The Role of the Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) at the National Economy: An Input-Output Analysis on Korea

Round  1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper deals with important issues for energy demand management - Eco Industrial Parks. The main issues to be addressed during the revision of paper: introduction should provide solid background for scientific research problem based on references. There is no such background provided in introduction. The input of paper should be highlighted in introduction. The theoretical background for methodology applied is not well enough presented. The paper lacks discussion of results section and comparison of results with other similar studies. The reference list should be extended by including new papers in in this field.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer #1:

 Thank you very much for your useful and valuable comments on this manuscript, we have accepted all of these comments and tried our best to revise our manuscript according to your valuable comments. The content, indicating how we have improved this manuscript has been specified as follows. Thank you very much.

Questions

The paper deals with important issues for energy demand management - Eco Industrial Parks. The main issues to be addressed during the revision of paper: introduction should provide solid background for scientific research problem based on references. There is no such background provided in introduction. The input of paper should be highlighted in introduction. The theoretical background for methodology applied is not well enough presented. The paper lacks discussion of results section and comparison of results with other similar studies. The reference list should be extended by including new papers in in this field.

Answers is listed point-by-point

1.        Introduction part was intensively polished with provision of research highlights based on the review on current knowledge gap; WE also rewrote the abstract to highlight the contribution of this paper to current gap（ "As environmental as well as business innovation, EIP enables to change the perception of industries and create new business values via the whole supply chain, but such evidences have been less reported to date" ）. Hence the main innovation of this paper was to link the EIP as new business model to IOA approach, which was effective to investigate the interactions of sectors in the supply chain and to evaluate the economic effects on the economic system.

2.        Methodology part was totally rewritten; Particularly, definition of EIP, how EIP matches to economic sectors and how to link EIP with IOA approach was carefully addressed (section 3.1).

3.        Results and discussions was intensively polished, discussions, implications was added (revised section 4, section 5.1 & 5.2). In addition, research limitations were stated and future concerns were discussed as well (section 5.3); As to the comparison of other similar results, to our best knowledge, ours was a first try to link EIP and IOA, hence we mainly focused on the discussion on our current results, and comparison between EIP sector and other sectors in our case (performance of EIP sector was compared with other sectors in term of interlinkage effects (Inter-industry linkage effect analysis evaluates the sensitivity and power of dispersion index of 31 sectors and horizontally compares them to catch the relative position of target sector in whole economy) in section 4.2. Results highlighted EIP had a strong forward linkage effects than other sectors, which indicated EIP sector's strong power to push other sectors to make change (as an evidence of environmental innovation drives economic innovation). Appreciate your understanding on this point.

4.        We updated the references with more up-to-date studies.

Sincerely yours,

The authors

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has an interesting angle on the analysis of eco-industrial parks development, and their significance for the economy. However, the current version is difficult to understand, and seems to be imposible to verify or replicate the results, which questions the outcomes and its value for the readers. The mathematics (formulas) is overwhelming, yet does not contribute much to the value of the paper, as it is unclear how did you apply it. Specific comments are below:

1) There are multiple grammar mistakes and poor style in a few parts, additional editing is required.

2) It is recommended to stick with a single name for the country throughout the paper, e.g. just use South Korea (instead of Korea, Republic Korea, KOR, South Korea).

3) Check the consistency in the use of monetary values, don't switch backwards and forwards from KRW to US $. Just use one primary currency, e.g US $, and double values where needed.

4) For all tables with data, indicate the source of information.

5) Consider moving a significant part of formulas with explanations (particularly if they are not developed by you), ans some big tables in Section 4 to Supplementary materials. You better focus on explaining what you have done, how, and what do the results mean, including any statistical verification and/or comparing with other sectors (apart from the EIP sector). Does the EIP sector performs better than other sectors or just the same?

6) In the current version, it is unclear how you defined and estimated the EIP sector. This needs to be carefully addressed, and could be a major contribution from the paper. What are the boundaries and what is the error in your estimation? Did you have any challenges here? Can we learn something from your experience?

7) Another challenge is to somehow link Section 2 (Korean EIPs) with Section 4 (IO analysis), in other words connecting the analysis of specific EIPs with the overall picture. At the moment, Section 4 seems to be quite away from the reality. Additional discussion and examples could help to explain the results, e.g. how a particular EIP contributes to employment etc.

8) Abstract and conclusion need some work. They have to be more meaningful and specific.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer#2:

Questions

The paper has an interesting angle on the analysis of eco-industrial parks development, and their significance for the economy. However, the current version is difficult to understand, and seems to be impossible to verify or replicate the results, which questions the outcomes and its value for the readers. The mathematics (formulas) is overwhelming, yet does not contribute much to the value of the paper, as it is unclear how did you apply it. Specific comments are below:

1) There are multiple grammar mistakes and poor style in a few parts, additional editing is required.

2) It is recommended to stick with a single name for the country throughout the paper, e.g. just use South Korea (instead of Korea, Republic Korea, KOR, South Korea).

3) Check the consistency in the use of monetary values, don't switch backwards and forwards from KRW to US $. Just use one primary currency, e.g US $, and double values where needed.

4) For all tables with data, indicate the source of information.

5) Consider moving a significant part of formulas with explanations (particularly if they are not developed by you), and some big tables in Section 4 to Supplementary materials. You better focus on explaining what you have done, how, and what do the results mean, including any statistical verification and/or comparing with other sectors (apart from the EIP sector). Does the EIP sector performs better than other sectors or just the same?

6) In the current version, it is unclear how you defined and estimated the EIP sector. This needs to be carefully addressed, and could be a major contribution from the paper. What are the boundaries and what is the error in your estimation? Did you have any challenges here? Can we learn something from your experience?

7) Another challenge is to somehow link Section 2 (Korean EIPs) with Section 4 (IO analysis), in other words connecting the analysis of specific EIPs with the overall picture. At the moment, Section 4 seems to be quite away from the reality. Additional discussion and examples could help to explain the results, e.g. how a particular EIP contributes to employment etc.

8) Abstract and conclusion need some work. They have to be more meaningful and specific.

Answers is listed point-by-point

1.     English was intensively polished with the help of native expert. We hope the revised version would reach the language requirement of journal publication;

2.     thanks for the comments, we revised this issue. We used [Republic of Korea, ROK], at the first time, then use the simplified format as “Korea” in the following context.

3.     We revised this issue to use KRW throughout the paper;

4.     We added the notes for tables; Data source of Tables (1-3) was offered. Table 4 was equations, and after Table 5 the data was come from IOA calculation.

5.     We totally rewrite the methodology part, in addition, limitation and further concerns about the method was also discussed (Section 5.3). Detail appendix information was move to Complementary information (Table S1 and S2). We kept some necessary equations as it directly related to our calculation. Results and conclusions were also revised. Particularly, performance of EIP sector was compared with other sectors in term of interlinkage effects (Inter-industry linkage effect analysis evaluates the sensitivity and power of dispersion index of 31 sectors and horizontally compares them to catch the relative position of target sector in whole economy) in section 4.2. Results highlighted EIP had a strong forward linkage effects than other sectors, which indicated EIP sector's strong power to push other sectors to make change (as a evidence of environmental innovation drives economic innovation). 

6.     Methodology section was totally revised, with a schematic chart on processing the calculation (Figure 2 and related text). Definition and Conceptual chart of EIP was also provided (section 3.1.1). How to link EIP and IOA were described in detail in section "3.1" and supplementary information offered the detail on how to link with EIP projects into economic sectors in the national economic system. Boundaries issue was also discussed here. IOA was mature approach although the was some uncertainty on the results, hence different from econometric approach, we didn't test the error of results (which was common in IOA papers based on our review), but we offered a discussion on the limitations of our results and uncertainty of data compilation & calculation (section 5.3). Appreciate your understanding on this point. Future concerns on challenges were also addressed in section 5.3

7.     How to link EIP and IOA were described in detail in section "3.1" and supplementary information offered the detail on how to link with EIP projects into economic sectors in the national economic system. Discussions and implications was revised and added (revised section 4, section 5.1 & 5.2)

8.     We rewrote the abstract and conclusion part. 

 Sincerely yours,

The authors

Round  2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have provided improved version of manuscript which can be published now as authors have addressed all comments provided by reviewer and improved paper signifcantly therefore I recomend to publish this paper in current form.

Reviewer 2 Report

Well done with corrections