Energy- and Environment-Biased Technological Progress Induced by Different Types of Environmental Regulations in China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
General Overview
The introduction presents a brief overview of the context of the research. It is beneficial that the authors clearly linked the impact of environmental regulations with technological progress. Yet, more information on the peculiarities of the country and the urgent needs for China to deal with environmental degradation would have been beneficial. No data are in fact included regarding the emissions of China and how since the opening up reforms emissions were on the rise. Further, it would be interesting to cover along with panel data (that should be updated at least up to 2018) also the national regulatory framework for environmental protection.
The paper is logically organized. The authors open the research by reviewing the literature and then suggest a theoretical framework in environmental policymaking in the country. It is beneficial that the authors in figure 1 specifically dealt with the effects of environmental regulations on enterprises by analyzing strategic choices of firms in relations to the different policies implemented. Three main types are identified by the author: control and command regulations, market based strategies and informal regulations. It would be helpful to show more clearly why these types have been selected by the author opposed to other ones selected by other scholars and experts.
The conclusions are insufficient and they too briefly present the findings of the paper. It seems the author is in rush to conclude his paper instead of using the last part of the paper and particularly the conclusions to reflect and critically assess the findings of the article. Moreover, sustainability is an important policy journal and the published articles require careful consideration of the public policy assessment and impact of the findings described in the article. For these reasons, it would have been beneficial to expand the final section of the manuscript by including specific policy recommendations for the country.
Language and style
English language and style – must be revised and require extensive work.
Just some examples (only exemplary not exhaustive) of evident typos and lack of English sentence structure that can be considered a careless revision and lack of check of the final draft of the paper by the author before submission to the journal or extensive need of a native proofreader.
29 degradation are now globle issues
32 This is not only benefit to Chinese people’s
54-55 In particular, under the “Chinese style 54 decentralization” (Jiang et al. 2019), it is in line with the regional economy target to select 55 appropriate environmental regulation with the subsequently induced technological progress.
It was not until recently have scholars targeted
92 the increasing pressure from energy exhausting and environment degradation
to discuss kinds of 110 energy- and environment- related technological progress simultaneously.
this paper makes a discussion
Comments and suggestions to the authors:
This article focuses on a timely and interesting topic: how environmental regulations shape firms’ behavior in China. The focus on China is appropriate in light of the need for the country to counteract the negative effects of climate change. Environmental degradation and sustainability crisis are having negative effects in the country not only on public health but also on societal values and on the very own legitimization of the Chinese government. Data used to carry out the research covers only the 2010-2016 period. In light of the signature of the Paris Agreement in 2016, it would have been beneficial to include additional information on how the agreement influenced the steadfast development of environmental regulations in the country. Since the US withdrawal, China took the lead together with EU on multilateral environmental regulations. The inclusion of an international perspective would be beneficial to strengthen the quality of the paper and could fortify the theoretical framework of the research.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
-There are a few repetitions at some points in the text (are mentioning mainly to the results). Please, check and avoid repetitions.
- Because the manuscript has been focused in China, I believe that a short description about the energy and environmental conditions in this country and especially in regional level will be useful enough (in the Introduction's sections). That will make the reader to follow easily some points of the discussion.
-In my opinion, the Results and Discussion section should be improved with more analytical comparison of results with the results of previous relevant studies or international oriented studies even if the paper concern to China exclusively. In the same section it is necessary to be indicating the impact from research results to the society and economy and also the further research that could be following. The research limitations are an issue also that must be included in this section.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Highlight changes in yellow in a next revision, please. No track changes.
Consider comments in the entire text.
As in conclusions, add contextualization to abstract
Revise the reference style
In the new style, add authors names before reference number
Be consistent in tables, always add references at the firs OR last column…
Remove “We” and personal expressions from the text
Which mechanism, context? Worldwide? China?...
Why blue colour?
Add knowledge, do not use the same content… “Figure 1. Mechanism between diversified environmental regulation and induced technological progress. 227”
“4. Model and data”
Please add references to already published data immediately before equations…, otherwise highlight originality and novelty…
This is not clear language to me:
“Additionally, referring to Hensen (1999), Seo and Shin (2016), and Seo et al. (2019), we”
Figure 2: add legend to axis…
This figure forces the reader to go back and interpret each abbreviation... add to figure
…Revise captions to be self-explanatory
“Table 3. Summary of variables.”
The use of abbreviations in the text, namely figures and tables, must be included I notes, to easy the task of the reader
Authors do repeat content…
“5.2. Dynamic threshold analysis”
“Table 5. Dynamic Threshold Regression Results.”
Avoid the “listing”.
I could not find the “(1)”
“(2) Within the regression on backstop technology, before the threshold, CCR and MBR have the 517 significant positive, negative coefficient, respectively, once over the threshold value, they have the 518 opposite coefficients. It means that, with the economic development, the environmental regulation 519 should switch from CCR to MBR to accelerate non-fossil energy technological progress. This is agree 520 with the debate of Xie et al. (2017). 521
In the lower development regions”
Revise
As in abstract, add contextualization to conclusions.
Again, avoid the separation…
“Based on the above analysis, some conclusions are given as follows.”
I cannot understand the sentence…
“In the basic regression, command and control environmental regulation promote energy-saving 555 and pollution abatement technological progress.”
I believe authors must revise title, abstract and conclusions sections to better translate what was done and achieved, thus making the text relevant.
This are crucial points of the manuscript that need improvement.
Reading the abstract and conclusions, I cannot understand what was done, and the methodology must be present before main findings
The authors have developed an interesting work. I would like to find a cleared link with sustainability, given the “ Energy- and Environment- Biased Technological 2 Progress” mentioned…
I would need authors to highlight the novelty of this text
I would like to see more references from 2020
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The author partially integrated the suggestions of the Reviewer.
The introduction gained a lot of clarity by including additional information on the current situation in China regarding environmental protection. The author states ‘According to “SDG Index and Dashboards Report 2018”, China ranked 37 54th, with a score of 70.1, and showed an obvious upward trend’ it is rather unclear what is the coverage of the index and the author’s assumption of the obvious upwards trend seems a bit too optimistic.
Table 1 is now better organized and the reviewed conclusions offer interesting insights.
It is also beneficial that the authors included the limitation of the study and future lines of research on the topic.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Highlight changes in yellow in a next revision, please. No track changes.
Consider comments in the entire text.
See that the text needs additional language revision:
“The mechanism are described in Section 3.”
“Which mechanism, context? Worldwide? China?...”
This is not a thesis, remove it:
“The remainder part is structured as follows. Section 2 provides a comprehensive literature review. The mechanism are described in Section 3. Section 4 presents the model and data. Empirical regressions are discussed in Section 5. The conclusions and policy implications are summarized in Section 6.
”
You did not remove blue from Figure 1
“Why blue colour?”
And again:
““Which mechanism, context? Worldwide? China?...”
”
This does not act like references to appear in the final list:
“Thank you foryour suggestions. According to your advice, we added the data sources as notes to all tables and figures.For example:
"Data source from calculations by the authors based on China’s statistical yearbooks, environmental statistical yearbooks, and government work reports."”
Do not duplicate words… “threshold”
“This is not clear language to me:
“Additionally, referring to Hensen (1999), Seo and Shin (2016), and Seo et al. (2019), we”
Response and revision:
According to your advice, we revised the statement to "Additionally, a threshold model, with an economic threshold for the regional heterogeneity in the Chinese economy, was established[89-91]."”
References were NOT clearly added to mathematical data, equations etc, are they all original, not based in known work…?
Immediately before equation number…
See that you mx incorrect reference style “(Canh et al., 2019),” with adtional style, not superscript, have you checked templates?
“Chinese economy, was established[89-91].”
Again:
Add knowledge, do not use the same content… “Figure 1. Mechanism between diversified environmental regulation and induced technological progress. 227”
Your captions are not clear nor enlightening… add content..
“Figure 2. Indicators of environmental regulation.
”
Where? Context, time frame…
This is not enough add reference numbers…
“Note: data sourced from calculations by the authors based on China’s statistical yearbooks, environmental statistical yearbooks, and government work reports.
”
Please avoid the listing, asked before, in conclusions, that does not allow to understand the text, if you list, it is NOT a discussion then…
“5. Results and discussion”
You do it again in conclusion
“The main conclusions are as follows:”
And check numbers…
“(2) System”
“(2) Herein preliminarily”
Very confusing…
This is an international journal and authors do mainly focus on Chinese references…
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors can still try to follow the remaining suggestions included in the report 1 to finalize the paper
Author Response
Thank you for your help suggestions，We have checked the report 1 and added some connection about the Paris Agreement in 2016 in the introduction and suggestions. For example:
"In the 2015 Paris Climate Summit, China said it would cut its carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product by 60-65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030."
You can find more details in the manuscript. We would like to thank you again for your valuable comment. We hope that you will find our response satisfactory.
Reviewer 3 Report
Highlight changes in yellow in a next revision, please. No track changes.
Consider comments in the entire text.
Again, a reference… number… must be assigned to each mentioned yearbook, otherwise, there is… no… reference…
“This does not act like references to appear in the final list:
“Thank you foryour suggestions. According to your advice, we added the data sources as notes to all tables and figures.For example:
"Data source from calculations by the authors based on China’s statistical yearbooks, environmental statistical yearbooks, and government work reports."”
Response and revision:
Thank you for your help suggestions, we revised the date source as follows:
"Data source from calculations by the authors based on China’s statistical yearbooks from 2001-2017, China statistical yearbook on environment from 2001-2017, and Report on the work of the government in China from 2001-2017."”
Reference style in MDPI is not…. Superscript…
“According to Canh et al.[91], 371 Huang et al.[97], Sun et al.[98]”
change
The authors made cosmetic changes, the listing style, strongly to be avoided… was kept. It des not connect content in a meainful way…
It is easy to write like this…
“Please avoid the listing, asked before, in conclusions, that does not allow to understand the text, if you list, it is NOT a discussion then…
(…)
Response and revision:
Thank you to point out these, we checked the paper and revised the corresponding statements to 5
avoid the listing. You can find the details in the manuscript.”
“Firstly, clean”
“Secondly, CCR”
“Thirdly, the”
And then again, to me, this is not comprehensible...
“Firstly, environmental”
“Secondly, system”
And then again…
“Firstly, analysis”
“Secondly, herein”
It compromises the text, which then loses relevance…
Authors must comprehend that this is not a mere detail to an international audience…
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
