Can the Low-Carbon Transition Impact the Urban–Rural Income Gap? Empirical Evidence from the Low-Carbon City Pilot Policy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1.  Abstract: line [15] TREND !!

2.    Introduction: Involved study's background. Chen (2021) : Author cites him self ! The some : Zhang et al. (2022).

3. Literature review : Is stuctrured. But there is more authors' citations  ( i.e : Zhang and Chen (2015) ; He and Zhang (2022) 

Teil index 260 (????) : is more better than GINI index ( like the argument of the authors in this paper). It is more logical to the line [263 -269 ] in appendex.

Hypothesis 1 : .......? ( Just H1a +H1b)

Hypothesis 2 : is  very long ( restructre it)

Hypothesis 3 : idem ( restructre it)

4. Findings :

Moderating variables : can improved.

Statistical Software used: to mention it

Heterogeneous analysis :  Author " divides the sample into eastern, central and western regions to explore the heterogeneous 544 effects of establishing low-carbon cities in different regions on the urban-rural income 545 gap". It must more important to make comparaision before and after this DIVISION ( statistaical significance).

5.  Ther is messing HYPOTHESES validation TABLE?

It means, to indicate after evry study, the acceptance/reject of the 3 theritical HYPOTHESES. 

6. Study Limitation :  like any research study, there are some limitation to announce them for further future papers.

Finally,

Please,  revise the paper according the comments and upload again.

Good luck dear authors.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewers.
Thank you very much for your professional guidance and suggestions, which helped this article a lot. Please see the attachment.
Best wishes
Zongbin Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I am pleased to review the manuscript. The authors have done well in structuring their study. Overall, the sections are elaborately written. Please see the attachment for further details

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewers.
Thank you very much for your professional guidance and suggestions, which helped this article a lot. Please see the attachment.
Best wishes
Zongbin Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper examines the effect of Low-carbon city pilot on the urban-rural income gap. It is difficult to justify the rationale and motivation for conducting the research. Meanwhile, the explanation for the results is unconvincing. Specifically, the following problems exist:

1.   The abstract is too simple. It is recommended to reformulation the abstract so that the reader understands the significance of your research.

2.   The logic of the introduction is not clear, and the motivation of the research is not clear enough. The relationship between environmental regulations and income inequality needs to be clarified by providing more context and background information. Research questions and research objectives need to be highlighted.

3.   The literature review discusses the environmental and economic effects of low-carbon city policies and the influencing factors of urban-rural income gap. However, research on the impact of low-carbon cities on urban-rural income gap is needed. The literature review is insufficient to support the arguments in this paper.

4.    In Section 4.2, equation (1) “did” should not be taken directly as an explanatory variable. It is recommended to refer to other papers using the difference in difference model. In Equations (2) - (5), the setting of the mediation model examines the nonlinear effects of employment and innovation on urban-rural income gaps. It is necessary to support the nonlinear mediation model from literature and theory.

5.   From the table 2, LCCPS increase the urban-rural income gap. However, in lines 474-477, the discussion is interpreted to verify the hypothesis that LCCPS have a negative impact on the income gap.

6.   In the discussion of structural effect, there is a U-shaped relationship between employment structure and urban-rural income gap. This means with the adjustment of employment structure, the urban-rural income gap fell first and then rose. This is contrary to the explanation in the text.

The explanation for the innovation effect is also the opposite of the result.

7.   Most of the variables used in this paper are macroeconomic variables, which may cause endogeneity problems. However, this paper lacks the test of endogeneity.

8.   Other minor errors:

   - In line 221, “the coefficients of output elasticity of The coefficients of output elasticity of”, a repeat. 

       - In the policy recommendations, the first is followed by the third, and the second is missing.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers.
Thank you very much for your professional guidance and suggestions, which helped this article a lot. Please see the attachment.
Best wishes
Zongbin Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

After reading this interesting research paper, I suggest the following improvements to the authors:

- do not write the equation "above" or "below", number all equations

- some variables in the equations are not explained in the text

-line 248, you cannot start the sentence with "? = 1，2 denote urban and rural areas...."

-edit the equations, because from line 262 to line 270, pretty much everything is messed up

- proofreading is required

The methodology is clearly described and well done, the empirical results of this work are of great importance to the academic and real sectors. After correcting these few minor comments, I propose the publication of this work.

Author Response

Dear Reviewers.
Thank you very much for your professional guidance and suggestions, which helped this article a lot. Since my response has equations in it, they cannot be displayed in the shortcut dialog box. Therefore, please see the attachment.
Best wishes
Zongbin Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

I think the manuscript has been sufficiently improved to publication in Sustainability.