PONE-D-24-12713Can Green Credit Policies Improve the Digital Transformation of Heavily Polluting Enterprises: A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on Difference-in-DifferencePLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Yuan,

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Section 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

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: 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

Reviewer #2: No

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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: I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to review your work titled "Can Green Credit Policies Improve the Digital Transformation of Heavily Polluting Enterprises: A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on Difference-in-Difference." I find the topic of your study both interesting and significant. The study focused on the effects of green credit policy on the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. The study revealed that green credit policy significantly inhibits the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises. However, in its current state, I believe the manuscript requires further improvements before it can be considered suitable for publication. I have several comments that need to be addressed, along with some thoughts on your findings.

There are fundamental concerns about this study:

1. Clarify the contribution of the study: While the authors briefly mention the key findings of your study, it is important to clearly state the contribution of this study to the existing literature.

2. Identification Strategy: For the results of the event study method, I suggest reporting specific coefficients and reference periods.

3. The conclusion section should offer more profound insights into the conclusions and recommendations.

4. The conclusion section should compare the authors’ results with other papers so that differences and similarities are highlighted.

5. The work is interesting and valuable; however, this work needs to be improved for publishing in this prestigious journal.

6. Regarding writing: The text of this manuscript needs thorough revision, as there are multiple instances of word usage errors, such as "double-difference approach."

Reviewer #2: This paper focuses on the impact of the green credit policy on the digital transformation of heavily polluting enterprises and analyzes the moderating role of enterprises' R&D investment and executives' financial backgrounds. My main concerns are as follows:

1. In the abstract section, both R&D investment and executives' financial background weaken the inhibitory effect, but only the specific impact of R&D investment is described in depth. Why not explain the impact of executives' financial backgrounds? It is suggested to supplement the detailed influence of executives' financial backgrounds or delete the specific expression of the impact of R&D investment.

2. In the introductory section, on page 2 of the manuscript, the first paragraph proposes that environmental protection and digital transformation are the two major themes leading the future development, but only the role of digital transformation on corporate strategy is introduced later, and the impact of environmental protection on corporate strategy is not introduced separately. It is suggested that "on the other hand" should be followed by a description of the importance of environmental protection for manufacturing enterprises. The relevant descriptions of existing green credit policies are suggested to be moved after the introduction of the two themes and introduced as a policy tool linking the two themes. The symbols cited in pages 2-3 of the manuscript are incorrectly marked and should be replaced with superscripts.

3. In the research design section; on page 7 of the manuscript, please re-edit the three model formulas according to the publication standards of the journal, especially formula (3) is deformed. On page 8 of the manuscript, there are errors and repetitions in the description of assignment in the explained variable part of variable selection. There is no mention of how Digit_text calculates, and readers cannot understand the formation process of the explained variable according to the description. On page 9 of the manuscript, there are many repetitions and errors in the wording of the control variables; some variable names in Table 1 are not translated properly, such as "two jobs in one".

4. In the empirical results and analysis section, on page 10 of the manuscript, the results reported in Table 3 are incorrect, possibly missing the lower part of the regression results. On pages 14-15 of the manuscript, the moderating effect of R&D investment and executives with financial background is to test hypothesis 2 and hypothesis 3 respectively, which are incorrectly written as hypothesis 3 and hypothesis 4 in the manuscript.

5. In general, it is not necessary to write the full name of the author in the cited literature in the paper, but the surname can be written. The full name is used in many places in the paper, and it is suggested to modify it. For example, in line 2 of page 11 of the manuscript, "Zhang Xiaoxiao and Hu Jinyan(2022)" should be changed to "Zhang and Hu (2022)".

6. On page 16 of the manuscript, the acknowledgments should be placed at the end of the paper.

7. On page 17 of the manuscript, section of conclusions and suggestions, the first paragraph of the conclusion is repeated and difficult to understand, please re-describe the research content in concise language; the three paragraphs of the research conclusion can be combined into one paragraph, in which "the Guidelines" in the second and third paragraphs are proposed to be changed to "the green credit policy". Policy suggestions should be put forward from the perspectives of different subjects. The current policy suggestions are all from the government’s perspective and lack enterprises’ subjectivity.

8. There are a lot of grammatical and lexical errors in the paper, so it is recommended to polish it carefully.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Can Green Credit Policies Improve the Digital Transformation of Heavily Polluting Enterprises: A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on Difference-in-Differences

PONE-D-24-12713R1

Dear Dr. Yuan,

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.

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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,

Juan E. Trinidad-Segovia, PhD

Section Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: 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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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 satisfactorily replied to my remarks and suggestions, and the paper has considerably improved

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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