Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Summary

This study uses social network analysis to analyse the degree and evolution of collaborative governance in dealing with air pollution between 2017 and 2021 in the “2+26” cities in in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei.

Overall, the manuscript is well structured and successfully highlights the role that collaborative governance can play in mitigating air pollution.

 

Major Issues

There are no major issues to be addressed.

 

Minor Issues

Please address the following:

1.       The statements made in the introduction need to be supported by numerous references.

 

2.       Line 189: Please cite the reference for Freeman.

 

3.       This paper needs to be thoroughly edited and the grammatical errors corrected before publication.

 

4.       Line 278: Is figure 1 the ‘evolution chart’ referred to? Please specify.

 

5.       Line 280: It is not possible to definitively state that ‘the overall evolution trend is from sparse to dense, and then gradually 280 sparse’ based on the visual impression of Figure 1. Please calculate a metric, perhaps the number of interactions between cities, to support the statement made. Also, please qualify what is meant by ‘sparse’ and ‘dense’. The network in Figure 1 (1) does not look very sparse, especially in comparison with the network in Figure 1 (4).

 

6.       Line 302: It is not clear to a (non-Chinese) reader how the ‘cross provincial collaborative governance’ is shown in Figure 1. Please indicate the provincial delineations in the networks somehow.

 

7.       Line 310: The statement that ‘the air pollution situation in each city has improved signifi-310 cantly since the implementation of the joint prevention and control policy of air pollution 311 in “2+26” cities’ needs a reference.

 

8.       Figures 2 and 3: Please label the y-axis.

 

9.       This paper could be improved by finding a better way to visualize the results in Tables 1 and 2 and Figures 2 and 3.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript and your valuable comments. Your comments are pertinent and constructive. I have thoroughly revised my manuscript following your comments. Next, I will report the revisions I have made one by one in combination with your comments on my manuscript.

1. In response to your question that the statements made in the introduction need to be supported by numerous references, I have added citations to some of the reported statements (e.g., lines 26-27 and 44-45), some of the views of other scholars (e.g., lines 36-38), and some objective data (e.g., lines 47-49) reproduced in the manuscript.
2. In response to your question that need to cite the reference for Freeman, I have added a new reference to Freeman at the end of this paragraph.
3. In response to your question that this paper’s grammatical and sentence errors needs to be thoroughly edited, I have thoroughly revised the grammar and sentences of the article through the English editing function provided by MDPI after revising the manuscript.
4. The ‘evolution chart’ at lines 278 in the manuscript refers to Figure 1. Considering the ambiguity in the expression of the evolutionary chart, I have deleted this expression in the manuscript and replaced it with Figure 2.( Because I added a new picture named Schematic diagram of “2+26” cities in the introduction part of the manuscript, the number of picture named Structural evolution of collaborative governance network of air pollution in “2+26” cities in Chapter 4 has changed to Figure 2)
5. Regarding the issue of the density of associations between nodes in the Figure2 (in Lines 378), I added a new table(in Lines 386) below the Figure 2, which reports the density of the relationship between nodes at each stage. According to the statistical value of each stage, it can be found that, the collaborative governance network of air pollution in “2+26” cities presents an overall evolution trend of an inverted V-shape from relatively dense to dense, and then it gradually becomes sparse. However, since the expression ‘the overall evolution trend is from sparse to dense, and then gradually sparse’ in the original expression was indeed ambiguous, I changed it to ‘the collaborative governance network…… trend …… from relatively dense to dense, and then it gradually becomes sparse’.
6. Regarding the issue of enabling non-Chinese readers to better understand cross-provincial collaborative governance, I added a new picture of the “2+26” cities in the introduction which can help non-Chinese readers better understand China’s administrative divisions. Meanwhile, I added some examples when discussing issues related to cross-provincial collaborative governance. For example, in lines 419 to 427, I took the five neighboring cities of Henan and Shanxi as examples, and discussed in detail the problem of frequent collaborative governance of cities within the same province and rare collaborative governance of cross-provincial cities.
7. I have added a new reference to the statement that ‘the air pollution situation in each city has improved significantly since the implementation of the joint prevention and control policy of air pollution in “2+26” cities’ in Lines 433.
8. I have label the y-axis to Figure2, 3 and 4.
9. Regarding the issue of finding a better way to visualize the results in tables and figures in the manuscript. I made some attempts, such as displaying the Tables 2 and 3 in the form of tree diagrams, and displaying the Figure2, 3 and 4 in the form of radar charts. But the revised figures are still not ideal, so I still keep the tables and figures in the manuscript. I only made some simple micro-modifications to them. For example, for Table 2, some unimportant rows were removed and only keep the two cohesive subgroup analysis results with the most members and the least members to make the table look more simple and clear.

The above are the revisions I have made to the manuscript based on your comments. I think that under the guidance of your review comments, the manuscript has been greatly improved in theory and science after revision. Thank you again for your valuable comments on this manuscript.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The author should be more specific related to the measures of air control politics;

The experimental design should be improved, as well as the representation of the data.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript and your valuable comments. Your comments are pertinent and constructive. I have thoroughly revised my manuscript following your comments. Next, I will report the revisions I have made one by one in combination with your comments on my manuscript.

Regarding the issue that the manuscript should cover more measures related to air pollution prevention and control, I have further sorted out air pollution prevention and control policies in detail in the manuscript, and further enriched the review of existing research results on air pollution prevention and control policies in the literature review section (in Lines 146-160).

Regarding your concerns about better presentation of the study design and data, I have substantially revised Chapter 3 of the manuscript. Among them, I newly added the calculation methods of some specific indicators of social network analysis presented in the manuscript, such as the formula of how to calculate the density, centrality and the centralization index of the network(in Lines 229-272). At the same time, in order to better present the research data, I have given a more detailed introduction to how to collect data and how to assign values ​​to the data (in Lines 325-352).

The above are the revisions I have made to the manuscript based on your comments. I think that under the guidance of your review comments, the manuscript has been greatly improved in theory and science after revision. Thank you again for your valuable comments on this manuscript.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a very interesting and well-written paper on collaborative governance focussed on air pollution.

In my opinion, it is of great interest and well-suited for the Journal.

I suggest it for publication in its present form.

Specifically: The manuscript refers to a Regional collaborative governance to improve co-construction and cogovernance. These issues are of paramount importace moving toward a change for the two major problems we have to face: climate and pollution. Moving toward a strict collaboration between science an policies can offer a wide range of possible solutions, we cannot have available only one because of the complexities of territories and specific situations. Specifically this manuscript offers a relevant example of integrated governing system. Even several examples are available, this paper explore the effects of the collaboratiove governance of a wide number of cities and this in not very common: it reports the different phases to achieve the desired results and this report is extremely important to be utilised as a benchmark for policy-makers. Given the complexity of the matter the authors have utilised the existing data obtaining a very important results, from a policy poin of view, that is the centrality of the micro level for the functioning of the collaborative network. This is a real importnt finding from a methodological point of view. The conclusions, where the authors properly add 'policy insight', are strictly based on their findings. I particularly appreciated paragraph 5.2 (policy insight) where the authors give precise indication how to operate (best practice). As I already wrote, if it is time to change we need tools: the proposed one is in my opinion a very good contribution. In my opinion the graphical content and tables are well structured to understand the main objetives of the paper, and of particular relevance fig.1 that is immediate in allow to keep the results of the new governance methodology. As I alredy wrote, the literature list, even not large, is perfectly suited to the paper, because the main objective is to think about the governance and not, i.e., pollution phenomenology.

 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript and your valuable comments. Your comments are pertinent and constructive. I have thoroughly revised my manuscript following your comments. Next, I will report the revisions I have made one by one in combination with your comments on my manuscript.

In response to your question about the issue that the references in the manuscript are not rich, I have further enriched the review of existing research results in the literature review section. At the same time, I also specifically added a review of some existing research results on the collaborative governance of air pollution in “2+26” cities.

The above are the revisions I have made to the manuscript based on your comments. I think that under the guidance of your review comments, the manuscript has been greatly improved in theory and science after revision. Thank you again for your valuable comments on this manuscript.

 

Reviewer 4 Report

Please find, check and revise according to the file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript and your valuable comments. Your comments are pertinent and constructive. I have thoroughly revised my manuscript following your comments. Next, I will report the revisions I have made one by one in combination with your comments on my manuscript.

1. a) In response to your question about the lack of references, I have further enriched the review of the existing research results. At the same time, some of the latest discussions on the research results of the “2+26” cities air pollution prevention and control policies have been added (in Lines 146-160). At the same time, in the process of commenting on the existing research, I further identified the shortcomings of the existing research and some contributions made by this research (in Lines 190-197).
2. b) In response to your question about the figures could not be seen clearly, I made some adjustments to the figures in the manuscript, for example, adjusting the size and clarity of the figures on page 9. At the same time, because this article focuses on the structural characteristics and evolution trend of collaborative governance of air pollution in “2+26” cities, and the figures in the manuscript can more clearly and intuitively show the changes in the collaborative governance relationship between the “2+26” cities, so these figures are helpful to the discussion of the article , so I still keep them in the manuscript. In addition, regarding your question that the calculation formula used in the article is not clear, in the chapter of research design, I newly added the expressions used in the manuscript to calculate the network density and node centrality (in Lines 230-273), as well as the collection process of related data (in 326-342).
3. c) I have added references to data from other sources in the manuscript. For example, Lines 42-49, Lines 330-336 and Lines 432-434, etc.
4. d) In response to your question about the insufficient introduction to point centrality, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality in the manuscript, I have made a clearer explanation of the concepts, differences and calculation formulas of point centrality, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality in the chapter of research design (in Lines 248-266), which may help readers understand the centrality of the actors represented by the nodes in the social network.
5. e) I have re-written the descriptive paragraphs in the manuscript where there were issues with unclear semantics, grammatical errors, etc.
6. f) In response to your question that this paper’s grammatical and sentence errors needs to be thoroughly edited, I have thoroughly revised the grammar and sentences of the article through the English editing function provided by MDPI after revising the manuscript.
7. g) In the part of research design, I gave a detailed introduction to the advantages, functions and important role played by Ucinet software in social network analysis (in Line 344-353). At the same time, in order to solve the problem that the description of the research method is too simple, I have made a more detailed description of the process of collecting and sorting out the research data in the manuscript (in Lines 326-343).
8. h) The cohesive subgroup analysis of the collaborative governance network of air pollution in “2+26” cities can reveal the substructures in the overall network and the relationship between substructures. Through the different stages of evolution of the internal members of the substructure to reflect the specific association model of collaborative governance among “2+26” cities, we can examine the changes in the internal characteristics of the collaborative network from the mesoscopic level. At the same time, since the cohesive subgroup analysis is an important part of the social network analysis method, this part of the content is still retained during the revision of the manuscript. In addition, considering that this part of the content is indeed relatively simple, the relevant content has been appropriately deleted to make it more concise and clear.
9. i) Regarding the distinction between mobilization governance and normalization cooperations, I have discussed in detail in the conclusions section. The advantage of mobilization governance is that it can realize the rapid integration and allocation of human, financial, and material resources in a very short period of time, so as to achieve rapid improvement of regional environmental quality. However, this governance method will incur high costs, and is not conducive to the stability and continuation of the collaborative governance network. Therefore, in order to prevent the rebound of air pollution control effects in this region, it is necessary to promote normal cooperation in air pollution control from the perspective of system construction and mechanism improvement.

The above are the revisions I have made to the manuscript based on your comments. I think that under the guidance of your review comments, the manuscript has been greatly improved in theory and science after revision. Thank you again for your valuable comments on this manuscript.

 

Reviewer 5 Report

Based on the social network analysis (SNA) method, this study analyzes the structural characteristics and evolution trend of the "2+26" urban air pollution collaborative governance. The research has guiding significance for deepening the collaborative governance of air pollution. However, before the article can be published, I think major revisions are needed. My specific comments are as follows:

1. The research area of this study is the "2+26" urban agglomeration. I think a map of these 28 cities is needed in the introduction part, which can help to understand the geographical information of these cities.

2. There have been some studies on the air quality policy of the "2+26" cities, but in the literature review part, the author did not make an in-depth summary of these studies. I hope the author can resummarize these studies, they are not necessarily all social science studies, but can improve the novelty of this article.

3. The research method section is just a brief overview of SNA. SNA has many key indicators, such as density, connectedness, path length, centrality, etc. These indicators can help in-depth understanding of the basic characteristics of "2+26" urban air pollution collaborative governance. However, there is no formulaic description of these indicators. Although some indicators seem to be used in the result analysis part, the currently used indicators cannot fully summarize the basic information of the "2+26" cities. I hope the author can add the above content, so as to improve the depth of the study.

4. Regarding data sources and data sorting, this part is what confuses me the most. The author seems to use a multi-valued undirected matrix, so what specific data did the author use to construct this matrix? At the same time, is the multi-valued matrix converted to a binary matrix? Finally, how to determine whether there is a relationship between the "2+26" cities? These key information are not clearly described in the text, which makes the key data used in this study unreliable. I hope the author can present the construction process of the relationship matrix in detail.

5. The axis titles of Figures 2-4 are missing.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript and your valuable comments. Your comments are pertinent and constructive. I have thoroughly revised my manuscript following your comments. Next, I will report the revisions I have made one by one in combination with your comments on my manuscript.

1. Regarding the map of “2+26” cities you mentioned in the comments, I have added a schematic diagram of “2+26” cities in Lines 54 Page2.
2. In response to your question about the insufficient summary of the “2+26” cities air pollution prevention and control policies in the literature review section, I have further enriched the review of the existing research results. At the same time, some of the latest discussions on the research results of the “2+26” cities air pollution prevention and control policies have been added (in Lines 146-160).
3. In response to your question about the insufficient discussion of the research methods, I have substantially revised Chapter 3 of the manuscript. Among them, I newly added the calculation methods of some specific indicators of social network analysis presented in the manuscript, such as the formula of how to calculate the density, centrality and the centralization index of the network(in Lines 229-272).
4. In response to your question about the problems existing in the data sources and data sorting part, I have also made key revisions. In order to better present the research data, I have given a more detailed introduction to how to collect data and how to assign values to the data (in Lines 325-352). For example, in terms of relationship assignment and relationship matrix construction, I have given a more detailed explanation. I amended the expression in the manuscript that ‘Whenever there is a related statement about the joint document, joint meeting or joint action between the government entities of the “2+26” cities in the data, the value of the collaborative relationship between the relevant cities will be increased by 1.’ And taking a piece of actual data I collected as an example, I explained in detail how to assign values. ‘For example, based on the original data, large-scale heavy pollution weather occurred in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei and its surrounding areas from November 12 to 16, 2020. In the process of this air pollution event, 17 cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, Tangshan, Langfang, Baoding, Cangzhou, Hengshui, Xingtai, Handan, Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Anyang, Hebi, Xinxiang, Jiaozuo, and Puyang, jointly launched the emergency response to heavy pollution weather, and took joint action measures such as emergency emission reduction. Based on this, it can be considered that the above cities have taken collaborative governance measures in the process of this heavy pollution weather; thus, the value of the collaborative relationship between the above cities has been increased by 1. Similarly, analyzing the 107 original data after sorting one by one, and then assigning the value of the collaborative relationship between the “2+26” cities. Finally, we can obtain the multi-value relationship value matrix of the collaborative governance of air pollution in “2+26” cities in four stages’.
5. In response to your question about the issue of missing the axis titles of Figures 2-4 are missing, I have re-added the titles of the horizontal and vertical axis of the figures in Page 13-15.

The above are the revisions I have made to the manuscript based on your comments. I think that under the guidance of your review comments, the manuscript has been greatly improved in theory and science after revision. Thank you again for your valuable comments on this manuscript.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

This time is better, yet I did not see any specific measure in your paper! What means " emergency measures"? Shutting down the activity, or improveing the quality of air by filtering? Which are concreate measures applied? Because from every article we have to learn something from the benefit of human being! Apart from a good coordination of the measures which defintely improved temporary the ai quality, riseing the responsability is a long time measure. Why those  measures are so expensive, and cannot become a permanent one?

The formulas that you have introduced, should be numbered and written in distinct lines along the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript and your valuable comments. Your comments are pertinent and constructive. I have thoroughly revised my manuscript following your comments. Next, I will report the revisions I have made one by one in combination with your comments on my manuscript.

1. Regarding your question about the lack of specific measures, I have added some common measures in the process of collaborative governance of air pollution in “2+26” cities currently in the section of Policy Insights, including transform and upgrade the industrial structure, update sewage equipment, and eliminate outdated production capacity, and so on (in Line 709-712). Of course, as you mentioned in your comments, these are temporary emergency measures. The purpose of implementing collaborative governance of regional air pollution is to make regional air pollution governance realize the transition from emergency governance to normalized governance. This transformation is based on the cultivation of awareness of the regional environmental protection community. Before this kind of awareness is formed, collaborative governance of regional air pollution will undoubtedly cost a lot of money, including information costs, negotiation costs, implementation costs, and so on. Once the awareness of the regional environmental protection community is formed, the governance subjects in the region will carry out independent collaborative governance activities of air pollution under the guidance of the sense of responsibility. This is the beginning of the normalized collaborative governance of regional air pollution. Now, the collaborative governance of air pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is in the process of transforming from mobilization cooperation to normalization cooperation.
2. Regarding the question with the formula you mentioned, I have numbered the formula and written in distinct lines along the manuscript (in Line 249-276).

The above are the revisions I have made to the manuscript based on your comments. I think that under the guidance of your review comments, the manuscript has been greatly improved in theory and science after revision. Thank you again for your valuable comments on this manuscript.

Reviewer 4 Report

a.      On Lines 179-186 of Pages 4-5, the presentations seems to be not comparable with the following research gap and creativity statements.

b.      How about the other side or directions of Hebei Province? Are these areas (not included in this paper) not correlated with the air pollutions around the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei areas?

c.       Some numbers of figures and tables are not correct. Figs.2 to 4 could be improved.

d.      About the defined concept in your papers, I suggest the author to use some demonstrative graphs to describe them.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript and your valuable comments. Your comments are pertinent and constructive. I have thoroughly revised my manuscript following your comments. Next, I will report the revisions I have made one by one in combination with your comments on my manuscript.

1. With regard to the presentations of lines 179-186, I have revised the expression of this paragraph. After the revision, the logic of this paragraph is: first, summarize the existing research results, then, point out some shortcomings of the existing research, and finally, put forward the main ideas and contents of this paper combined with the shortcomings of the existing research.
2. With regard to the question that the cities in the north of Hebei Province are not involved, this is related to the scope of the area covered by the “2+26” city. The delineation of the “2+26” cities is based on whether it will have a significant impact on air pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Existing studies have shown that for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, there are three main pollution transmission channels, namely the southwest channel starting from Shanxi and Henan, the southeast channel starting from Shandong, and the eastern channel starting from Tangshan. Cities on these pollution transmission channels are classified as “2+26” cities. Therefore, although the cities in northern Hebei are located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the atmospheric environment of these cities is relatively good, and due to factors such as terrain and industrial structure, they will not have a significant impact on the air pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Therefore, these cities are not included in the scope of “2+26” cities.
3. Regarding the wrong numbers of the figures and tables, I have renumbered them in order. At the same time, I made some adjustments to the format of Figures 2-4 to make them look clearer (in Lines 557, 592 and 622).
4. Regarding the definition in the manuscript, I introduced the origin of the “2+26” cities and the reasons for the demarcation of the scope in the introduction (in Lines 45-50), and showed the specific scope of the “2+26” cities in the form of pictures (in Lines 56).

The above are the revisions I have made to the manuscript based on your comments. I think that under the guidance of your review comments, the manuscript has been greatly improved in theory and science after revision. Thank you again for your valuable comments on this manuscript.

Reviewer 5 Report

The author has addressed all my comments, and now I recommend publishing this paper in Sustainability.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your approval of this manuscript, and thank you again for your suggestions and help in the revision of the manuscript!