The Impact and Mechanism behind the Effect of a Digital Economy on Industrial Carbon Emission Reduction

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study explores the effect of the expansion of the digital economy on the level of carbon emission intensity produced by the industry. The research utilizes a two-way fixed effect model, a mediated effect model, and a panel threshold model to analyze the relationship between the digital economy and carbon emissions. The findings suggest that the digital economy reduces industrial carbon intensity effectively through enhancements to technological and innovative capacities, improvements in energy efficiency, and enhancements to the overall industrial structure. However, this manuscript also needs to address the following concerns before getting published:

 

Formatting:

1. The two "Digital industrialization" on the left side of the “Energy utilization effect” box in Figure 1 can be reduced to one.

2. What do the two variables α_0 and α_1 in Equation 1 represent?

3. The titles of Section 3.2.1 and Section 3.2.2 are duplicated, please check and revise them.

4. In Line 378, should “water mean” be “mean”?

 

Content:

1. In response to the author's reference in Line 379 that the overall data is left-skewed distributed, it is suggested that the authors add a skewness coefficient column to Table 4 to aid in illustrating this conclusion.

2. How were the three percentages in Line 481 obtained? Could the author please add a detailed explanation? In addition, why is the sum of the three percentages less than 100%? Is it because there are other factors involved?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The quality of the English language in the manuscript is good overall, with only a few minor errors that need to be corrected.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time and hard work in helping us improve the quality of our manuscript. We appreciate the reviewers' valuable comments and suggestions and have revised our manuscript accordingly. Please refer to our point-to-point answers to the reviewer's comments below. Our responses (in green) and the reviewers' original comments (in bold font) are provided below. We have copied texts with major changes in the revision report (gray highlighting) to identify changes made.The exact details of the changes have been attached to a word document for your review.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time and hard work in helping us improve the quality of our manuscript. We appreciate the reviewers' valuable comments and suggestions and have revised our manuscript accordingly. Please refer to our point-to-point answers to the reviewer's comments below. Our responses (in green) and the reviewers' original comments (in bold font) are provided below. We have copied texts with major changes in the revision report (yellow highlighting) to identify changes made.The exact details of the changes have been attached to a word document for your review.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper explores how the digital economy is helping to reduce industrial carbon emissions in China. The authors use various econometric models to analyze data from 30 Chinese provinces over the period from 2013 to 2021. They find that the digital economy reduces carbon emissions through three main mechanisms: boosting technological innovation, improving energy efficiency, and optimizing the industrial structure.

Abstract: The topic is both important and timely, considering the global focus on reducing carbon emissions. The abstract is concise and well-written. It would benefit from a more explicit mention of the policy implications of the findings.

Methodology: The methodology is solid and well-explained. Including control variables and conducting robustness checks add credibility to the findings.

Results and Interpretation: The results are clear and logically interpreted. The finding of a non-linear relationship between digital economy growth and carbon emission reduction is particularly interesting. The discussion on potential drawbacks, such as the "Jevons Paradox" and "energy rebound effect," is relevant but could be expanded to include more detailed implications for policy and practice.

References: The references are appropriate and up-to-date. Please make sure all cited references are included in the bibliography and check for any citation errors.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript is generally well-written but has a few minor grammatical errors that should be corrected.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time and hard work in helping us improve the quality of our manuscript. We appreciate the reviewers' valuable comments and suggestions and have revised our manuscript accordingly. Please refer to our point-to-point answers to the reviewer's comments below. Our responses (in green) and the reviewers' original comments (in bold font) are provided below. We have copied texts with major changes in the revision report (blue highlighting) to identify changes made.The exact details of the changes have been attached to a word document for your review.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.         Abstract: The abstract needs to be revised to highlight the necessity and contributions of this study.

 

2.         Keywords: The second keyword requires revision.

 

3.         Introduction: The authors need to provide a review of existing methods and explain why they chose the two-way fixed effects model for their analysis.

 

4.         Section 2: Three hypotheses were proposed; their influences on the results and associated uncertainties should be discussed in Section 5.

 

5.         Section 2.2, Lines 169-171: The authors stated that they considered the effects of industrial structure, energy utilization, and technological innovation. However, the reasons for focusing on these three aspects were not explained. Moreover, were there other critical factors that should have been highlighted? The authors need to made a comprehensive discussion.

 

6.         Relationship Between Sections 2 and 3: What is the relationship between the proposed model in Section 3 and the effects of industrial structure, energy utilization, and technological innovation introduced in Section 2? The presented equations do not show the correlation.

 

7.         Table 1: Provide the source of the data.

 

8.         Table 2: How were the indicators determined? Were all indicators obtained from Wang et al. (2021) [25]? If all indicators were sourced from this previous study, what is the novelty of this research?

 

9.         Section 4: The authors need to use appropriate figures (images) to illustrate the methods and results. Currently, the manuscript contains no figures.

 

10.      Conclusions: The limitations and potential future research directions need to be included in the conclusions.

 

11.      English Improvement: The English needs improvement. Grammar and typos should be checked, and some confusing long sentences need to be broken down.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English Improvement: The English needs improvement. Grammar and typos should be checked, and some confusing long sentences need to be broken down.

 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your time and hard work in helping us improve the quality of our manuscript. We appreciate the reviewers' valuable comments and suggestions and have revised our manuscript accordingly. Please refer to our point-to-point answers to the reviewer's comments below. Our responses (in green) and the reviewers' original comments (in bold font) are provided below. We have copied texts with major changes in the revision report (green highlighting) to identify changes made.The exact details of the changes have been attached to a word document for your review.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, 

Thank you for adhering to the guidelines. Your work is appreciated, and it's clear you put in a lot of effort.

I also want to express my gratitude for the opportunity to contribute. It has been a valuable experience!

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

No further comment is needed.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required