Decisions on Pricing, Sustainability Effort, and Carbon Cap under Wholesale Price and Cost-Sharing Contracts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The work presented is very interesting, however, there are several aspects that need to be improved.

It is recommended to review this work to complement its theoretical review in the section where corporate social responsibility is mentioned.

Velazquez-Cazares, M. G., Leon-Castro, E., Blanco-Mesa, F., & Alvarado-Altamirano, S. (2021). The ordered weighted average corporate social responsibility. Kybernetes, 50(2), 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-01-2019-0060

The authors show several mathematical proofs or applications to support their proposal, but it is not clear what they wish to contribute. It is recommended to expand the discussion on their central point which is the “equilibrium decisions about pricing and sustainability efforts in a supply chain under a wholesale price contract and a cost-sharing contract”. This would be important to show the main advantages, implications, and challenges for future research. With this discussion, the conclusions of the paper can be greatly improved.

English should be improved you should er more academic. Avoid the use of the first person I or We or our or us and so on.

Author Response

Manuscript ID: sustainability-1657811 (Article)
Title: Decisions on Pricing, Sustainability Effort, and Carbon Cap under Wholesale Price and Cost-Sharing Contracts
Authors: Dooho Lee and Jong-Chul Yoon

We would like to express our gratitude with respect to the reviewers’ helpful comments. All of the changes, including several minor alterations, made in this revision appear in red color. This was done to enable reviewers to easily find out the changes.
The comments of the reviewers and our revision are summarized below:

Reviewer 1
1. It is recommended to review this work to complement its theoretical review in the section where corporate social responsibility is mentioned.

Velazquez-Cazares, M. G., Leon-Castro, E., Blanco-Mesa, F., & Alvarado-Altamirano, S. (2021). The ordered weighted average corporate social responsibility. Kybernetes, 50(2), 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-01-2019-0060
→ We added Velazquez-Cazares et al. [6] in lines 65-69 and described the definition and importance of corporate social responsibility.

2. The authors show several mathematical proofs or applications to support their proposal, but it is not clear what they wish to contribute. It is recommended to expand the discussion on their central point which is the “equilibrium decisions about pricing and sustainability efforts in a supply chain under a wholesale price contract and a cost-sharing contract”. This would be important to show the main advantages, implications, and challenges for future research. With this discussion, the conclusions of the paper can be greatly improved.
→ We modified lines 493-509 and lines 608-617 to reflect Reviewer 1’s comments. In corrected part, we emphasized on the advantages of a cost-sharing contract and urged the improvement of the legal system related to cost-sharing contracts.

3. English should be improved you should be more academic. Avoid the use of the first person I or We or our or us and so on.
→ Our draft was once again run through MDPI English editing service.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting article. After reading it, I found the following aspects related to:

1. Abstract. The abstract is well presented and clearly presents the main purpose of the research indicating the results and conclusions of the study.

2. Introduction. The introduction - a bit long - is well structured indicating the lack of the subject and the need for its investigation by the authors starting from the research questions.

3. Literature review. The first three subsections fit very well in the context treated except subsection 2.4. Research gap. In my opinion, this subsection should link to the Research Methodology section that I did not identify as the main structure of the article. I suggest the authors introduce this section Research methodology.

4. Problem description. This section should be renamed Research Methodology and should cover the method used to investigate the chosen topic. The authors do not specify the source of the data used (including the source of the graphs). Although the authors provide some information, this is not enough for the reader to realize which method is used for research. I suggest the authors clarify this issue. Section 4. Equilibrium Analysis with the Given Carbon Cap and Section 5. Government’s Optimal Decision on Carbon Cap should be part of a separate section called Analysis and Interpretation of Results. I suggest the authors to do this.

5. Conclusions. The authors briefly present the results obtained, the limitations of their study but also some recommendations. 

Author Response

Manuscript ID: sustainability-1657811 (Article)
Title: Decisions on Pricing, Sustainability Effort, and Carbon Cap under Wholesale Price and Cost-Sharing Contracts
Authors: Dooho Lee and Jong-Chul Yoon

We would like to express our gratitude with respect to the reviewers’ helpful comments. All of the changes, including several minor alterations, made in this revision appear in red color. This was done to enable reviewers to easily find out the changes.
The comments of the reviewers and our revision are summarized below:

Reviewer 2
1. Abstract. The abstract is well presented and clearly presents the main purpose of the research indicating the results and conclusions of the study.
→ Thank you.

2. Introduction. The introduction - a bit long - is well structured indicating the lack of the subject and the need for its investigation by the authors starting from the research questions.
→ Thank you.

3. Literature review. The first three subsections fit very well in the context treated except subsection 2.4. Research gap. In my opinion, this subsection should link to the Research Methodology section that I did not identify as the main structure of the article. I suggest the authors introduce this section Research methodology.
→ We added new section: Research Methodology (Section 3).

4. Problem description. This section should be renamed Research Methodology and should cover the method used to investigate the chosen topic. Section 4. Equilibrium Analysis with the Given Carbon Cap and Section 5. Government’s Optimal Decision on Carbon Cap should be part of a separate section called Analysis and Interpretation of Results. I suggest the authors to do this.
→ We added new section: Analysis and interpretation of Results (Section 4). Thus, our draft is organized as follows: Introduction (Section 1), Literature Review (Section 2), Research Methodology (Section 3), Analysis and interpretation of Results (Section 4), and Conclusion (Section 5).

5. The authors do not specify the source of the data used (including the source of the graphs). Although the authors provide some information, this is not enough for the reader to realize which method is used for research. I suggest the authors clarify this issue.
→ Our numerical examples were based on artificially simulated parameter settings. Under these settings, we obtained simulation data and depicted them in Figures 1 – 6. We clarified this issue at the beginning of Section 4 (lines 337-340).

6. Conclusions. The authors briefly present the results obtained, the limitations of their study but also some recommendations.
→ We shortened the conclusion section as Reviewer 2 suggested.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf