Can Local Government’s Attention Allocated to Green Innovation Improve the Green Innovation Efficiency?—Evidence from China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Can Local Government’s Attention Allocated to Green Innovation Improve the Green Innovation Efficiency? ——Evidence from China”. (ID: sustainability-1898994). According to these suggestions, we have made the several modifications in the  paper. Our responses to each suggestion for revision are as follows:

 

Point 1: The conclusions seem obvious and do not fit with the analytical rigor of the analysis methodology. They should be specified and aligned with the rest of the paper.

Response 1: We examined and adjusted the structure and presentation of “5.1. Conclusions”, as shown in line 475~495. Relevant documents are as follows：

Environmental protection and knowledge innovation have strong positive externalities and spillover effects. Green innovation has become an important breakthrough point for China to stop the economic downturn and deteriorating environment by promoting sustainable development with low energy consumption and low environmental damage through innovation. This paper embeds the attention-based view into policy implementation, constructs an analytical framework of how LGA-GI affects GIE. Using the panel data of 30 provincial administrative regions in China from 2009 to 2020, we depict the temporal and spatial characteristics of LGA-GI, empirically test the impact of LGA-GI on GIE by two-way fixed effects models, and then compare the effects on the three stages of green innovation. The findings are as follows: (1) The LGA-GI in China from 2009 to 2020 shows a positive development trend with some fluctuations, and spatial distribution has changed from a pattern of "sunken middle" (low LGA-GI in the central region) to "continuous highs with scattered lows". (2) LGA-GI has a significant positive effect on the overall GIE, but there is heterogeneity in different stages of green innovation. Specifically, the promotion effect of LGA-GI is concentrated in the stage of knowledge absorption and commercialization, rather than in the stage of knowledge innovation. The explanations for smaller effect in the knowledge innovation stage may be related to the GDP-oriented official performance assessment and centralized scientific research funding sources in China, and the long-term effect of knowledge innovation have yet to be fully captured.

 

The study findings correspond to the empirical results as follows:

• The first point in the research conclusion (line 485~488) corresponds to "4.1. Temporal and Spatial Distribution of LGA in China" in the empirical results.
• The second point in the research conclusion (line 488~495) corresponds to “4.2. Baseline results” in the empirical results, where line 489indicates the verification results of hypothesis 1(line 394~397) and line 489~492 indicates the verification results of hypothesis 2 (line 397~403) .

 

 

Point 2: Extensive editing of English language and style required.

Response 2: We checked and revised the language throughout the text and marked it in a revised mode.

Reviewer 2 Report

REVIEW of the manuscript titled:

Sustainability-1898994

 Can Local Government’s Attention Allocated to Green Innovation Improve the Green Innovation Efficiency? ——Evidence from China

The subject of the article is in agreement with the section of the journal Sustainability – Environmental Sustainability and Applications. It is specific and descriptive.

The abstract is a concise summary of the research conducted, results obtained, and conclusions reached.

The Introduction presents general information about the chosen subject, makes references to previous studies and presents the author’s hypothesis. Bibliographic references are appropriate to the chosen subject. It also shows how the article is organized.

The main body of the article refers to the mechanism of LGA-GI’s impact on GIE from three perspectives – material resources, administrative authority and supporting policies.

Problem formulation and the processes used to prove the hypothesis are adequate. However, there is a small constraint regarding the source of the data, which is taken only from public documents without investigation by the authors.

The authors also used illustrations to exemplify their ideas and the results obtained. It is noted in the presentation of the results that the authors excluded the data of the regions that are majorly different from the rest of the sample due o their high purchasing power due o autonomous development. The results demonstrate that the conclusions from the basic model are robust. The results are clear and concise by presenting in tables and illustrations.

The conclusion explains what the research has achieved and these are related to the problem stated in the introduction. This section includes a summary of the main findings and implications for the field and provides shortcomings of the solution presented and suggests future areas for research.

The results and conclusions of this article may be useful to other researchers, but they have limited relevance at the national level due o the data source used.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Can Local Government’s Attention Allocated to Green Innovation Improve the Green Innovation Efficiency? ——Evidence from China” (ID: sustainability-1898994). According to these suggestions, we have made several modifications in this paper. Our responses to each suggestion for revision are as follows:

 

Point 1: Problem formulation and the processes used to prove the hypothesis are adequate. However, there is a small constraint regarding the source of the data, which is taken only from public documents without investigation by the authors.

Response 1: Using public documents as the data source to measure government attention is a commonly used method, and we added references in line 273 of “3.2.2. Explanatory Variable”. Supplementary references are as follows：

• Quinn, K.M.; Monroe, B.L.; Colaresi, M.; Crespin, M.H.; Radev, D.R. How to Analyze Political Attention with Minimal Assumptions and Costs. J. Polit. Sci.2010, 54, 209–228, https://doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00427.x.
• Larsen-Price, H.A. The Right Tool for the Job: The Canalization of Presidential Policy Attention by Policy Instrument: Larsen-Price: The Right Tool for the Job. Policy Stud. J.2012, 40, 147–168, doi:10.1111/j.1541-0072.2011.00438.x.
• Shi, C.; Shi, Q.; Guo, F. Environmental Slogans and Action: The Rhetoric of Local Government Work Reports in China. Clean. Prod.2019, 238, 117886, https://doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.117886.
• Cheng, Q.; Kang, J.; Lin, M. Understanding the Evolution of Government Attention in Response to COVID-19 in China: A Topic Modeling Healthcare2021, 9, 898, https://doi:10.3390/healthcare9070898.

 

We agree that adding other data sources, such as surveys and interviews, could improve the measurement of LGA-GI. However, since improving the measurement of local government attention is not a main objective of our research, conducting large scale and long time-span surveys to measure LGA-GI is beyond the scope of our research design and not very feasible due to our personnel and budget constraints.

 

We added a point in lines 523~532 of “5.3. Research prospects” to suggest future research on this issue：

(1) The measurement of local government attention can consider expanding the data sources and discussing the color of discourse. In terms of data sources, how to obtain micro investigation data could be further explored, such as questionnaires or interviews of local government officials, media staff, and social people. Then, the coverage of public documents can be expanded by taking into account leader’s written instructions, interviews with officials, the newspaper articles of provincial party committee, CPPCC proposals, and government work circulars, and finally combining public documents and micro-survey data to measure LGA more comprehensively. In addition, the attention tendency of local government can be further accurately portrayed by examining the expressions of discourse emotion.

 

Point 2: The results and conclusions of this article may be useful to other researchers, but they have limited relevance at the national level due to the data source used.

Response 2: Since the study areas of this study are confined to provinces in China, we agree with your comment that the results and conclusions may not be applicable to other nations and regions. In response to this comment, we address this point in lines 538-541 of "5.3. Research prospects", as follows:

(4) The areas we study in this paper are provinces in China, and whether the findings are applicable to other regions with different political institutions or at different stages of economic development could be further explored in future research.