Review Reports - Can Urban Greening Construction Improve the Corporate Preventive Environmental Investment? Evidence from China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The research paper "Can Urban greening construction improve the corporate preventive environmental investment? Evidence from China" provides an interesting analysis of the relationship between urban greening construction and corporate environmental investment. The paper presents empirical evidence from Chinese listed companies, using a fixed-effects regression model to examine the impact of urban greening construction on preventive environmental investment. The results show that urban greening construction has a positive and significant effect on corporate environmental investment.

However, the paper could benefit from a more detailed discussion of the mechanisms underlying this relationship. It would be interesting to explore why companies that are located in areas with more green spaces are more likely to invest in preventive environmental measures. Additionally, the study only focuses on Chinese listed companies, which limits the generalizability of the findings to other contexts. Overall, the paper provides valuable insights into the role of urban greening construction in promoting environmental investment, but further research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms at play.

Moreover, few minor improvements are suggested below;

1. The first paragraph written in the introduction section does not contain any citation/reference to support the argument. It is recommended to support the arguments with latest references.

2. The sentence written on line 27 begins with And….. It is recommended ot to begin the sentence with And…

3. Check spacing between the words specially wile providing the citations. See line number 38 containing citations [1]], [2,3]. There is a need to cross check the spacing problem throughout the manuscript.

4. The originality of the research is not written clearly. There is a need to differentiate this research from the already existing studies.

5. Highlight the contributions of this research in the context of green environment, urban green construction and so forth.

6. The methodology section lacks the detailed information about the sample collection and the methods used.

7. It is not clear that by using which sources the authors managed to collect data. What was the firm inclusion criterion?

8. Results are fine.

9. Discussion of results is not presented well. Make a comparison of the results of earlier studies to the results of your study.

10. Overall, the authors have made good effort to conduct this study covered under The National Social Science Fund of China

Needs extensive improvements. Moreover, I have not checked the Plagiarism, it is the duty of the authors to maintain the required levels of Plagiarism.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

Many thanks for the insightful comments and suggestions of the referees. Those comments are all valuable and helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made corresponding revision according to reviewer's advice. We used the “Track Changes”function so that any changes can be easily viewed.

The following answers and revisions I have made in response to the reviewers' questions and suggestions on an item by item basis.

Point 1: The first paragraph written in the introduction section does not contain any citation/reference to support the argument. It is recommended to support the arguments with latest references.

Response 1: Corresponding references are added to the first paragraph (line 29,33), and the introduction is adjusted to make the logic smoother.

Point 2: The sentence written on line 27 begins with And….. It is recommended ot to begin the sentence with And…

Response 2: The corresponding modification has been completed according to the above suggestion（line 27）

Point 3: Check spacing between the words specially wile providing the citations. See line number 38 containing citations [1], [2,3]. There is a need to cross check the spacing problem throughout the manuscript.

Response3: Corresponding modifications have been completed according to the above suggestions.

Point 4: The originality of the research is not written clearly. There is a need to differentiate this research from the already existing studies.

Response 4: In the introduction, the innovation points of this paper are improved(line 94-109).

Point 5: Highlight the contributions of this research in the context of green environment, urban green construction and so forth.

Response 5: The corresponding modification has been completed according to the above suggestion（line 99-104）

Point 6-7: The methodology section lacks the detailed information about the sample collection and the methods used. It is not clear that by using which sources the authors managed to collect data. What was the firm inclusion criterion?

Response 6-7: The data mainly comes from Chinese patent State Intellectual Property Office retrieval system and Chinese Research Data Services(line 241-243).These are relatively authoritative databases that are publicly available in China, and researchers can directly download the relevant data without the need to collect first-hand data.

The research methods are mainly referred to Section 3.1(line191-220).The mediation effect model is used to analyze the internal mechanism. As for the validity of the mediating effect model, the method proposed by Baron and kenny has been recognized to some extent. Many scholars have adopted this method to explore the internal mechanism[1,2], but the research on urban greening construction has not been involved.

Lin H, Zeng S, Liu H, et al. Bridging the gaps or fecklessness? A moderated mediating examination of intermediaries’effects on corporate innovation. Technovation 2020, 94: 102018.[CrossRef]
Alrjoub A M S, Bataineh A, Al-Qudah L A M, et al. The Impact of Quality Costs as a Mediator in the Relationship Between Management Accounting Systems and Financial Performance: the Case of Jordan. International Journal of Professional Business Review 2023, 8(4): e01462-e01462.[CrossRef]

Select Chinese listed companies according to the availability of relevant corporate data (line 267).Data about Chinese listed companies are collected in the above database.

Point 8: Results are fine.

Point 9:Discussion of results is not presented well. Make a comparison of the results of earlier studies to the results of your study.

Response 8: In the conclusion, the similarities and differences between the research conclusions of this paper and other existing studies are explained(line567-594) .

Point 10: Overall, the authors have made good effort to conduct this study covered under The National Social Science Fund of ChinaOverall, the paper provides valuable insights into the role of urban greening construction in promoting environmental investment, but further research is needed to fully understand the mechanisms at play.

Response 10: The discussion section is added and discussed from the perspective of improvement of implementation effect and limitation (line512-548) .

Point 11: A first remark is based on your abbreviations used through entire article. Even though these abbreviations were described in subsection 3.2 on page 5, they must be explained when they first appear in the article. Is the case of figure 1 for PEI description. In the same time, please explain what you have on the y axis and what are the units of measure in this case? You state.... Changes of corporate preventive environmental investment under different greening level .... Could you be more specific?

Response 11: The corresponding modification has been completed according to the above suggestion（line 116-126, Fig1）

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The paper needs some adjustments in order to be ready for publication.

In the Introduction section you have to emphasize the general paper objective and, also some specific goals. This could be correlated with the entire article approach and in relation with the paper outline. Since later in the paper you stated three hypotheses maybe is useful to generate also here some research questions to underline the authors concerns about the topic and the main researches focus.

Now, I will focus on the second section dedicated to the Literature review and hypothesis presentation. A first remark is based on your abbreviations used through entire article. Even though these abbreviations were described in subsection 3.2 on page 5, they must be explained when they first appear in the article. Is the case of figure 1 for PEI description. In the same time, please explain what you have on the y axis and what are the units of measure in this case? You state.... Changes of corporate preventive environmental investment under different greening level .... Could you be more specific?

Afterward, moving to the third section, you specified two empirical models to test all three hypotheses. Can you declare which are the main issues/elements or approaches that support these models? Also can you describe/explain the parameters included in the relationships (1) to (4)? To be honest, is true you declared after the relationship (4) that you refer to the method proposed by Baron and Kenny. This is valid for both empirical models? Why you selected this method?

You used on the line 209 CNRDS database. Could you specify what is the meaning?

Also, in China the enterprises have to pass every year the ISO14001 environmental certification? These certificates are not valid for at least two years? ( lines 200-206)

Looking to the final paper part I would like to ask the authors to insert a section dedicated to Discussions. Here, I would like to ask you to enter some info that could generate some ideas about the implications (theoretical and practical) of this research. I am curious to know if this approach is implementable/or valid in other countries, or, and based on the stated limitations, it is difficult to pronounce such a verdict. There are some specific features in the China case for the mandatory environmental regulations and incentive environmental regulations?

I do not consider that the qualitative level of the English language used in the article is of such a nature as to raise problems. Obviously, there are small spelling errors, inverted letters, left blank spaces, phrases that start with a lowercase letter, or phrases where the word after the comma starts with a capital letter. These problems will be fixed with certainty in the final acceptance part of the paper when spelling and grammar corrections are requested.

A final step before publication is the proofreading stage.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

The following answers and revisions I have made in response to the reviewers' questions and suggestions on an item by item basis.

Point 1: In the Introduction section you have to emphasize the general paper objective and, also some specific goals. This could be correlated with the entire article approach and in relation with the paper outline. Since later in the paper you stated three hypotheses maybe is useful to generate also here some research questions to underline the authors concerns about the topic and the main researches focus.

Response 1: The introduction adds the general objective and specific goals of the paper(line84-89). Adjust and improve the structure of the introduction section to make it logical and consistent with the research hypothesis.

Point 2: A first remark is based on your abbreviations used through entire article. Even though these abbreviations were described in subsection 3.2 on page 5, they must be explained when they first appear in the article. Is the case of figure 1 for PEI description. In the same time, please explain what you have on the y axis and what are the units of measure in this case? You state.... Changes of corporate preventive environmental investment under different greening level .... Could you be more specific?

Response 2: The corresponding modification has been completed according to the above suggestion（line 116-126, Fig1）

Point 3: Can you declare which are the main issues/elements or approaches that support these models? Also can you describe/explain the parameters included in the relationships (1) to (4)? To be honest, is true you declared after the relationship (4) that you refer to the method proposed by Baron and Kenny. This is valid for both empirical models? Why you selected this method?

Response 3: In Section 3.1, we added the meaning of each parameter of the model and explained the relationship between the main parameters and the hypothesis of the paper.

As for the validity of the mediating effect model, the method proposed by Baron and kenny has been recognized to some extent. Many scholars have adopted this method to explore the internal mechanism[1,2], but the research on urban greening construction has not been involved.

Lin H, Zeng S, Liu H, et al. Bridging the gaps or fecklessness? A moderated mediating examination of intermediaries’effects on corporate innovation. Technovation 2020, 94: 102018.[CrossRef]

Alrjoub A M S, Bataineh A, Al-Qudah L A M, et al. The Impact of Quality Costs as a Mediator in the Relationship Between Management Accounting Systems and Financial Performance: the Case of Jordan. International Journal of Professional Business Review 2023, 8(4): e01462-e01462.[CrossRef]

Point 4: You used on the line 209 CNRDS database. Could you specify what is the meaning?

Response 4: Chinese Research Data Services(CNRDS) is a high-quality data platform built by China that integrates economics, finance, business and other fields.

Point 5:in China the enterprises have to pass every year the ISO14001 environmental certification? These certificates are not valid for at least two years? ( lines 200-206)

Response 5: In China, ISO14001 environmental certification is valid for 3 years, but the premise is that the enterprise must pass the annual audit of the certification body, otherwise even in the validity period can not be used normally. To avoid ambiguity, the paper has been modified as follows: If firm i pass the the certification in t year ,and the annual audit is normal, SP is equal to 1; otherwise, it is equal to 0.( lines 234-235)

Point 6:Looking to the final paper part I would like to ask the authors to insert a section dedicated to Discussions. Here, I would like to ask you to enter some info that could generate some ideas about the implications (theoretical and practical) of this research. I am curious to know if this approach is implementable/or valid in other countries, or, and based on the stated limitations, it is difficult to pronounce such a verdict. There are some specific features in the China case for the mandatory environmental regulations and incentive environmental regulations?

Response 6: The discussion section is added and discussed from the perspective of improvement of implementation effect and limitation (line512-548) .

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The responses, comments, changes and additions are satisfactory.

Please make the final checks!

A final proofreading is mandatory.

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

The following answers and revisions I have made in response to the reviewers' questions and suggestions on an item by item basis.

Minor editing of English language required

Response: English language has been polished as required, please review! Thank you!