Spatial and Temporal Effects of Digital Technology Development on Carbon Emissions: Evidence from China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The Authors might better clarify the aim of the study and why they select just 30 Chinese provinces, and how these ones were selected.

Author Response

请参阅附件。

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic “Spatial and Temporal Effects of Digital Technology Development on Carbon Emissions: Evidence from China” is very novel to existing literature. Upon reading through the manuscript, I come out with the following report;

1.      The title of the article is remarkable, the presentation is good and it provides several scientific justifications.

2.      The paper should be checked extensively to correct grammatical errors.

3.      The authors were not able to provide their readers with a clear, concise, and sufficient explanation of the problem. They are entreated to clearly outline this aspect in the introduction.

4.      The motivation of the study should also be clearly stated under the introduction.

5.      I detected that, the significance of the paper has not been reported. This should be included in the introduction.

6.      Please, improve upon your literature review. It is very scanty. Contact the following sources to help you write that aspect. The sources must be cited to prevent issues of plagiarism (Doi: 10.1177/01445987211023854; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17671-4

7.      The justifications for the choice of the studied variables must be clearly stated. This is a powerful aspect of paper writing.

8.      Similarly, the reasons for using the period 2011 to 2019 must be clearly outlined under the methodology aspect of the study.

9.      The authors are entreated to check one by one to confirm that all sources indicated in the manuscript have been properly captured in the reference list.

10.  Finally, the paper is very commendable; the subject is interesting and has a wide variety of policy implications. I therefore recommed it to be major revisioned.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The study topic is interesting and can substantiate the development of measures to reduce the effects of carbon emissions.

Authors must consider the following aspects:

- the work will be published at the end of 2022 or beginning of 2023 and the authors, right from the introduction, mention estimates for the year 2020 "China's digital economy would reach $5.4 trillion in 2020, accounting for 38.6% of annual GDP, an increase of 2.4 percentage points year -on-year" - it is indicated either to present the actual achievements compared to the estimates from the mentioned study, or to abandon the respective text (Sentence 2 of the introduction)!

- to specify the source for "The Chinese government has committed to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060" and to indicate the directions of intervention and the implications on the economic structure.

- to indicate the selection criteria of the 30 provinces in China and the degree of representativeness to ensure the solidity of the generalization of the results

- to mention the comparative advantage of using the selected methods (Global Moran Index, SDM, STIRPAT model) compared to other possible ones, used in similar studies as the pursued research objective - to indicate the advantages, limits and usefulness for decision-makers

- in fig. 1, considering that Fig. 1a indicates the interval 2011-2019 and in fig. 1b it is a final year of analysis, we recommend to indicate the extreme years (therefore also 2011) in order to highlight the progress in the analyzed regions. Similar recommendation for Fig 2

- in 5.1 last paragraph, at point 2 has to indicate the timeframe for "the short and long term"; at point 4 it is necessary to indicate the studies are referring to, i.e. the sources for concluding remarks as "existing studies that digital technology development helps reduce carbon emissions in neighboring regions".

- in point 5.2, the policy recommendations are general, they can be formulated without taking into account the analysis carried out by the authors. Therefore, it would be interesting to indicate to what extent the results of the study can define specific action measures, differentiated, for the convergence of programs to reduce the gaps in achieving the objectives of reducing carbon emissions at the regional level.

Also, considering that the time effect was identified and that some analyzes consider only 6 years (Table 4, 180 obs), insufficient time to identify major changes in the analyzed variables without being associated with significant changes in policies, it is necessary to indicate the limits of the significance of the results obtained

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have done a great job. Kudos