Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I read your paper with interest. I find that it touches on an interesting topic and worthy of further study. The topic is potentially interesting to the journal readership, and the empirical case is relevant. However, despite these merits, the paper has some major problems. Some weaknesses exist in the theoretical part, but the empirical part is the most problematic one.

In the introduction, contributions of the study should be explicitly identified and briefly elaborated.

The literature review could be improved by formulating hypothesis (or hypotheses) that are investigated.

Please provide references for the following sentence: “PMC index mehod has become one of the important methods of policy quantitative evaluation research, and its application scope covers many fields such as environmental science, and economics. It can analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a single policy and display the advantages and disadvantages of different policy dimensions through a three-dimensional PMC surface figure”.

What is the role of the paper by Nkoua and Yiqun[24] in the current study? This is not clear to me.

How are indexes in Table 1 calculated?

I do not understand what secondary indexes in Table 1 mean. Are the collected from some source or are they calculated?

What is the difference between Tables 1 and 2? To me, Table 2 is the replication of Table 1.

What is ZR in formula 2? What is T in formula 3?

Based on what are grades assigned to various policies in Table 5?

Extensive editing of English is required. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper has conducted an interesting research work and it is also well-organized.

The English language expression is clear.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is interesting.

Are there any other policy assessment  developed by another country? it would be great including a discussion about that.

-

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

sustainability-2626079:

This paper addresses an interesting problem: quantitative evaluation of carbon reduction policy. This topic is interesting. I think it has the potentials to be considered for publication, but some concerns should be considered before it was processed further:

1. In the introduction part, the authors should provide the contribution of this paper.

2. In section 3, the authors should provide more detail about the advantage of PMC method compared with other methods.

3. In Tab.2, there are some symbol errors.

4. In line 296, “the” maybe a useless word.

 

5. In section 4, the authors should provide more result discussions.

It should be improved.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

1. Why are 12 representative samples of carbon emission reduction policies selected from the 60 policies collected and collated for quantitative evaluation, and how is the representativeness of these policies determined? In other words, what are the selection criteria? In what areas do these policies focus? What are the differences between them? Why were these policies chosen over others?

2. There is a missing period in line 368.

3. The indicator values of the policies in different provinces are both high and low. Is it possible to explain the reasons for the lower indicator values in the light of the specific conditions of each province?

4. The suggestions put forward in the article are rather vague, and it is suggested that more in-depth research should be conducted to give more practical suggestions.

Overall, this article has a valuable topic, clear logic, and is recommended to be slightly modified.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My comments are addressed at a satisfactory level.