The Determinants of Investment Account Holders’ Disclosure in Islamic Banks: International Evidence

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is well articulated and develops an interesting theme concerning the determinants of Investment Account Holders (IAHs) Disclosure in Islamic Banks. The authors highlight the difficulties in retrieving the data and manage to have manually extracted them from a database called "IBISONLINE". There are no specifications on the database and its use in scientific papers. Apart from this, the weakest question concerns the period examined by the 'year 2011 to 2015. It is too far from the current period and does not allow us to consider the research up-to-date. In the same review of the literature, reference is made to recent years, while the database considers the period 2011-2015. the authors must update the database at least up to the most recent years in order to improve the proposed research.This aspect is fundamental and can affect the conclusions and results reached, which must also be revised accordingly.

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper that could be potentially publishable subject to some revisions that are discussed in more detail below.

Case study:

Methods: Consider to derive a bank performance measure by means of frontier efficiency methods such as Data Envelopment Analysis using balance sheet data and other and non-financial data.

Results: The modelling approach used is sensitive to outliers? Please discuss.

Implications: Discuss on both theoretical and practical implications of the study.

Future research - Generalization of the results: Discuss on avenues on future research to address factors that limit the ability to generalize the results of the study.

Author Response

Please see the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The research topic is interesting. A general concern is about to the results and its discussion with the literature. It should be more detailed and more well fundamented. 

The authors should consider the following recommendations in order to improve the original manuscript:

- To modify the title of the research paper by including the following: ”...A case study for Brazil”, since potential readers need to know this detail.

- To include certain relevant research questions

- To extend the Theoretical Framework, by providing more relevant literature review, especially studies conducted during the last 5 years. There is no logical order in the literature review. All citations are in one flow. Yet, sentences look like a cut from cited papers and placed in this section without explaining why. The idea of sustainability needs to be more visible in this research paper.

Regarding consumer behaviour framework but also a sustainable socio-economic, perspective, including the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, I suggest extending the literature section by including at least the following recent and relevant studies:

1. Hawaldar, I.T.; Ullal, M.S.; Birau, F.R.; Spulbar, C.M. Trapping Fake Discounts as Drivers of Real Revenues and Their Impact on Consumer’s Behavior in India: A Case Study. Sustainability 2019, 11, 4637.
2. Bonera, M.; Corvi, E.; Codini, A.P.; Ma, R. Does Nationality Matter in Eco-Behaviour? Sustainability 2017, 9, 1694.
3. Batool, M., Ghulam, H., Hayat, M.A., Naeem, M.Z., Ejaz, A., Imran, Z.A., Spulbar, C., Birau, R. & Gorun, T.H. (2020) How COVID-19 has shaken the sharing economy? An analysis using Google trends data, Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1331677X.2020.1863830.

• Deepen the description of the limitations of conducted research and indicate the trends for further empirical research.
• To expand the managerial implications in the article.
• Human proofreading, English grammar and spelling correction are also required in order to improve the quality of the manuscript.
• I would also like to see a well-developed discussion comparing and contrasting solution/results presented in the work with existing work and then a subsection of it presenting contributions to theory/knowledge/literature and followed by a subsection on “Implications for practice”.
• The Final Remarks section should be renamed in Conclusions section which needs to be greatly improved and expanded.
• References in the text and also the Reference section must be included by following the instructions for authors based on the standards of Sustainability journal.

Author Response

Please see the attached file

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have better motivated their choices and have made improvements to the paper. Consequently, the paper is considered eligible for publication.

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors completely ignored most of the previous recommendations.

- Authors did not extend the Theoretical Framework.

Regarding the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, there is still no mention despite it is affecting the global economy and implicitly the financial system (also islamic banking field). For your information, Islamic Banks have consumers and Islamic banking customers have certain perceptions based on religious beliefs.  

See above certain research papers published in this field of study:

1. Mehdiabadi, A.; Tabatabeinasab, M.; Spulbar, C.; Karbassi Yazdi, A.; & Birau, R. (2020) Are We Ready for the Challenge of Banks 4.0? Designing a Roadmap for Banking Systems in Industry 4.0., International Journal of Financial Studies, Special Issue “The Financial Industry 4.0”, 8(2), 32, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijfs8020032.
2. Birau, R., Spulbar, C., Karbassi Yazdi, A., ShahrAeini, S.A., (2021) Critical success factors for CRM implementation in the Iranian banking sector: A conceptual analysis, Revista de Științe Politice. Revue des Sciences Politiques, No. 69, 32 – 45.

- References in the text and also the Reference section are still not following the instructions for authors based on the standards of JRFM journal. There is no improvement since last review.

- The entire article is chaotically formatted and edited. For instance, there are blank pages (see page 14), all tables are to large and off the page, there are used different fonts and font sizes [see equation (1)].