Does Policy Synergy Improve Ecological Resilience? Evidence from Smart City and Low-Carbon Pilots in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

I have read your manuscript very carefully. At the beginning of my review, I would like to state that this is a topic suitable for this scientific journal, as well as beneficial for both theory and practice. After analyzing the originality control protocol, I conclude that this is an original work, partial similarities with other works are absolutely negligible.

I have several comments and recommendations regarding the content of the manuscript. I believe that not all of its parts fully comply with the requirements of the instructions for authors published on the website of this scientific journal.

I recommend that you do the following:

The abstract, which is 139 words long, is short and does not sufficiently characterize the manuscript. Its primary task is to interest the reader and contain a clear goal, the scientific research methods used, the results and conclusions (recommendations). In my opinion, it would be appropriate for the abstract to also mention the sources/data used, from which you drew knowledge and performed calculations. I do not recommend using abbreviations such as (ER, DID) in the abstract. MDPI does not charge fees for the scope and for this reason I would not use abbreviations at all in the text, or at most in tables and graphs where the scope of the text is objectively limited.

I recommend sorting keywords or, in this case, key phrases alphabetically.

The introduction, which I appreciate, correctly and concisely places your scientific study in the issue and especially emphasizes its importance. Consider whether to leave the tested hypotheses in the second chapter (lines 160,161,162), but do not use the abbreviations ER here. Given its scope, some parts would be moved to subsection 2.1, which represents the theoretical basis.

Subsection 2.1 is without any references to the sources used, which must be removed, or This chapter, also considering the title of the second chapter, should be supplemented with a theoretical basis containing works by foreign authors in order to achieve a stronger text and higher added scientific value. I recommend, for example, to focus attention on the relationship between the integration of Industry 4.0 and automated vehicles into the concept of smart cities, as this is a current topic in urban urbanization and technological innovations in cities. Based on this knowledge, I recommend supplementing the theoretical basis and therefore the number of sources with several current open access works from the field of construction, development of smart cities and villages, road infrastructure included in the world scientific databases WoS and Scopus, such as:

Kaššaj, Michal, and Tomáš Peráček. 2024. Synergies and Potential of Industry 4.0 and Automated Vehicles in Smart City Infrastructure. Applied Sciences, 14 (9): 3575. https://doi.org/10.3390/app14093575

Funta, Rastislav. 2021 Automated Driving and Data Protection: Some Remarks on Fundamental Rights and Privacy. Krytyka Prawa, 13(4), pp. 106–118, doi: 10.7206/kp.2080-1084.495

You mention it in the third chapter (lines 203 and 204 - We select sample cities from Annual Urban Statistical Yearbook in China during the 203 period from 2005 to 2022.) However, there is no reference to these official sources in the references or in the text, e.g. the Chinese Statistical Office. In no case can one be satisfied with data taken from other works of the authors you cited.

However, this chapter is really extremely extensive and thorough. However, focus your attention only on the basic scientific methods of investigation such as analysis, synthesis, deduction, comparison, induction, including their brief description and justification of their use for each chapter of the manuscript. An example and inspiration is the scientific work Kaššaj & Peráček (2024), already recommended above.

Since the manuscript lacks a Discussion chapter, I recommend adding the discussion to the fifth chapter. This will add its title to Discussion and Conclusion. The chapter thus edited should contain a clear confirmation/rejection of the three hypotheses set out in lines 160, 161 and 162, even for a layman. Finally, I recommend adding this chapter to the limits of the research as well as the possibilities of your potential future research in this area.

Author Response

We very much appreciate that you provided us with this revision and resubmission opportunity. We are also grateful for the thoughtful and perceptive comments and suggestions. We have carefully reviewed the comments and revised the paper accordingly, and please refer to the attachment for details of the revisions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for your manuscript. The abstract must be rewritten, it is not very scientific to present classifications 1,2,3 and especially in the abstract. The relevance of the topic is presented and justified in the introduction, but it is not clear how the authors deal with the research gap, because this is more of a practical problem, not a research one. Usually, scientific literature is a guide for us in determining the research gap. There is a lack of a goal, research questions. There is no separate section for literature analysis on smart cities, here the author can definitely use sources from the Sustainability journal: Mills, D.; Pudney, S.; Pevcin, P.; Dvorak, J. Evidence-Based Public Policy Decision-Making in Smart Cities: Does Extant Theory Support Achievement of City Sustainability Objectives? Sustainability 2022, 14, 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14010003 and Kruhlov, V.; Dvorak, J. Social Inclusivity in the Smart City Governance: Overcoming the Digital Divide. Sustainability 2025, 17, 5735. https://doi.org/10.3390/su17135735 The logic of combining policy background and hypothesis is not very clear. Because policy background is more about the context, and policy hypothesis includes methodology. There is no scientific justification for why policy needed to be studied. Also, the authors did not provide a discussion, the conclusions do not show how the authors contribute to the development of the theory, what policy implications, what future research could be.

Author Response

We very much appreciate that you provided us with this revision and resubmission opportunity. We are also grateful for the thoughtful and perceptive comments and suggestions. We have carefully reviewed the comments and revised the paper accordingly, and please refer to the attachment for details of the revisions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Lines 20–41: The introduction is long before the research gap is stated. The gap (lack of focus on ER and policy synergy) only becomes explicit around lines 67–79. Suggest moving those lines up earlier.

Lines 54–66: When citing contradictory findings (smart-city pilots have positive vs. no effect), expand why such differences exist (data, methodology, regional contexts).

Lines 67–79: The claim that little attention is paid to synergy could be supported by including a couple of international references. Right now, it is all China-focused.

Lines 182–191 (Table 1): Indicators of ecological resilience are listed, but no justification for their selection. Add 1–2 sentences explaining why these capture resistance, adaptability, and recovery.

Lines 225–235 (parallel trend test): The text mentions the assumption but the explanation is minimal. Expand interpretation of Figure 1 (what do the coefficients mean, why does it support the assumption?).

Lines 203–207 (data handling): Linear interpolation of missing data is mentioned briefly. This could bias results. Add a note explaining why this is acceptable and whether robustness checks were done.

Lines 335–347: Policy implications are framed only for China. Add 2–3 sentences connecting findings to global low-carbon/smart-city strategies.

Figure 1 (Line 237): Caption should explain clearly what each coefficient and CI represent.

Author Response

We very much appreciate that you provided us with this revision and resubmission opportunity. We are also grateful for the thoughtful and perceptive comments and suggestions. We have carefully reviewed the comments and revised the paper accordingly, and please refer to the attachment for details of the revisions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Based on the changes made, I agree to publish the manuscript.

Best regards, Reviewer

Author Response

We are especially grateful for your previous practical suggestions and comments, which have greatly contributed to improving the quality of our paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Many thanks for updates.

all the best 

Author Response

We are especially grateful for your previous practical suggestions and comments, which have greatly contributed to improving the quality of our paper.