How Do Innovation-Driven Policies Affect Urban Green Land Use Efficiency? Evidence from China’s Innovative City Pilot Policy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments:

I am honored to have received the invitation from your esteemed journal to review this paper.  After carefully reviewing this paper, I believe that, overall, the research perspective demonstrates a certain degree of innovation, the theoretical foundation is solid, the research methodology is reasonably well-justified, and the content of the paper is sufficiently rich.  It is a commendable academic research paper. Therefore, I recommend accepting the paper for publication after addressing the following six areas for improvement.

1.The introduction lacks a clear and straightforward explanation of the research motivation of this paper and its main contributions to the academic field.

2.Authors need to carefully check and adjust the reference format to ensure consistency with the journal layout requirements.

3.Some sentences in the text are overly long and not clearly expressed. It is recommended to carefully review the entire document and refine the language to ensure precision in written communication.

4.The figure 2 in the paper is not clear enough. It is recommended to redraw it, remove the border, and use a clearer and more straightforward map.

5.Potential biases in the multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model have not been adequately addressed. Although the paper employs heterogeneity-robust estimation methods as proposed by Sun & Abraham (2021), it does not discuss the issue of 'negative weights' caused by dynamic time weights and overlapping treatment groups. It is recommended to supplement the analysis with the Goodman-Bacon decomposition to examine the differences in effects across different treatment timing groups.

6.The conclusion and implications section is relatively thin and lacks further consideration of the following issues: on the one hand, the contribution of this study to the relevant research field; on the other hand, the potential limitations of this study and the outlook for future research.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The author should pay attention to the English writing and expressions, make necessray language polish.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper explores the effect of China’s Innovative City Pilot Policy (ICPP) on Green Land Use Efficiency (GLUE) using panel data from 282 cities (2006–2021). Employing a super-efficiency SBM model and multi-period DID, the authors examine both direct and mediated effects of the policy.

While the study is methodologically rigorous and presents robust empirical results, there are some points to be modified to improve the paper. Some necessary improvements are still listed in the following bullets:

• Missing an s in the institutional reference, “School of Economics”
• The title appears unclear and grammatically incorrect. For example, another better-sounding Draft title could be: ”How Do Innovation-Driven Policies Affect Urban Green Land Use Efficiency? Evidence from China’s Innovative City Pilot Policy"
• Some references (in the text) do not have a space before they are inserted, please edit for consistency.
• The citation [11] is skipped in the state of the art (the work of Tone (2002) is cited differently than the others), and is then cited only later at line 224 as [11]. So everything needs to be edited and adjusted to make the method consistent.
• There are some strange commas inside the paper “、” , e.g., line 88. Please edit after careful rereading.
• The state of the art is well set, but it is too specific and some references on other examples of “green” incentives are missing. For example, some studies on incentives are missing: on the energy retrofit of buildings (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2025.145142), on electric vehicles (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114610) and on the hydrogen (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egycc.2024.100172).
• About the methodology section, while the modeling is well-executed: it would be beneficial to include a graphical representation of the empirical strategy, like a timeline or treatment schema.
• The results section appears to be too dense and technical and lacks in some points of interpretive commentary. e.g., the interpretation of GLUE distribution over time (Fig. 1 and 2) is too brief considering the complexity of the figures.
• Quantitative results (e.g., coefficients from regressions) are reported correctly but not always clearly linked to hypotheses.
• The conclusion section reiterates results but lacks critical reflection: What are the limitations of the study? How do results compare to existing literature?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Following the previous comments, it can be appreciated that the authors have improved the manuscript. According to me, the current status of the paper can be accepted for publication.