PONE-D-23-22886The Impact of Financial Development on Enterprise Green Innovation under Low Carbon Pilot CityPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Cui,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 24 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

William Mbanyele, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The manuscript entitled “The Impact of Financial Development on Enterprise Green Innovation under Low Carbon Pilot City” provides an empirical analysis on studying the influence of financial development on the green innovation of enterprises in low-carbon pilot cities. The authors mainly used double difference and multiple fixed effects models to examine the real effect of financial development on the green innovation of enterprises. Also, the authors further explore underlying mechanisms through which financial development can affect green innovations of enterprises, and found that it contributes to relax financing constraints and trigger R&D investment. Overall, the manuscript is well-written and interesting. I have several minor comments and suggestions for the authors (see the attachment).

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6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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Reviewer #1: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review Comments.pdf

PONE-D-23-22886R1The Impact of Financial Development on Enterprise Green Innovation under Low Carbon Pilot CityPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Cui,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 20 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Dr. Jiachao Peng

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments:

The revised version of the manuscript is not satisfactory at the moment. I would like to request the author's attention to make detailed modifications in accordance with the suggestions from the external reviewers and the academic editor.

1. The abstract excessively exaggerates the scientific value of the paper. Please use appropriate vocabulary and avoid unreasonable expressions such as "fill the research gap".

2. It is crucial for the author to update the data. Currently, there is a wealth of policy research literature on low-carbon pilot projects, with a considerable number of samples involved.

3. The author needs to explain the reasons and relevant justifications for selecting control variables.

4. The results from Figure 1 indicate that the empirical results did not pass the parallel trend test. How did the author handle the results that did not pass the parallel trend test?

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have address all my concerns well in the revised manuscript, and I do not have further comments.

Reviewer #2: Low-carbon pilot city (LCPC) plays a pivotal role in driving institutional-level green innovation among enterprises. Now the revisions are ok, so I suggest to accept it.

Reviewer #3: Please see attached the detailed review report for your perusal.

RECOMMENDATION: MAJOR REVISION

Manuscript Number: PONE-D-23-22886R1

The Impact of Financial Development on Enterprise Green Innovation under Low

Carbon Pilot City

The paper attempts to investigate how financial development influences enterprise green innovation in low carbon pilot city (LCPCs). To achieve this, the authors used data from listed companies in various cities in China between 2010 and 2018 and found that LCPC policies stimulate institutional green innovation within enterprises. Overall, the paper is interesting and exhibits good potential. However, it suffers from several deficiencies that need to be addressed before it can be accepted for publication.

1) Generally, the abstract of a paper is based on research aim/purpose, research method, and key findings. Abstract of this paper is well written but it is required to highlight the key findings of the study. Please revamp the abstract and make sure to include information as below, in order:

- Motivation

- Objective

- Data and method

- Results

- Implications

2) The Introduction fails to motivate the study. In the present form, it resembles a mini-review of literature, rather than discussing any policy-level problem. Why this study is necessary? What policy level problem this study is addressing? How is the study expected to provide any solution to that problem? How does the choice of sample is complementing that problem? Are the results and policies generalizable? The introduction is silent in all these aspects. The mere choice of new variables, new methods, or choosing a new context is not considered as contribution of a study. In the introduction section, the study should be positioned within the context of more contemporary literature. In this direction, more recent literature can be used to motivate the research question adequately. Meanwhile, the authors are strongly advised to derive the gap in which the study intends to fill from the existing literature. This section thus requires a thorough revision. Please check this paper: Estimating the trade-environmental quality relationship in SADC with a dynamic heterogeneous panel model. African Review of Economics and Finance 13(1): 113-165

3) Originality: Structurally, this paper is well-written with well-established econometric methods. However, the most critical issue that is grossly lacking in this paper is the motivation of this paper. Hence, the background of the study should be strengthened with the issue centred on global per-capita CO2 emissions, and it should be well justified why it is important to carry out this study.

4) The contributions of the paper are very weak. What are the contributions of the document to the empirical literature? The authors can show how this study differs from other studies and also elaborate more on the contributions of this paper. Addition of more recent literature will make the work more relevant to readers.

5) The paper should be restructured. Section 2 should attempt to summarize the empirical literature. This section needs to be rewritten and strengthened. The authors are advised to divide this section into three sub-sections. The first part should clearly illustrate the theoretical studies linking the variables under review. The second section should concentrate on empirical works between these variables. The last section should summarize the literature gaps. What is the aim of the review of literature? The authors should not merely list out the studies without even creating a debate among them. Without that debate and thoughtful contradictions, the research gap cannot be substantiated. Also, the current literature appearing in this section should be strengthened. The authors should use more recent studies in this section. Meanwhile, more can be done to reflect more comparison in the literature against other regions. For instance, in Europe, BRICS, Africa and Asia. To improve this section, the authors are invited to use the following papers and cite them.

a) https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.1044605

b) https://doi.org/10.1007/s43621-022-00117-3

c) https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-023-00453-x

d) https://doi.org/10.1007/s41247-023-00110-y

e) https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-022-00396-9

f) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21107-y

g) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-05944-y

h) https://doi.org/10.1080/12265934.2019.1695652

i) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-020-09285-6

j) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17193-z

k) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10644-021-09368-y

l) https://doi.org/10.3390/su141610268

m) https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2022.2123411

n) https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.985719

o) https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2473

p) https://doi.org/10.1080/13504509.2023.2183526

q) https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-419113/v1

r) https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2535

s) https://doi.org/10.1080/27658511.2023.2210950

t) https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2597

u) https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2618

v) https://doi.org/10.1080/19463138.2023.2222264

w) https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.2473

x) https://doi.org/10.3280/EFE2022-002006

y) https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2023.2234230

z) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wds.2023.100096

aa) https://doi.org/10.1007/s41247-023-00112-w

bb) https://african-review.com/online-first-details.php?id=69

6) The authors neglect the significance of the study in the introduction section. Why? Several studies have been conducted regarding this topic at hand; therefore, it is crucial for the investigators to incorporate the novelty as well as the significance of the study.

7) In section 3 (Data Description and Model Design), after reorganizing the paper, the authors should provide a clear theoretical underpinning before the empirical framework. Please, restructure this section with a clear theoretical framework demonstrating how the variables under review are related. The theoretical underpinning between these variables should be properly justified in this sub-section. The authors should provide a justification of the use of the variables chosen. Please adjust accordingly by incorporating that. The authors should use the above-mentioned papers to strengthen this section.

8) Authors are advised to conduct the robustness check to strengthen the paper. The authors should use some of those papers mentioned above to strengthen this sub-section.

9) The authors merely reported the results without even discussing the economic intuitions behind the results. Are these results supporting or refuting the existing policies in the chosen context? Are the results directed towards any new policy initiatives? The discussion of results should open up the threads of policy discussion, which is completely absent in this case. A mere comparison of the results with the literature doesn't ensure the novelty of the results unless they give out something new on the theory/policy front. Moreover, the discussion of results should be properly tied to past literature, and emphasis should be placed on how past studies either support or refute the findings of this study and why. Therefore, this section needs revision.

10) To improve the quality of this manuscript, the authors are invited to use the papers already mentioned above and some useful ones in the area to strengthen the introduction, literature review, methodology and results and discussion sections.

11) The policy implications of the results need more substantiation than what is currently stated in the paper.

12) Conclusion reiterates the results, which is completely undesirable. The author(s) should summarize the results within a maximum of 3 sentences. The authors should kindly strengthen this section. Moreover, the policies are completely vague, and it seems that the authors already had the policies in mind before even starting the paper. The policies should be directly derived from the discussion of the results, and they should not go beyond the results. The policy implications of the results need more substantiation than what is currently stated in the paper. The policy suggestion section needs improvement. Kindly improve it.

13) Kindly improve the study limitation(s) and possible direction for future research after the policy recommendation section.

14) Finally, it is vital that this manuscript is proofread by a native speaker of English language to further strengthen easy readership.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Dr. Maxwell Chukwudi Udeagha

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Referee Report.pdf

PONE-D-23-22886R2The Impact of Financial Development on Enterprise Green Innovation under Low Carbon Pilot City

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Cui,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. In a previous round of review, Reviewer 3 included several requests to cite specific works - these requests were in points 5a-bb of the comments in the decision letter. We understand that you have added citations to several of these works in your revised manuscript. Please note that it is not necessary or expected to cite the works requested by the reviewer. We apologise that this was not noted in the previous decision letter.

In light of this, we are issuing this revision decision to provide you an opportunity to remove the citations added in response to the previous reviewer's request. You may remove all or none of the references, at your discretion. No further revisions are required before your manuscript proceeds to acceptance.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 12 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

George Vousden

Deputy Editor-in-Chief

PLOS ONE

on behalf of,

Jiachao Peng

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

********** 

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

********** 

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

********** 

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

********** 

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

********** 

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This paper has made important contributions to the existing literature, and in the previous revision, I have recommended it to be published in the Plos One journal. I don't understand why it was sent for review again.

Reviewer #2: Drawing on economic, management, and organizational psychology theories, we investigate the influence of the financial development level on enterprise green innovation in LCPC, utilizing data from listed companies between 2010 and 2018. Now the revisions are all ok, the structure is good. So I suggest to accept it.

Reviewer #3: The manuscript looks good. The authors have successfully addressed the concerns raised. They have expanded the discussion section to provide more context for their key findings and to better articulate their implications for the field. They have acknowledged the limitations of their study more explicitly and discussed potential avenues for future research to address these limitations.

********** 

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Maxwell Chukwudi Udeagha

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

The Impact of Financial Development on Enterprise Green Innovation under Low Carbon Pilot City

PONE-D-23-22886R3

Dear Dr. Cui,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Jiachao Peng

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: