Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to evaluate the article "Analysis of the Impact of Official Promotion Incentives on Urban Ecological Welfare Performance and Its Spatial Effect".

The article addresses a relevant and recent topic with interesting potential to be able to access.

As suggestions for improvement for the article:

- The summary needs to be rewritten, as it is not adequate. Avoid using bullet points, and make the text more fluid.

- Present some very recent references from quality journals.

- In the Introduction, leave the research gap to be filled by research in a more evident way.

Author Response

Reply to reviewer comments

1. Thank you for your suggestion. This article has made modifications to the abstract as follows:

Abstract: Economic growth, environmental protection and welfare improvement are closely related to the local officials. Therefore, exploring the paths that affect EWP(EWP) from the perspective of official promotion incentives has certain practical significance. EWP is an indicator that measures the welfare relationship between ecological resource input and output, reflecting the sustainable development status of a region. First, considering the background of the dual carbon goals, the EWP of 284 cities from 2007 to 2020 was measured by constructing an indicator system and using the super-SBM-DEA method. Second, by constructing a theoretical framework of "official promotion incentives-fiscal responsiveness-EWP", we empirically tested the impact and mechanism of official promotion incentives on urban EWP; Finally, based on regional and official age heterogeneity, we explored differential impact of official promotion incentives on urban EWP. The results show that: Official promotion incentives inhibit the improvement of urban EWP by reducing financial responsiveness; In terms of spatial spillovers, under three types of spatial weight matrices, promotion incentives for officials in neighboring areas can significantly improve the EWP of local cities; From the perspective of regional differences, official promotion incentives in the eastern region significantly improve urban EWP, official promotion incentives in the western and northeastern regions significantly inhibit urban EWP, and official promotion incentives in the central region have no significant impact on urban EWP. From the perspective of official age, local officials aged 53 and 54 intensify the inhibitory effect of promotion incentives on urban EWP. By constructing a theoretical framework and empirical testing, this paper provides theoretical support and empirical experience for the impact of official promotion incentives on urban EWP. The results help to understand the relationship between official promotion incentives and sustainable development, and promotes sustainable urban development.

2. Thank you very much for the reviewer's suggestions. This article has added the latest references from high-level journals and replaced some references from domestic scholars with references from foreign scholars. Please refer to the References section for details.
3. Thank you very much for the reviewer's suggestions. We have added some content at the end of the introduction to clearly identify the gaps in existing research and provide a basis for the innovation of this article. Specifically, as follows:

Although some research has explored the impact of official promotion incentives on economic growth, environmental pollution, or welfare, the impact of local official promotion incentives on the comprehensive indicator of urban EWP has been overlooked.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The reviewed paper (Analysis of the Impact of Official Promotion Incentives on Urban Ecological Welfare Performance and Its Spatial Effect) presents an interesting an up-to-date problems related to welfare relationship between ecological input and output. The authors fairly state that this relationship reflects the sustainable development status of a region. The research results show that the official promotion incentives impact the urban ecological welfare performance.

The authors retrieved quite big sample of data from 284 Chinese cities - that seems to be appropriate taking into account the complex nature of the research problem. The authors mentioned about SBM-DEA model, however, I cannot see any DEA model description or results of this analysis - please explain which results (table) describe this analysis results (efficiency). In fact, I find benchmark analysis not appropriate for almost 300 objects. Explain please which objects were compared. I am used to seeing the efficiency scores table, mathematical model description, and some charts and summaries of the DEA analysis (see for example the work of: Gang Li, Ping Wang, Raktim Pal, Measuring sustainable technology R&D innovation in China: A unified approach using DEA-SBM and projection analysis, Expert Systems With Applications 209 (2022) 118393). If the authors used another approach to DEA please explain it.

Some other issues also need to be addressed in the paper. First of all, at the end of the Literature review section research questions or hypotheses should be formulated.

