Response：

Thank you for your kind notice. We have modified it to “Trade-off Analysis”.

 

• Line 419 the authors states " To input variables, the adjustment ratio was calculated by subtracting the original resource value from its target scores..." How these target were defined? it´s not clear in the text and seams do not make sense.

 Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. These target values are calculated by the DEA model selected in this study (model (7) and (8)). They are achieved by building those efficient DMU combinations on the efficiency frontier, not imaginary goals.

 

• Section 5.3 suggest the use of other DEA model but do not explain why. Is it really necessary? what is expected as results with this suggestion? It is also suggested to combine other methods. Why? Let it clear to the readers.

Response：

Thank you for your kind comments. In order to avoid the reader misunderstanding, we have rewritten the content.

“Future research can expand the evaluation model to network structure to deal with more complex operational management and performance evaluation issues of international commercial port enterprises of Chinese A-share listed companies. In addition, some other mathematical models for performance evaluation can also be combined with the model of this study to verify the realistic value of the evaluation results together, which may be a new path for the future research.”

Thank you for your thorough and thoughtful review of our manuscript. Your feedback will be incredibly valuable for guiding our future research and improving our work. Thank you again for your help, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Thanks so much!

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author:

Name: Guoya Gan 

E-mail: [email protected]

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I am satisfied with the revised version of the manuscript. However, I have no additional comments. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you again for your generous comments and help. According to your comments, we have further modified some English writing to improve our study. Thank you so much!

 

Yours sincerely,

Guoya Gan

E-mail: [email protected]

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors tryed to justify their considerations and submitted a new version of paper but it also is far from the Sustainability pattern of paper. I recommend submitting it for another journal that focus on modeling/optimization applied to real cases.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you again for your generous comments and help.

• First of all, we would like to explain that this study does not intend to improve the DEA model, but only adopts the model of Fang et al.(2013) to evaluate the ESG performance of China's listed port enterprises. This is an application study, so it is in line with the publication scope of Sustainability.
• Fang, H. H., Lee, H. S., Hwang, S. N., Chung, C. C. A slacks-based measure of super-efficiency in data envelopment analysis: an alternative approach. Omega2013, 41, 731-734.  https://doi.org/1016/j.omega.2012.10.004.
• Secondly, our author is not the first time to publish our study in this journal, and we has also carefully read both of the author notes of this journal and the topic of this special issue "" before the submitting, which is all in line with the requirements of this journal. At the same time, we found that a recent article published in this special issue also used other methods to carry out an applied study, so we believe that this study is in line with the requirements.
• Finally, we also sorted out the main contribution points of this research to emphasize the practical value of this research:
• Compared with previous studies, this study no longer considers the variables mainly based on port operation characteristics, nor takes ESG variable as the main variable, but combines the two to conduct a more comprehensive performance evaluation study on China's listed port enterprises.l
• Through the comprehensive evaluation of multi-criteria and multi-objectives, we conducted a quantitative ranking of all the evaluated enterprises in the entire industry, and selected eight port enterprises that will perform relatively well in 2023 operation. l
• For each evaluated enterprise, we conducted a further suitable adjustment analysis (namely, trade-off analysis). It is designed to help all efficient companies understand their strengths in the industry as a whole, while helping all inefficient companies understand their weaknesses (such as wasted investment or poor output). Through this study, we find out that in the whole industry, efficient enterprises tend to perform better in throughput and berth utilization efficiency. However, inefficient enterprises often have great disadvantages in social responsibility performance and environmental performance in ESG rating. These conclusions of this study may provide reference suggestions for the relevant port managers when formulating strategic rules. l
• Group analysis help us reduce the benchmarking enterprises from eight to four. This also emphasizes that a truly excellent enterprise should be an important embodiment of comprehensive results.

 

Based on the above reasons, we sincerely hope that you can reconsider your evaluation of our research, and we will fully cooperate with you to improve the quality of your paper. Thank you so much!

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author:

Name: Guoya Gan

E-mail: [email protected]