The Non-Linear Relationship between Air Pollution, Labor Insurance and Productivity: Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines Approach
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Title could be changed to Non-linear relationship between air pollution, labor insurance and productivity: Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines Approach
Lines 13-14, why do we need to study this topic, This study explores the non-linear relationship between air pollution, social-economic factors including labor insurance, and labor productivity in Taiwan’s industrial sector.
In abstract, State originality of this paper, research gap that this paper fills, academic contributions of the paper.
Abstract should state the connection between pollutants and health insurance.
Line 16, what kind of labor insurance?
Line 39, delete matter
Line 50-51, citation format may not compile with MDPI style.
Cite some articles which are related air pollution: The impact of sustainability awareness and moral values on environmental laws and state what is the research gap that has been filled.
Introduce the few sections at the end of the introduction.
Section 2 title should be Literature review
Data and research method (not methodology) should be separated into two sections.
All figures’ resolution must be raised.
Reduce abbreviations as much as possible, lines 284-289 have too much abbreviations that need us to flip over the pages to find what do these mean. As readers, we are falling short of time to do that but cannot remember too much.
Table 2, where do the values of the numerical figures in the equation come from?
“This study focuses on the interaction between labor productivity, air pollution, and labor insurance.” “This study aims to examine the broader impact of air pollution, insurance and labour productivity.” The first sentences of the two paragraphs may seem the same in the introduction part.
The research methods may not be revealed in the introduction part. This research method and past studies may be revealed in the section with title “research methods” instead.
A brief introduction of the coming sections in this paper may be listed at the end of the introduction part.
Some of the past studies situation may be moved to the literature review part from the introduction part.
The font in the literature review part are different in some lines, the authors should revise them.
The introduction of MARS in the literature review part should be moved to the research methods part.
The title “3. Data and Methodology” may change to “3. Data and research methods” instead.
MARS has been applied in several studies across different fields due to its ability to model and predict efficiently…The author should compare different methods of machine learning such as AutoML, see the paper Predicting Carpark Prices Indices in Hong Kong Using AutoML. Because if we want to say this model is bad or good, we might need to compare to a few models, say AutoML, and others in both literature and data analysis.
What is the total amount of data collected? The author need to show the sample size of this research, and add in the table 1.
“MARS has 168 several advantages over other methods, including its ability to produce simple and interpretable models, measure the contribution of inputs, and computational efficiency [27].” The content in the Literature review part may seem completely the same as in the “3.2 Methodology” part, the authors need to delete one.
Some references may seem a bit outdated, the authors may need to revise them.
Polish English
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Please see the attachment for the responses to the comments.
Thank you.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors:
1) The authors should explain the concept of "labor productivity" for example, labor productivity is a measure of economic performance that compares the amount of output to the amount of labor used to produce this output. In addition, it must be explained how the output and the amount of work required are measured. In addition, specify the time period in which these values are measured (for example, monthly data, year, etc.).
See for example - Irfan, M., Zahoor, H., Abbas, M., & Ali, Y. (2020). Determinants of labor productivity for building projects in Pakistan. Journal of Construction Engineering, Management & Innovation, 3(2), 85-100.
2) Line 193-195 - "By using these data, this study aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of air pollution on the health and productivity of people in Taiwan." In the abstract, you wrote that the purpose of the study is to examine the non-linear relationship between air pollution, socio-economic factors, including labor insurance, and labor productivity in Taiwan's industrial sector.
3) Table 1- Labor productivity index for the industrial sector (2016=100). The mean is 85.496, and the Std. dev is 22.361. The coefficient of variation (CV) is 0.2615, a high value. Authors should address this issue of the CV. In a similar way, the CV must be related and presented to the rest of the data appearing in Table 1.
The coefficient of variation (CV) is defined as the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean.
4) The equations should be numbered as usual.
5) Some Figures are redundant.
6) In the paper, there is no statistical analysis of the results, for example, the correlation coefficient (Pearson correlation coefficient), adjusted coefficient, the level of significance, Pvalue of the regression coefficient, etc.
7) "Monthly data from January 1998 to October 2022 received from various sources" -
The sample size is 57 (or 58 if it includes October 2022). So it includes values taken during the COVID-19 period. The authors must check whether the "Covid-19 values" are not outliers. In my opinion, the background is not well organized. It would be better if the authors first explained the motivation for their study and finally then discussed the problem statement.
8) Make the exposition tight and clear (right now, it is meandering and redundant, particularly in the first part of the paper).
9) The research objectives and methodology should be better explained and motivated.
10) The objectives must be clearly indicated in the abstract.
11) In the conclusions section, the authors should provide a general interpretation of the rustles, the unique contributions of the paper, and the limitations of the research's managerial implications.
12) The authors must add updated articles 3 to 5 references from the journal "Sustainability".
I do hope you find these comments and questions helpful in improving the manuscript.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Please see the attachment for responses to comments.
Thank you
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Introduction, Chen and Kan [1] as well as Chen, et al. [2] has highlighted the harmful effects of air pollution on physical health. What kind of physical health do you refer to here?
Table 1 should add citations, and standardise the font size.
Table 1, Std. dev. Etc should state full names.
Figure 1. Linear model misspecification needs more details, what does that mean by misspecification?
Line 63, 76:54%?
root mean square error needs some more details about what is that.
In research method section, please state what are the methods including Support Vector Machines (SVMs), Principal Component Regression (PCR), Generalized Least Square Model (GLM), and Partial Least Square Model (PLS). The maths models should also be stated.
Comparison of the results of the above models are missing?
Lines 365, what is optimal hyperparameters?
Why Taiwan? Can the results be generalised?
Why only RMSE was tested? How about the other errors? If these are not tested, it can be included as limitation of the research method where future studies may include details of other forms of errors https://uobrep.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10547/625439/20220706084333_79086.pdf?sequence=5&isAllowed=y
Figure 7, state the importance of variables with respect to what dependent variables’ impact, e.g. labour productivity.
Figure 8. state what kind of insurance is that. State full name of PM.
Lines 451-452, state what kind of labor insurance
Line 453, in the industrial sector? Which kind?
Font size and font are different from the rest: mainly PM10, to a level lower than 36.2 μg/m3 can yield a rise in marginal labor 500 productivity compared to when PM10 levels exceed 36.2 μg/m3.
Put limitation to the end of conclusion section.
Some citations should be added about “overfitting, model selection, and parameter choices” and more elaboration is needed.
References of the journal names’ font should be changed.
Some references have missing parts, for example, missing page number for Lofland, J. H.; Frick, K. D., Effect of Health Insurance on Workplace Absenteeism in the U.S. Workforce. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2006, 48 (1).
Zhao, P.; Wang, L.-Y.; Zhao, L., Can Sound Health Insurance Increase the Internal Circulation in the Economy of China? 582 Frontiers in Public Health 2021, 9
Polish English
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We have included our response points addressing the comments made by the reviewers. These response points are attached and provided alongside our revised submission. Thank you.
Best regards,
Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Accept in present form
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
We appreciate your acceptance of our paper. Thank you for considering and approving our submission.
Best regards,
Authors
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Font size of the references need to be standardised and follow MDPI requirements.
Figure 3-5 needs higher resolution.
Minor edit