The limitations of the study and perspectives for future research should be explained in the last section (Conclusions).

It would be valuable to formulate also managerial implications.

Also, there are a lot of editorial errors (e.g. punctuation) the authors should check the text carefully.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

1.       Abstract: The authors need to specify the location of the study area in the abstract, at present, it is not clear where the 284 cities come from, Similarly, the “eastern region, western and northeastern regions, and central region” mentioned in Lines 19-23 are not clear are not clear either. Is that the eastern part of all the samples? Or the eastern part of China? And the same problem could be found in Line 185.

2.       The last sentence of the abstract should explain the scientific significance of the research from a more macro perspective, such as ensuring the ecological sustainable development, promoting the ecological-economy coordinated development, etc.

3.       Lines 102-106: The expression of these sentences is confused and illogical. In addition, a reference should be added to the author “Guo”.

4.       Line 118 and Line 120: The reference to the authors is in the wrong format and should be marked as “Zhou (2004)” and “Zhang and Gao (2007)”. Please check the manuscript for the similar problems.

5.       Section 3. Research design: I suggest that the authors add a subsection to this section: 3.1 Study area. And explain the spatial distribution characteristics of the cities and the reasons for sample selection. At the same time, it is necessary to provide a spatial distribution map of the cities. Otherwise, it would be difficult for the readers to understand the location mentioned in “4.4.1 Heterogeneity analysis based on east, middle, west and northeast”.

6.       Table 1, some expressions in the table are not standard, please check the professional English expression, such as “First level indicator”, “Secondary indicators”, “Level three indicators”, and “Park green space area”.

7.       Data source: It is recommended to supplement the website address of the relevant data source.

8.       Method: I would like to know whether the authors conducted spatial correlation test using global and local Moran’s I index before choosing the spatial Durbin model? In addition, there are three other three spatial econometric models (SAR, SEM and SAC), why did the authors choose spatial Durbin model?

9.       Line 705: what does the “sex?” in the end of the sentence refer to ?

10.   Section 5.2, Policy Implications: At present, this section is entirely aimed at Chinese government environment, for a scientific paper, the significance of research needs to be discussed under a broader perspective. For example, discuss the applicability of the methods used in this study and whether they can be generalized? What is the significance of this research to enlighten the development of related fields in other countries?

11.   References: Almost all the references are from Chinese scholars, and the authors need to supplement the references from other countries.

12.   Language: The English need to be improved in the manuscript, and I suggest the help from a native speaker.

The English need to be improved in the manuscript, and I suggest the help from a native speaker.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors took into account my comments and improved the article sufficiently. I recommend it for publication.

Author Response

We are grateful to reviewer for your effort reviewing our paper

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have made acceptable revisions on their manuscript and addressed most of my comments and concerns. A few minor revisions are recommended:

1. Figure 2, Please mark Macau in the picture.

2. References No. 29 and No. 30 are duplicated.

Author Response

Thank you very much for the careful review by the reviewer. We have made improvements to the two questions you raised

1.Figure 2, Please mark Macau in the picture.

We are grateful to reviewer for your effort reviewing our paper

. Due to the small area of Macau, it is not marked on the map. We accept the reviewer's suggestion and mark Macau as shown in Figure 2.

Figure2 Division of four regions in China.

Note: the map is drawn according to the Standard Map Service Website of the Ministry of natural resources (map review No. GS (2020) 4630).

2.References No. 29 and No. 30 are duplicated.

Due to our negligence, there was an overlap between references 29 and 30. Therefore, the 29th reference has been replaced, as detailed in the original text. In addition, we have checked the references throughout the entire text.

29. Tone, K. A Slacks-Based Measure of Efficiency in Data Envelopment Analysis. European Journal of Operational Research 2001，130,498-509.
30. Tone, K. A Slacks-Based Measure of Super-Efficiency in Data Envelopment Analysis. European Journal of Operational Research 2002, 143, 32–41.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx