A Study of Countermeasures to Activate the Consumption Potential of Urban Residents in Yangtze River Delta Region by Linking Supply and Demand Synergy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper "A Study of Countermeasures to Activate the Consumption Potential of Urban Residents in Yangtze River Delta Region by Linking Supply and Demand Synergy" addresses the issue of promoting the consumption integration of cities in the Yangtze River Delta region to enhance the consumption quality and level of residents in cold spots. The authors have used disposable income and spending on seven categories of consumer goods in 41 prefecture-level cities in the Yangtze River Delta from 2005 to 2019 to determine the marginal propensity to consume using the Panel data model and perform a Jenks spatial visual analysis. Although the study attempts to address an important research question and presents a strong potential to contribute both academia and practical policymaking, the reviewer would provide some minor suggestions for the authors to consider:

1.     The introduction could have been better developed to provide a clearer rationale and justification for the study.

(1) The literature review could have been more extensive to provide a broader context for the study.

(2) There are some important data in the introduction that should be provided reference. For example, please provide the reference for the sentence “Final consumption spending, gross capital formation, and net exports of goods and 31 services will each contribute 1, 1.5, and 0.5 percentage points to economic growth in 2022 32 in China, the proportion of GDP is 32.8%, 50.1%, and 17.1%, respectively, according to 33 the "troika's" contribution to economic growth.”

2.     The authors have not cited many recent studies on the subject, which could have enriched the discussion. Some highly relevant papers can be important evidence and supporting materials. For example “Quantifying ecosystem services supply and demand shortfalls and mismatches for management optimisation” the paper “Assessing the vulnerability of energy supply chains: Influencing factors and countermeasures”; and "Identifying Ecological Security Patterns Based on Ecosystem Service Supply and Demand Using Remote Sensing Products".

3.     The model used to determine the marginal propensity to consume is appropriate for the study. However, the authors could have provided more detailed information on the data used and the assumptions made.

Overall, "A Study of Countermeasures to Activate the Consumption Potential of Urban Residents in Yangtze River Delta Region by Linking Supply and Demand Synergy" attempts to address an important research question. However, improvements could be made to the introduction, literature review, and methodology sections.

Author Response

Dear reviewers，

Based on your review comments, I have completed the revision. Because of the suggestions given by several reviewers, the annotated version of the document has more revised parts and looks messy. You can accept all the changes to the document and then see the full content of the revised version.

The details of your response can be found in the word document. I hope my revised paper can be included in your journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, I have carefully read the article and consider it fully worthy of publication in such a serious scientific journal. However, in order to improve the quality of the article, I propose to make some changes to it.

1. Data on economic growth and its indicators, which are given in the Introduction, must be accompanied by links to literary sources or Internet pages.

2. The title of subsections 2.1, 4.3, 4.5, and 4.6 must begin with a capital letter.

3. Table 5 shows the name of the city "Introduction". This is probably a mistake.

4. Figure 1 and its brief description should be moved to Section 3 Results

5. References 6 and 15 are outdated and should be replaced.

6. In the Abstract section, it is necessary to provide quantitative estimates of the results obtained in the article

 

Author Response

Dear reviewers，

Based on your review comments, I have completed the revision. Because of the suggestions given by several reviewers, the annotated version of the document has more revised parts and looks messy. You can accept all the changes to the document and then see the full content of the revised version.

The details of your response can be found in the word document. I hope my revised paper can be included in your journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In this article, the author analyzes and discusses the consumption potential of Yangtze River Delta region from the perspective of supply and demand synergy, and give corresponding development suggestions. It has practical significance to a certain extent. However, I think some details should be paid more attentions and further improved in this paper. Specific comments are given below.

1. Some adjustments are needed in the “Introduction”, or the “Literature Review” section should be added. Studies related to the factors influencing consumer preferences should be properly summarized. In addition, the ArcGIS technique should be appropriately described, such as the characteristics, advantages, and related applications of this method.

2. Although some symbols have been explained, the meaning of what the symbols represent has not been stated, such as “”, “” in Eq. (1), “” in lines 187-188, and “y1, y2, … , y7” in Table 1. In addition, pay attention to grammatical and clerical errors. For example, “F_1” in line 177.

3. The full name of some abbreviations should be given. For instance, “the Fisher-ADF test and the LLC test” in line 220.

4. The Kao test and Pedroni test are mentioned in section 3.2, but the results are not shown. What is the meaning of “t-statistic” and “Probability value” in Table 2? How are the values in the Table 2 obtained? And how to determine whether co-integrated or not? A detailed explanation of these should be given.

5. It would be better to address in detail the contribution of the manuscript such as the importance of the research problems, the advantages of the research method. Moreover, the limitation of the work in this study and future research directions should be elaborated.

In my opinion, the content of this manuscript needs to be further adjusted. A major revise is needed before it can be considered for publication.

Author Response

Dear reviewer，

Based on your review comments, I have completed the revision. Because of the suggestions given by several reviewers, the annotated version of the document has more revised parts and looks messy. You can accept all the changes to the document and then see the full content of the revised version.

The details of your response can be found in the word document. I hope my revised paper can be included in your journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The research undertaken is important and up-to-date, but the article requires significant changes and modifications to improve its readability and better reception by potential readers. These improvements should be in the abstract, which is intended to encourage reading the entire article. Introducing changes in the main part of the text may contribute to emphasizing the quality and importance of the findings, which may be of interest not only to other scholars, but also attractive to a wider audience. This is justified because of the topic taken.

Particular remarks

It is necessary to improve the way of presenting the state of knowledge concerning the research issues by supplementing the references with the currently available most relevant and recent publications in this area.

The abstract is not properly written and the comments to it are as follows. It is too long - it cannot contain more than 200 words. There is no proper description of the background of the research undertaken, as well as the purpose of the study and research questions posed in a broad context. The abstract begins immediately with a description of specific research activities undertaken by the authors of the article. After a brief description of the research methods used, the article's key findings should be presented and the main conclusions or recommendations that clearly follow from the conducted research should be highlighted.

The keywords need to be corrected - they should refer to the content of the article, also widely known and used within the framework of the undertaken research issues. Currently, there are too few keywords of a general nature. These keywords should clearly indicate the type of research topic undertaken. In addition, it would be good if these keywords and issues to some extent referred to the profile of the journal. In the given form, the reference to the issue of sustainability in the abstract and in the main part of the article is not very visible.

In the Introduction section, there is no reference to the latest and key literature items important from the point of view of the research issues undertaken. Therefore, the importance and need for research in this area cannot be fully understood and accepted by the reviewer.

The items listed in the References section are few and, additionally, they are used in an illegible way. References to literature given in the text are hardly understandable if several publications are given for many sentences of the text (lines 62, 102). It is not known which parts of these references regard. There are sentences without references to literature, however, they require it. For example, in lines 103-104, scholars who are gradually including the natural fracture technique of ArcGIS in their economic research are mentioned. Nevertheless, there is a distinct lack of references to their publications on this kind of research. Another example concerns the 'Intermediate Microeconomics A Modern Approach' mentioned in line 87, which is not covered by relevant publications and research related to it. Some reference numbers are spelled incorrectly (e.g. in line 133).

At the end of the Introduction section, the main aim of the work should be specifically stated and the main findings should be briefly explained. In addition, research questions posed or hypotheses tested later would be inspiring. The information provided here should be consistent with the research carried out and the rest of the article.

The content given in the Materials and Methods section should deliver such detailed information that would allow for the repetition of the completed research. In subsection 2.3 ‘Data Sources and Study Scoping,’ there is only information about the statistical yearbooks used. The Authors should provide specific references to publications and data sources that would be accessible to others.

The description of the results should be presented in a clear and concise manner. The Authors should consider adding an appendix with selected tables. In the current form of the article, large tables placed in the text make it difficult to understand the results and conclusions that follow from them.

Large tables also make the Discussion section difficult to read and can be moved to appendices attached to the text. In this section, references to key literature should be added and the importance of findings should be discussed in the broadest possible context of various scientific research related to sustainability. The current description contained in this section also lacks a synthetic description of the key limitations of the research carried out in the context of the main goal, hypotheses or research questions.

Section and subsection titles should be capitalized.

Some sentences in the Abstract are too long, which makes them hard to follow (lines 12-17 or 20-23). There is no research questions asked in the Abstract, thus following and understanding the research problems is hindered.

The Introduction section lacks introduction, some explanation of why the Authors chose this particular topic and decided to focus on one Chinese province. There are too many random numbers quoted, yet no reference is provided. Overly compound sentences need to be divided into shorter ones to make the text more comprehensible.

Punctuation is either missing or confusing.

There is no information given concerning the Party Congress – which party was it? Why was the Congress held (line 44)?

Author Response

Dear reviewer，

Based on your review comments, I have completed the revision. Because of the suggestions given by several reviewers, the annotated version of the document has more revised parts and looks messy. You can accept all the changes to the document and then see the full content of the revised version.

The details of your response can be found in the attachment. I hope my revised paper can be included in your journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

This research paper has revised my suggestion very well. I think it meets the requirements of your journal, so I suggest to accept this paper.