PONE-D-24-04688How air pollution affects corporate total factor productivity?PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yin,

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Chaohai Shen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

Dear Authors,

I have received the required number of reviewers' reports. Based on their comments and my own justification after reading the paper, I think you have to make substantial revisions.

In particular, we consider the literature part is very weak with the hypotheses not well developed. You should completely rewrite the literature part with most recent and classical papers properly cited. These papers were usually published in decently good international peer-reviewed journals.

Also, the empirical part should be further improved by clearly justifying the validity of the model.

There are more issues raised in the reviewers' reports. Please carefully read them and make revisions accordingly.

Sincerely,

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

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: No

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

Reviewer #2: No

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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: No

Reviewer #2: 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 article has a poor analysis of the literature, and there is no research gap. The hypotheses were formulated based on what? Why was this methodology adopted? what does this mean? The lack of these assumptions precludes further analysis

Reviewer #2: This study investigates the impact mechanism of air quality on corporate total factor productivity by selecting listed firms in China. Although it is very interesting, there are many problems. Significant revisions to this study are required before it can be considered for publication.

1. Abstracts are excessively long. It fails to succinctly elucidate the purpose or gaps in the research.

2. The Introduction section is poorly designed. The gaps between this study and existing studies are not visible in the Introduction. Meanwhile, this section fails to give the research innovation.

3. The Literature Review is weak in supporting the research hypotheses. Firstly, the Literature Review of this study fails to support the research hypotheses well and needs to be further strengthened. Secondly, the formulation of research hypotheses needs not only the support of authoritative literature but also the support of classical theories.

4. Does the interactive effect of research hypothesis 2 and research hypothesis 3 exist? For example, the government's attention impacts investor sentiment. Therefore, this section needs to be redesigned.

5. The "Ethics Statement" on page 7 does not seem appropriate here.

6. Research data is too old. The author mentions in the limitations section, “Due to the availability of data, the data in this paper is only up to 2019.” Is this an insurmountable challenge? If possible, please update the research data and reiterate the limitations.

7. This study fails to provide descriptive statistics for all variables, which weakens the scientific validity of the empirical research.

8. The Discussion section is extremely poor. The present Discussion simply analyses the empirical results and does not compare them with existing studies to clarify how this study contributes to, adds to, or differs from existing studies. It is more a test of heterogeneity than a discussion.

9. Policy recommendations need to be more specific, nuanced, and feasible. In addition, limitations and future research need to be more detailed.

10. English level needs to be improved. It has grammatical errors and presentation errors. In addition, this study needs to pay attention to the use of long sentences, acronyms, and proper nouns.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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How air pollution affects corporate total factor productivity?

PONE-D-24-04688R1

Dear Dr. Yin,

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,

Chaohai Shen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Dear Authors,

I have received the required number of reviewer reports. Based on their comments and my own justification, I think the revised version can be accepted for publication.

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

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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

**********

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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: No

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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

**********

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: corrections were made in accordance with the comments, I have no other comments. the article is suitable for publication

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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

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