The Exploration of a Causal Mechanism for Corporate Environmental Performance in Hydropower Engineering Enterprises: Evidence from China and the United States

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The presented research is relevant and fully corresponds to the scope of the journal in its subject matter, content, and results. The study uses an original methodology based on the application of new, dynamically developing research methods. The article has a logical structure and significant and interesting results. Separately, I would like to positively characterize the combination of research methods that allowed the authors to obtain interesting scientific results. Despite the advantages, some questions and points of discussion arose while studying the article. In the introduction, the authors point out, "In previous studies, we have identified three research gaps." But it is not clear on the basis of which papers these research gaps have been identified. Also, Figure 1 requires a more detailed description and justification if it is placed in the introduction. The choice of China and some US basins in the research also requires additional justification (page 2 of the article). The authors point out that "as two major countries in the world, China and the United States play a crucial role in green amd sustainable management of hydropower projects." However, in relation to the choice of hydropower projects, this requires a deeper justification. This is also important because the authors suggest using the same causal relationship diagram (Figure 9), whereas they may differ for different economic systems. Taking into account the difference between the economies (including in terms of regulation) of China and the United States, this requires justification. The literature review was conducted in broad terms, but it is not always clear how the literature analysis influenced further research. In particular, in section 2.1, much attention is paid to the circular economy, but earlier and later this strategy is not considered in detail. Some objects do not have links to sources (for example, table 1).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper entitled "The Exploration of Causal Mechanism of Corporate Environmental Performance in Hydropower Engineering Enterprises: Evidence from China and the United States" represents an interesting comparative study that tackles some serious issues. It uses non-trivial tools to yield meaningful results. The paper can be improved in some fields - please see my comments and suggestions: 

1. A comparison of China and USA needs to be further justified. What about the recent developments after the U.S. presidential elections in November 2024? Some comments need to be added regarding the most recent developments.
2. How and why would climate crises "escalate into more widespread regional security conflicts in the future"? The reference to this statement (which is a way too ambigous) refers to a study of a vertebrate exclusion on leaf liĴer decomposition in the coastal Atlantic forest of southeast Brazil. How are those related?
3. Please refrain from statements such as: "two major countries in the world, China and the United States play a crucial role". Why are they major and in what terms? Economically (certainly not in size)?
4. The number of references is quite low considering that US and China are compared and lots of papers have been written on the specific topic of the paper (hydropower projects) for each country. Section 2 needs to be extended.
5. "This study aims to extract information on groups of event from text corpora" - this is interesting but the "corpora" needs to be specified and described in detail for both US and China. It is not clear how the data has been gathered and processed. Some technical Appendix with the code might be useful perhaps.
6. Is Figure 6 really necessary? It looks very "cool" but the message it conveys is distorted by an attempt to present two Word Cloud diagrams side by side blurred by some "space" background. 
7. Sections 4 and 5 might benefit from some network diagrams that are used for bibliometric analysis (see e.g. VOSviewer). Visually, they are better than the plain text descriptions.
8. Section 6 (Conclusions) need to be written up in order to include real policy implications and pathways for further research.
9. The paper would benefit from the professional proofreading in order to tackle minor flaws and inconsistencies

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Although English is generally fine, the paper would benefit from the professional proofreading in order to tackle minor flaws and inconsistencies

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper has been revised thoroughly following my comments and suggestions. All the remarks have been tackled rigorously and taken care of. However, the authors need to make sure that the English proofreading (especially in the newly inserted parts) has been taken care of. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

So far, there are some strange grammatical constructions and minor flaws in English that come up now and again and this needs to be taken care of. Please engage a professional English proofreader to improve the text of the revised manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Editors and Reviewers:

We would like to express our sincere gratitude for having the opportunity to minor revise our manuscript titled “The Exploration of Causal Mechanism of Corporate Environmental Performance in Hydropower Engineering Enterprises: Evidence from China and the United States”. And we are grateful for the valuable time and insightful comments provided by the reviewers, which are significant to our research. In the following, we conducted comprehensive language polishing and English proofreading for all the content of this article, including the newly revised sections, through the MDPI author service interface. Additionally, we highlighted the modifications throughout the text using red underlines.We have tried our best to make the revisions clearer, and we hope that the revised manuscript meets the requirements for publication.We have tried our best to make the revisions clearer, and we hope that the revised manuscript meets the requirements for publication.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf