The Impact of Environmental Protection Expenditures on Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Questions and comments:

1. The author's statement: "Climate change is a major, imminent threat facing our planet" is declarative. Millennial climate changes on planet Earth do not give grounds for such pessimism of the author. It's not that bad.

2. The empirical model used cannot be verified for adequacy, as this takes a long time.

Author Response

Comment 1: The author's statement: "Climate change is a major, imminent threat facing our planet" is declarative. Millennial climate changes on planet Earth do not give grounds for such pessimism of the author. It's not that bad.

Response: The sentence is revised to address the reviewer's comment. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article makes a significant contribution to the field of environmental economics by examining the impact of government environmental protection expenditures (EPE) on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The study's findings indicate that an increase in EPE is associated with a reduction in GHG emissions, confirming the effectiveness of government spending in combating climate change. However, the article has several limitations that could be improved to enhance its scientific value.

The author uses a general EPE indicator as a percentage of GDP but does not specify which types of expenditures are included in this category (e.g., spending on renewable energy, biodiversity protection, waste management, etc.).

The article does not account for time lags between increases in EPE and reductions in GHG emissions. The effect of environmental protection expenditures may manifest with a delay.

The article does not conduct an analysis of differences between regions (e.g., developed vs. developing countries), although such differences could be significant.

The references list is quite limited, and the author is recommended to add more citations to newer articles focused on GHG emissions and their impact on climate change. Here are some articles the author should consider:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173359
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02032-z
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.119978
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173895

Author Response

Comment: What types of expenditures are included in EPE?

Reply: An explanation is provided: "EPEs include expenditures on activities for pollution abatement, protection of biodiversity landscape, waste and wastewater management."

Comment: The article does not account for time lags between increases in EPE and reductions in GHG emissions. 

Reply: I have introduced one year time lag to the regression analysis; however, the results didn't change.

Comment: The article does not conduct an analysis of differences between regions (e.g., developed vs. developing countries), although such differences could be significant.

Reply: In order to examine the income effect, I dropped low income countries from the data and ran the numbers only for higher income countries. However, the results didn't change.  

Comment: The references list is quite limited, and the author is recommended to add more citations to newer articles focused on GHG emissions and their impact on climate change. 

Reply: Thank you for the suggestions; more citations are added. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article explores the impact of environmental protection expenditures (EPE) on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, analyzing data from 117 countries between 2000 and 2023. The study finds that EPE is negatively correlated with GHG emissions, indicating that increased EPE helps reduce GHG emissions. It also reveals an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) relationship between economic development levels (measured by GDP per capita) and GHG emissions, where emissions increase with GDP per capita up to a certain point and then decrease. Additionally, the relationship between urban population and GHG emissions is inconsistent across different models, and trade openness does not significantly impact GHG emissions. The article is innovative to some extent, but there are still some issues that need further improvement, as follows:

1. When introducing the data, it is necessary to provide a more detailed explanation of the data collection methods and data quality control measures to enhance the credibility of the study.
2. When describing the model, it is essential to further discuss the rationality of the model assumptions. For example, the independence assumption of the error term may be influenced by certain factors, such as international environmental policy coordination.
3. In terms of control variable selection, it is advisable to consider adding other variables that may affect GHG emissions, such as energy structure and technological level, to more comprehensively control for potential confounding factors.
4. In the conclusion section, it is necessary to propose more specific policy recommendations based on the research results, such as how to optimize the allocation and use of EPE to more effectively reduce GHG emissions.

Author Response

Comment:  When introducing the data, it is necessary to provide a more detailed explanation of the data collection methods and data quality control measures to enhance the credibility of the study.

Reply: Thank you for the suggestion. More information is added on data collection and quality. In addition, Annex 1 provides information about data sources.

Comment: When describing the model, it is essential to further discuss the rationality of the model assumptions. For example, the independence assumption of the error term may be influenced by certain factors, such as international environmental policy coordination.

Reply: Thank you for the comment. Further discussions are added on the assumption of the independence of the error term.

Comment:  In terms of control variable selection, it is advisable to consider adding other variables that may affect GHG emissions, such as energy structure and technological level, to more comprehensively control for potential confounding factors.

Reply: Thank for this valuable suggestion. Additional regressions are run to control for six other variables on the energy structure, which turned out to be statistically highly significant.

Comment: In the conclusion section, it is necessary to propose more specific policy recommendations based on the research results, such as how to optimize the allocation and use of EPE to more effectively reduce GHG emissions.

Reply: Thank you. The conclusion section is rewritten to reflect recommendations based on empirical findings. 

 

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author must expand the research.
It currently has a good literature review, findings, data, recommendations, and conclusion, but the overall quality will be higher if the article's author expands on all the structural parts. 
The author can create a few figures for the readers to understand the results better. Also, if the material has figures, some trends can be better pointed.
Currently, the material doesn't have any figures, just tables.
The author can also use and add more references.
The material needs better formatting. For instance, the reference part has different styles of the text.
The information from Annex 2 should be shown in the main text.
The text in Annex 1 must be explained in a different (more scientific) style or deleted.
After all the corrections, I believe the article will be more scientific, better quality, and include more findings and recommendations, as well as data in tables and figures.

Author Response

Comment: Expanding the research.

Reply: Thank you for the suggestion, the research has been expanded. More recent work is cited.

Comment: Creating figures.

Reply: Thank you for the suggestion; figure 1 is added. 

Comment: Formatting.

Reply: Thank you for catching the formatting issue in the reference list; it's fixed.

Comment: Deleting Annex 2 and reformatting Annex 1.

Reply: Thank you for the suggestion. The list of countries is moved to the main text and Annex 2 is deleted. Annex 1 is reformatted making it more scientific. 

Comment: Adding more references.

Reply: Thank you for suggestions; more references are added. 

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The overall quality of the research after the first review process is higher.

I can see clearly the changes from the author.

The research now is more scientific.

The article is expanded.

It also has new figure/figures.

I see the changes in the formatting.

The annexes are edited.

The material has new references.

To improve a little bit more the article, the author can do the following details (only if it is possible):

• The abstract part can be slightly expanded or combined better with the highlights.
• The introduction part can be slightly expanded.
• Remove the unnecessary underlining in the references part.

Success!