Joint Economic–Environmental Benefit Optimization by Carbon-Abatement Cost Sharing in a Capital-Constrained Green Supply Chain
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please refer to the attached file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
感谢您的回复和建议。请参阅附件。
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors, Your manuscript is interesting, but some sections need a discussion in depth. In addition, references are necessary in some sections. Please find below my suggestions.1. Introduction
Line 37-40. Please include a reference.
Line 46-52. Please could you include a reference to this sentence?
2. Literature Review
Please try to change the title of this section.
3. The one-way cost-sharing case.
This section need of a great discussion.
Author Response
Thank you for your reply and comments. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
I have no more questions about the method design and content presentation of this manuscript. It needs to revise some English grammars and sentence formats.
Author Response
Thanks for your suggestions, we have polished the article further and thanks again for your advice.
Reviewer 4 Report
In this paper, the authors mainly study the role of carbon-abatement cost-sharing contracts in the supply chain with a capital-constrained manufacturer. The data are solid. I only have several queries.
1. Figures 1, 2, and 3 are very rough. They should be improved. Moreover, authors should clearly tell us the meaning of each coordinate axis.
2. What do the differences mean in Fig. 2?
3. Figure3, the differences look very tiny, what do the effects of called “economic-environmental” ? It should be confirmed in the discussions.
Author Response
Thank you for your reply and suggestions. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Please refer to the attached file.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Question 1:
Lines 71-74, "The rest of the article is organized as follows. Chapter 2 reviews the literature to clarify the research gaps. Chapters 3 and 4 present the one-way and two-way cost-sharing cases, respectively. In Chapter 5, the problem is extended to consider consumers’ green preference. Chapter 6 concludes the paper and provides discussions."
Our comments: Please change "Chapter" and "Chapters" to "Section" and "Sections". Grammarly suggested that "consumers’ green preference" changed to " consumers’ green preferences".
Reply:
Thank you so much for your kind advice. We have correct the related comments mentioned in the manuscript.
Question 2:
After Section 3.1, the authors did not provide cited papers, except Lines 358-359, "according to the conventions in previous studies (Cao et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2019; Xu & Fang, 2020)," and Lines 394-395, "the initial market demand follows X ~ exp(0.01) (Buzacott & Zhang, 2004; Shi et al., 2020a,b)." Our comments: There are six models, eight lemmas, eight propositions, and two corollaries in this manuscript. The results are beyond average published papers. However, the authors did not show us the relationship between their new findings and previously published papers. We advise the authors to tell readers the results of previously published papers and then their new findings. We strongly suggest the authors add Chen (2015, IJPE), Bing et al. (2012, POM), Shi et al. (2023, IJPE), and other related papers in their model development and proof procedures.
Reply:
Thank you so much for your kind advice. As for the lack of references in the core part of the paper you proposed, because the paper studied the economic and environmental benefits of the capital-constrained low-carbon supply chain, the relevant conclusions enrich the relevant research and achieved a certain degree of innovation, so it is an original achievement in model building and solution.
Among all the lemmas, propositions and corollaries, the lemmas and propositions in 3.2, 3.3 and 4.2, 4.3 are procedural conclusions ,for step by step approaching to the following conclusions of corollary1&2, proposition3&6, and proposition7&8, in which the value of the one-way cost-sharing contract and two-way cost-sharing contract, as shown in3.4, 4.4 and 5.1. The contracts have positive environmental externalities, then we further examine the joint “economic-environmental” benefit of the contracts, which are different from the past related research.
In response to the three papers you mentioned, the Chen (2015, IJPE) focused on the choice of financing method of capital constraint supply chain, which is different from our research on low-carbon supply chain finance; the Bing et al. (2012, POM) focused on the choice of financing method of supply chain including one or two capital constrained members, which is different from our research on low-carbon supply chain finance, and each system has only one capital-constrained role; the Shi et al. (2023, IJPE) focused on the impact of procurement commitment contract on low-carbon supply chain, which is different from our research which attention is on the impact cost-sharing contract of low-carbon supply chain. The relevant conclusions of this research enrich the relevant research and achieved a certain degree of innovation, so it is an original achievement in model building and solution.
Question 3:
When β=0, the model of Equation (6) is reduced to the model of Equation (1).
When α=1, the model of Equation (16) is reduced to the model of Equation (11).
When β=0 and α=1, the model of Equation (24) is reduced to the model of Equation (21).
Our comments: The authors should delete those duplicate models and proofs.
Reply:
Thank you so much for your kind advice. The Equation (6) is the manufacturer’s decision-making problem under the case with the retailer’s cost sharing and β is the sharing proportion. The range of β is from 0 to 1, so the situation when β=0 is an extreme case. The Equation (16) is the manufacturer’s decision-making problem under the case with the two-way cost sharing of the supplier and the manufacturer and β, α are the sharing proportions. The range of β and α are both from 0 to 1, so the situation when α=1 and β=0 is an extreme case. The Equation (24) is the manufacturer’s decision-making problem under the case with the two-way cost sharing of the supplier and the manufacturer considering the consumers’ green preferences, and β, α are the sharing proportions. The range of β and α are both from 0 to 1, so the situation when α=1 and β=0 is an extreme case.
Therefore, the models have different meanings and different parameters, and we have omitted the proof process of some repeated proof methods in this paper. For the proof process that cannot be omitted, we are careful to give the detailed proof process.
Question 4:
Lines 275-278, Equation (11), ;
Our comments: We cannot seeinside Equation (11). The authors did not explainin Table 1, at Line 169.
Reply:
Thank you so much for your advice. We have update the Equation according to your comments. As for table 1, it is the explanations of main notations in the one-way cost-sharing case, andare the notations used in the two-way cost-sharing case, which are not used in the one-way cost-sharing case, so they are not explained in table 1. To avoid duplication, the meanings ofare explained in 4.1, at Lines 256-262.
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
