The Impact of the Digital Economy on New Energy Vehicle Export Trade: Evidence from China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors- The key contributions and innovation should be clearly presented in Abstract and Conclusion. Some specific results and data should also be given.
- The research motivation is not very clear, and the core content also needs to be compared and analyzed with the current literatures.
- The paper discusses the relevant data from 29 regions, but does not provide specific data sources.
- How can the conclusions and rules discussed in this article be specifically applied? More details about the model implementations and application discussions should be added.
- The conclusion part is too long and needs to be refined. A separate section needs to be added to clearly explain the non-conclusion parts in advance.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article fails to clearly define the research question. From the Introduction, it can be seen that the author studies the impact of the digital economy on industrial global expansion, but this topic is too broad. The author should directly address the relationship between the digital economy and the sales growth of electric vehicles from the outset, instead of making detours. In fact, there are numerous factors influencing the export trade of electric vehicles, with the digital economy being only a minor one. Therefore, I do not recommend publishing this article here. It is suggested that the author revise the paper carefully, identify the problem accurately, and carry out the research accordingly.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAuthors investigate and present the positive association between digital economy growth and NEV exports.
Suggest breaking the research objective into clear bullets rather than a continuous paragraph
Clean up of table 1 to avoid roll over into next page
Authors could caveat the contribution by citing the unique advancement of this work beyond linking 2 disjoint subjects previous decoupled. Pg 11, most of the methods and applications are drawn from prior works, hence the above delineation requested.
Interesting to note fdi is not statis significant in tables 6-8 but regionally speaking, it has a effect esp in western provinces as described in the text preceding table 12.
As it is panel data, the role of time/year, if it could be captured in the model or specific examples like in YYYY, due to policy AAA, this spike or external shocks. This could be pertinent given the trade and tariff negotiations globally.
Request authors to give summary table or gis whatever apt for general reader to know the geography better when talking about regional provinces
Likewise the actual NEV numbers, any summary table, plot showing time series will be really helpful to accompany the regression model outputs and policy implication inferences.
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis paper focuses on impact of the digital economy on China’s new energy vehicle (NEV) exports. This topic has certain practical significance. Overall, the structure of the paper is clear, but there remains several aspects needes to be refined. The suggestions are as follows:
1.Literature Review Section:
I recommend to enrich the discussion of digital economy measurement, to improve this section and lay a more solid foundation for the construction of digital economy measurement indicators in the later analysis.
2.Results Analysis Section:
(1) The data statistics and collinearity test results presented in Sections 5.1–5.3 are not the core content of the analysis. It is suggested to move them to the “Data and Methods” section to make the results analysis more focused on the core research findings and improve the logical coherence of the paper.
(2) I think it's better to add a brief analysis on “China’s digital economy level (based on indicators' measure results) and China’s NEV export performance” in the first part of the results analysis. This would help to indicate both situation and to reveal their relevant relations between digital economy level and China’s NEV export performance.
(3) In terms of heterogeneity analysis, the paper currently adopts an Eastern–Westen-Central regional division. On this basis, I recommend to add further heterogeneity analysis based on the level of digital economy development or NEV export performance in each province. This would reveal the differences in research findings under different contexts more comprehensively.
3. Section 6:
(1) The first conclusion in Section 6.1 does not appear to be a conclusion; rather to be a theoretical contribution of this paper. It is better to add a separate disscussion section to emphasize the contribution of the paper.
(2) The third policy recommendation in Section 6.2 needs to clearerly explain its connection with the regression results. If relevant, the underlying logic should be elaborated in more detail to ensure the pertinence and validity of the policy recommendations.
Author Response
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Reviewer 5 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsSustainability-3738204, Paper Review, Title:
The Impact of the Digital Economy on New Energy Vehicle Ex-2 port Trade: Evidence from China
The manuscript aims to assess the impact of digitalization on new energy vehicle exports. The topic is good and current. The paper needs to be thoroughly reviewed for English improvement. Section 2 is dense and needs to be better presented and explained. The structure of several paragraphs in section 2 are difficult to understand.
Please double check equations 1, 3 and 4.
The paper does not show any input data. There is no word about the type of data and related variables. The data while it said it is contained in the paper; there is no indication about the section / location where the input data is presented. The reader can find from Table 3 that there are 203 observed datapoints.
Many methods are used, entropy, PCA, and many tests. The paper needs to shed some light on these methods and tests and the relevance of one compared to another.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageExamples of quality of English:
Line 13, please review the sentence.
Line 40, please review the sentence.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors（1）The author's response to " I think it's better to add a brief analysis on “China’s digital economy level (based on indicators' measure results) and China’s NEV export performance” in the first part of the results analysis. This would help to indicate both situation and to reveal their relevant relations between digital economy level and China’s NEV export performance " provides only generic statements, which lack convincing power. To improve this, I suggest presenting an numerical description of both two variables acoording to descriptive statistics table 3, followed by correlation table 4 to provide a preliminary numerical description of their relationship.
（2）Figure 2 needs to be more standardized and polished. All tables should have consistent variables and not span multiple pages.
（3）Given the extensive revisions made to the manuscript, it is imperative that the author carefully reads through the entire text multiple times to guarantee its overall coherence and academic rigor.
Author Response
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Reviewer 5 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors have addressed the comments I raised earlier.
Author Response
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