Assessment of Eco-Innovation Drivers within the Informal Sector in Ghana

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Would you please review the "Remarks" columns in Table 6? For instance, line number 519 reveals that Hypothesis 5 is also accepted because hometown identity has a positive effect on Ghanaian eco-Innovation Performance (????= 0.148**; p-value = 0.009 < 0.05) and is statistical significance at 5% significance level 2- tailed test. 

In this case, the test statistics lie in the rejection region and the null hypothesis should be rejected at a 5% level of significance. You used the same logic for all five hypotheses. Would you please review this basic hypothesis testing procedure? 

Further, line numbers (508 and 509) need to be fixed. I could not see the organisation of the paper at the end of the Introduction section. Please ensure that the estimates are efficient and unbiased. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presents an interesting research aimed at identifying eco-innovation drivers of small medium enterprises (SMEs) in the informal sector in Ghana, enriching the empirical literature within the context of a developing country. It highlights a great review effort of research and data statistical compilation but requires some more explanations and grammar corrections to be complete. 

There are growing concerns about the state of the natural environment due to the negative impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, inefficiency in natural resource and waste management as well as the devastating impacts of pollution among many others. In view of the urgency of the environmental challenges, emerging and developing countries, especially from Africa, need to build their capacities for researching, inventing, adapting or adopting new technologies to counter these challenges.

As the authors mentioned, many studies have focused on the determinants of eco-innovations within firms in industrial countries, while only a few elements are known concerning developing countries. Thus, it is important to better understand drivers to environmental innovation for a country like Ghana with a predominant SMEs in the informal sector. For the article, the authors proposed 5 hypotheses to change that, but using methods from European researchers, adapted to local circumstances in order to create added value. The parameters constructed by western literature about motivation or strategy to eco-innovate are mostly validated in the article and linked to 3 of the validated hypotheses.

Still, 2 of the hypotheses proposed by authors for deeper understanding the drivers of eco-innovation in the informal sector in Ghana were rejected, so will not prevent the over-generalizations, normally met in the case of literature for developing countries and which was stated as purpose for the article.

In terms of suggestions for the author:

For the 2 hypotheses rejected, at least a paragraph should appear in the discussion section to explain this rejection and to justify their space occupied in the article.  

Moreover, the hypothesis were not correlated with the data obtained from Table 2 - Profile of respondents - to make an advanced correlation with age, sex, level of education, in order to justify its presence and to create a better understanding of the influence, internally, in terms of these factors on the eco-innovation process. Maybe the education is important, or age to the process. Those connections could add massive data for “proposals about the importance of the entrepreneur's vision and values on the intensity of commitment to environmental innovation” as the authors stated.

From a reader point of view, the focus is lost on the topic “in order to assess of Eco-innovation drivers within the Informal sector in Ghana” in the presentation of statistical processes due to lack of explanations. There are a lot of statistical data Confirmatory factor analysis, HTMT ratio, that show great effort from the authors that confirms the all the 5 hypothesis, but without explanation of the data (2-3 lines). For example, the authors present the bootstrapping approach with 1562 resamples (why 1562 and why this method?), table 5 with Model fitness indices like GFI, NFI, RFI, IFI without explanations for abbreviations, that show that all hypotheses were supported. Then Parameter estimation section for proposed model table is presented with variables like βuns, βs without formulas or explanation through which they reject 2 of the hypotheses. In the latter some more questions arrise like how do we measure a „unit increase” in regulations / hometown identity? These oversights need to be addressed also.

Grammar Suggestions  for the author

·         Line 18- just 60% of the hypothesis were accepted so I suggest to replace “validated” with the word “tested” or similar that shows the actual results, since the whole conceptual framework was not validated entirely;

·         Line 35-36 - Africa 2024 (STISA-2024),' endorsed by the African 35 Union in 2014- as the text is understood, recent policies from 2020-2024 were endorsed 6 years before, in 2014? Before being published? from the past? Please rephrase to add sense to the sentence;

·         Line 37 - Please remove the blank space after “eco-“;

·         Line 37 - Could the author correct from „was first defines” to "was first defined" to properly use the past tense;

