How Does New Energy Demonstration City Policy Promote Urban Land Use Efficiency in China? The Mediating Effect of Industrial Structure

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper investigated the effects of New Energy Demonstration City Policy on urban land use efficiency.  Overall, this is a clear, concise, and well-written manuscript. Some small problems:

Figure2, the skech map of the South China Sea should be of identical color scheme with the master map.

Line 253, εi.t ，however it is eit in the equation.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper focus on a measure to deal with the urban energy consumption and its implications in economic development by analyzing the new energy demonstration city (NEDC) policy in China. To explore how the NEDC policy can promote the growth of urban land use efficiency (ULUE), the study apply the PSM-DID method and the mediating effect model to evaluate the effects of this policy.  

The paper deals with a relevant and up to date topic, trying to provide some policy inspirations for policymakers to support the low-carbon and sustainable economic development and urban land use.

The structure of the paper is clear, the rationale is adequately presented in the abstract and the introduction and the methodology is consistent with the aims.

However, there are some concerns regarding:

The literature review refers to a limited part of the scientific scenario, covering exclusively the Chinese context, reducing the interest for an international audience and affecting the relevance of the results. Even if the contents are very site-specific, the topic is relevant in different geo-political context.

In §2.1 the literature has been presented as a list of authors without a critical exploration of the contents.

The research framework and the definition of the research hypothesis needs to be expanded and related to the lit rew.

The discussion can be expanded in order to better explain the results and its implication in terms policy design.

The conclusions need to be referred to the discussion of the research findings.

In general, the paper could benefit from a reorganisation of the contents to better address the articulation presented in the introduction. 

A less concise style should also be used to better clarify the contents.

There are frequent misspellings (i.e. lines 24, 35, 109) and sentences without verbs.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper has been adequately reviewed