Corporate Social Responsibility Funding and Its Impact on India’s Sustainable Development: Using the Poverty Score as a Moderator

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

The topic of the study is quite interesting and just you need to fix the following concerns in the next version:

1-What is the research problem and why you concentrated to India? Is there any unique characteristics for India?

 2-The theoretical issues and literature section should be up to date up to 2022, so this part needs much more efforts and some related papers are suggested as follow:

2-1-Sustainability, sustainable development and corporate social responsibility

2-2-Sustainability Reporting and Corporate Reputation: The Moderating Effect of CEO Opportunistic Behavior

2-3-Corporate social responsibility and future financial performance: Evidence from Tehran Stock Exchange

2-4-Sustainable development and corporate social responsibility – organisation level

2-5-Board compensation and disclosure quality: Corporate governance interference

3-Please employ appropriate control variables for the study.

4-The conclusion part should be extended according to the findings

5-The implications of the study should be stated

 

Author Response

Reviewer comment

English language and style are fine/minor spell check required

Authors Response

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion to improve the paper. We have updated the manuscript accordingly.

Reviewer comment

Are all the cited references relevant to the research? -    Must be improved            

Authors Response

Thank you for this suggestion. We have updated the literature review and introduction with adding more recent citations.

Reviewer comment

Is the research design appropriate? -   Must be improved

Authors Response

The research design is now updated in the conceptual model given in figure 1 and in methodology subsection 3.2.

Reviewer comment

Are the methods adequately described? -   YES

Authors Response

Thank you.

Reviewer comment

Are the results clearly presented? -    Must be improved

Authors Response

Thank you very much for pointing this out. We have updated result section.

Reviewer comment

Are the conclusions supported by the results? -    Must be improved

Authors Response

Thank you for this suggestion. We have updated it accordingly

Reviewer comment

What is the research problem and why you concentrated to India? Is there any unique characteristics for India?

Authors Response

Thank you for kind suggestion we have updated it accordingly in 2^nd page and highlighted yellow colour.

Reviewer comment

The theoretical issues and literature section should be up to date up to 2022, so this part needs much more efforts and some related papers are suggested as follow:

2-1-Sustainability, sustainable development and corporate social responsibility

2-2-Sustainability Reporting and Corporate Reputation: The Moderating Effect of CEO Opportunistic Behavior

2-3-Corporate social responsibility and future financial performance: Evidence from Tehran Stock Exchange

2-4-Sustainable development and corporate social responsibility – organisation level

2-5-Board compensation and disclosure quality: Corporate governance interference

Authors Response

Thank you for elaborating on all the points clearly. We have added literature to the manuscript as per your suggestion in page number 3^rd and 4 and highlighted in yellow colour.

Reviewer comment

Please employ appropriate control variables for the study.

Authors Response

Thank you for kind suggestion. We have updated it accordingly in section 3.3 and in page number 12 in discussion.

Reviewer comment

The conclusion part should be extended according to the findings

Authors Response

Thank you for the valuable suggestion.  We have now updated it accordingly in page number 13 in conclusion section.

Reviewer comment

The implications of the study should be stated.

Authors Response

Thank you for the suggestion. We have updated it accordingly in Discusussion section including a separate section 5.2 and in page number 13 in conclusion section.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The topic raised by the authors seems to be an interesting and timely topic that is worth the attention of the magazine. The authors have maintained the proper structure of the article, nevertheless, I believe that the literature review section should be expanded, as well as the discussion section, limitations of the research and conclusions, which were written in an obtuse manner. 

Author Response

Reviewer comment

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references? -  Yes

Authors Response

Thank you very much

Reviewer comment

Are all the cited references relevant to the research? -    Can be improved

Authors Response

Thank you for this suggestion we have updated literature accordingly in literature review and other appropriate places.

Reviewer comment

Is the research design appropriate? –   Can be improved

Authors Response

The research design is now updated in the conceptual model given in figure 1 and in methodology subsection 3.2.

Reviewer comment

Are the methods adequately described? – Yes

Authors Response

Thank you for this.

Reviewer comment

Are the results clearly presented? –  Yes

Authors Response

Thank you for this.

Reviewer comment

Are the conclusions supported by the results? –  Yes

Authors Response

Thank you for this.

Reviewer comment

The topic raised by the authors seems to be an interesting and timely topic that is worth the attention of the magazine. The authors have maintained the proper structure of the article, nevertheless, I believe that the literature review section should be expanded, as well as the discussion section, limitations of the research and conclusions, which were written in an obtuse manner.

Authors Response

Thank you for elaborating on all the points clearly. We have updated literature, limitations and suggestion to the manuscript as per your suggestion

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

ID_2151303: Title: Corporate Social Responsibility and its Impact on India’s Sustainable Development: Using Poverty Score as a Moderator

 

Dear authors and editor,

 

This article focuses on the relationship between social funding and sustainable development for Indian dataset.

 

I can see some aspects of the paper that should be improved for its consideration.

 

First of all the title of the paper is misleading. They are confusing the CSR fundings with CSR. It should be more specific.

 

Abstract is not clear. Especially the way of reporting findings. Further, authors are using abbreviations and full terms confusingly. From methodology section it seems they used GMM estimation.

 

Overall, the paper needs a thorough grammar and language check.

 

In the introduction section, the Contribution of the study is not clear. Please clarify your research questions, objectives, background motivation, theoretical and empirical motivation and the lines of contributions to the literature. You can do this by sharply articulating your research questions/objectives, identify the potential theoretical, background and theoretical motivation or gaps, and explain how your study contributes to the literature. You can do this by highlighting the weaknesses of prior studies as well. Currently, your introduction is very dry. Additionally, you need state clearly the contributions of the paper. For example, "Consequently, the current paper seeks to make the following contributions to the existing literature. First,…, Second,…., Third, …, Fourth,… and so on". The description of the contribution needs to be more forensic, needs to be more focussed.

 

In the literature review and hypothesis development section, I suggest authors

There is very significant literature on CSR. The current study needs to build on this existing literature and it needs to prepare a better base for the current study.

 

In the literature review section, the authors need to update the literature and include recent published papers (2022) and they need to discuss the research gaps and then they need to explain how the current paper fills at least one of these gaps. Consider following: 

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.897444

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bir.2022.08.011

 

 

 

There needs to be a more comprehensive and formal discussion methodology used to conduct this study. The formatting of the equations is not according to standards. In the data description, they used different abbreviations as sources, such as MCA, NITTI ect. Always write the full form of the abbreviation while using first time (in each section) 

 

Table presented are not readable, Specially, Table 5 is not readable… I recommend authors to move standard errors beneath coefficient that is a standard practice. And also explain in notes which variables are represented by abbreviations. You can follow the tables presentation style of following study https://doi.org/10.1002/ijfe.2684 .

 

The authors need to link their findings more strongly to the: (i) theory, (ii) empirics, (iii) context of region; and (iv) highlight their economic, academic/research and policy implications. In the discussion of the results please focus on the novel findings and insights vis-à-vis the existing literature.

 

In the conclusion, the authors need to expand the discussions relating to implications, limitations and avenues for future research.

Author Response

Reviewer comment

Moderate English changes required

Authors Response

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion to improve the paper. We have updated the manuscript accordingly.

Reviewer comment

Does the introduction provide sufficient background and include all relevant references? -  Must be Improved

Authors Response

Thank you for this suggestion. We have now updated introduction with more clear way.

Reviewer comment

Are all the cited references relevant to the research? –  Must be Improved

Authors Response

Thank you for this suggestion we have updated literature accordingly in literature review and other appropriate places.

Reviewer comment

Is the research design appropriate? -   Must be Improved

Authors Response

The research design is now updated in the conceptual model given in figure 1 and in methodology subsection 3.2.

Reviewer comment

Are the methods adequately described? -   Must be Improved

Authors Response

Thank you for this suggestion. We have updated it accordingly in Data and Methodology section (section 3).

Reviewer comment

Are the results clearly presented? -   Must be Improved

Authors Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestion. we have updated the results section (section 4) accordingly.

Reviewer comment

Are the conclusions supported by the results? -  Can be Improved

Authors Response

Thank you for this suggestion. We have updated it accordingly.

Reviewer comment

First of all the title of the paper is misleading. They are confusing the CSR fundings with CSR. It should be more specific.

Authors Response

Thank you for kind suggestion we have updated it accordingly and highlighted in yellow colour.

Reviewer comment

Abstract is not clear. Especially the way of reporting findings. Further, authors are using abbreviations and full terms confusingly. From methodology section it seems they used GMM estimation.

Authors Response

Thank you for kind suggestion. We have updated abstract accordingly and highlighted in yellow colour.

Reviewer comment

Overall, the paper needs a thorough grammar and language check.

In the introduction section, the Contribution of the study is not clear. Please clarify your research questions, objectives, background motivation, theoretical and empirical motivation and the lines of contributions to the literature. You can do this by sharply articulating your research questions/objectives, identify the potential theoretical, background and theoretical motivation or gaps, and explain how your study contributes to the literature. You can do this by highlighting the weaknesses of prior studies as well. Currently, your introduction is very dry. Additionally, you need state clearly the contributions of the paper. For example, "Consequently, the current paper seeks to make the following contributions to the existing literature. First,…, Second,…., Third, …, Fourth,… and so on". The description of the contribution needs to be more forensic, needs to be more focused.

Authors Response

Thank you for elaborating on all the points clearly. We have updated the manuscript as per your suggestion and highlighted the corrections in yellow colour.

Reviewer comment

In the literature review and hypothesis development section, I suggest authors There is very significant literature on CSR. The current study needs to build on this existing literature and it needs to prepare a better base for the current study. In the literature review section, the authors need to update the literature and include recent published papers (2022) and they need to discuss the research gaps and then they need to explain how the current paper fills at least one of these gaps. Consider following: doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.897444 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bir.2022.08.011 Implications are included in discussion. They need to be more practical in approach. The authors also suggest that when the internet subscribers are high, the FI lowers SDG and vice versa. Kindly suggest what does it convey.

Authors Response

Thank you for elaborating on all the points clearly. We have added literature to the manuscript as per your suggestion in page number 3^rd and 4 and highlighted in yellow colour.

Reviewer comment

There needs to be a more comprehensive and formal discussion methodology used to conduct this study. The formatting of the equations is not according to standards. In the data description, they used different abbreviations as sources, such as MCA, NITTI ect. Always write the full form of the abbreviation while using first time (in each section).

Authors Response

Thank you for elaborating on all the points clearly. We have updated in page number 5^th in the manuscript as per your suggestion and highlighted yellow colour.

Reviewer comment

Table presented are not readable, Specially, Table 5 is not readable… I recommend authors to move standard errors beneath coefficient that is a standard practice. And also explain in notes which variables are represented by abbreviations. You can follow the tables presentation style of following study https://doi.org/10.1002/ijfe.2684 .

Authors Response

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. We have now updated the table accordingly.

Reviewer comment

The authors need to link their findings more strongly to the: (i) theory, (ii) empirics, (iii) context of region; and (iv) highlight their economic, academic/research and policy implications. In the discussion of the results please focus on the novel findings and insights vis-à-vis the existing literature.

Authors Response

Thank you for kind suggestion. we have updated it accordingly page number 13 in discussion section.

Reviewer comment

In the conclusion, the authors need to expand the discussions relating to implications, limitations and avenues for future research.

Authors Response

Thank you for kind suggestion we have updated it accordingly page number 13 in conclusion section.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you very much for sending your paper. The paper seems that all comments have been incorporated.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for incorporating suggested changes.