·         Line 47-49 - Could the author please rephrase “While large firms on the grounds that, they structure whole sections of the economy and that, by the volume of their activities, are a key player in sustainable development policies”, to add sense to the phrase like: “While large firms structure whole sections of the economy and, by the volume of their activities, are a key player in sustainable development policies....”, or similar because in the initial text seems like something is missing and losing sense;

·    Line 56 - Could the author please add”,” to increase the understanding the text;

·  Line 56 - Could the author please remove blank space for adequate grammar punctuation

·         Line 65 - Could the author please remove blank space for adequate grammar punctuation

·    Line 68 - Could the author please change “global” term since global=worldwide /intercontinental, to something more appropriate like “integrated/ fused” or similar since Ghana has a local informal economy;

·         Line 70 - Could the author please correct “the less formalized the management” to “the less formalized the management is” to add a verb to this part of the phrase;

·         Line 81 - Could the author please change”;” to “:” the understanding the text for adequate grammar;

·         Line 82 - Could the author please remove blank space for adequate grammar punctuation;

·         Line 82 - Could the author please remove double blank space for correctness;

·         Line 83 - Could the author please correct “improved” to “improve” for adequate verb articulation

·         Line 85 - Could the author please change”;” to “:” for adequate grammar punctuation;

·         Line 85 - Could the author please remove blank space for adequate grammar punctuation;

·         Line 114 - Could the author please remove double blank space for correctness;

·         Line 120 - Could the author please correct “result” to “results” for adequate verb articulation;

·         Line 122 - Could the author please correct “sanctioned” to “sanctions” for adequate noun articulation;

·         Line 128- Could the author please please remove the "." in the middle of the sentence;

·         Line 129 - Could the author please correct “sanctioned” to “sanctions” for adequate noun articulation;

·         Line 132 - Could the author please correct to “Ghanaian informal sector/ Ghana's informal sector / Ghana, informal sector

·         Line 136- Could the author please please correct “according a novel” to “according to a novel” for adequate noun articulation;

·         Line 137- explained in the intro section

·         Line 137 - Could the author please correct “we hypothesis” to “we hypothesize” for adequate verb not noun;

·         Line 151 - Could the author please remove double blank space for correctness;

·         Line 154- Could the author please please correct “has been” to “have been” for adequate grammar;

·         Line 173- Could the author please please add “,” to increase degree of reading;

·         Line 173- Could the author please please add “s” for adequate noun articulation;

·         Line 184 - Could the author please remove blank space for adequate grammar punctuation;

·         Line 184 - Could the author please correct “combine” to “combined” for adequate verb articulation;

·         Line 222 - Could the author please correct “fims” to “firms” for adequate noun writing;

·         Line 240/261 - Could the author please remove double blank space for correctness;

·         Line 285-286 - Could the author please use the same text dimensions in this section

·         Line 310- Could the author please please add “behaviour / values / intentions” or similar are to increase degree of reading;

·         Line 372 - Could the author please correct “aimed” since it was 10 years ago adopted

·         Line 392 - Could the author please remove “enterprise registration status,” since it was already mentioned before;

·         Line 395 - Could the author please correct “survey” to “surveyed” for adequate verb writing;

·         Line 396 - please add space between text

·         Line 403 - Could the author please correct “was” to “were” for adequate verb writing;

·         Line 417 - Could the author please correct „least pollution”  correct to „less pollution”  

·         Line 423 - Could the author please remove “:” for correctness since nothing is enumerated;

·         Line 438 - Could the author please add “;” or “.” for correctness since is starts a next sentence

·         Line 442 - Could the author please correct „was”  correct to „were”  for adequate verb use in plural;

·      Line 492/493 - Could the author please remove double blank space for correctness

·     Line 546 - Could the author please correct. „Theoritical and parctical Contributions” to „Teoretical and practical Contributions”

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

consent of Enterpreneur must be added to reslve ethical issues. Result part is not cleared stepwise analysis and sample calculation must be added. A table with recent literatures must be added.

Add some literatures 

Investigation of influential factors of green supply chain management in Indian mining industries: An empirical study

Thermal Power Sector Sustainability

A framework for assessment of SSCM strategies with respect to sustainability performance: An Indian thermal power sector perspective

Add future scope and limitation of wok.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx