Sustainable Impact of Green Building on the Eco-Economic Efficiency of the Construction Industry: Evidence from China

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corrections highlighted in the re-submitted files.

2. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: Title: The title is too long and unclear. Please replace it with a clearer formula that reflects the content of the study.

Response 1: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree with this comment. Therefore, we have change the title to “Sustainable Impact of Green Building on Eco-economic Efficiency of Construction Industry：Evidence from China”. (Please refer to Lines 1-2 in the revised paper)

Comments 2: Abstract: This section must be suitable for separate presentations (independent of the manuscript text body). The abstract is written qualitatively. The influence of the studied parameters should be presented in key sentences that present their negative or positive influence or their optimal value. This section must be suitable for a separate or independent publication. Please present the obtained results in quantitative form.

Response 2: Thanks for the good suggestion. I have presented the research results quantitatively, hoping to improve the expressiveness of the abstract. The detailed modifications are as follows:

Addressing the global warming challenge, carbon emissions reduction potential of green building (GB) is garnering increasing attention. However, the extent to which GB can impact the eco-economic efficiency (EE) of the construction industry remains unclear. To fill this gap, based on panel data in 30 regions of China from 2003 to 2018, a comprehensive analysis of the EE and sustainable impact of GB is conducted using Super Slacks-Based Measure (SBM-DEA), Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR), and Threshold models in this study. The findings reflect that only about 10% of provinces have achieved EE effectiveness , with pure technological effectiveness being a significant driving force behind this. The average comprehensive, pure technical, and scale EE have 62.23%, 46.42% and 31.91% improvement potential to the efficiency frontier. The EE in the eastern region is relatively high, while the western region surpassed the central region due to scale and pure technical efficiency. EE is significantly reduced in the current period when it is subject to a positive impact of a standard deviation from the economic level. It reached the strongest in 1 period, then gradually disappeared until 6 period，aligning with the Kuznets curve's theoretical assumption. GB awareness negatively impacted the current period, but is expected to gradually show a positive effect after 2 period. The urbanization, green building awareness, and green building coverage have a very small contribution to the EE, accounting for 8.6%, 1.6%, and 9% respectively. Early EE and economic level being identified as the primary variables affecting the current EE. The impact of GB on EE exhibits a threshold effect, with the ecological effect of GB only being significant in cities with economic levels higher than 11.063. This research contributes to the existing knowledge of GB's eco-economic mechanism and provides insights for government policies, promoting the sustainable development of the GB market. (Please refer to the Abstract section in the revised paper)

Comments 3: Introduction and Literature Review Section：Please combine the sections and present the information in a more compact form. Maybe some tables and schematic representations would improve the quality of these sections.

Response 3: Thanks for raising the concern. I have reorganized the structure of the article, hoping to improve its readability. (Please refer to the whole revised paper)

Comments 4: What is the novelty of this study? Please clearly highlight what makes the results from this research different from those previously reported and how this paper will extend the knowledge in this field.

Response 4: Thank you very much for your comments. We have added a novelty part in the Conclusion section as follows:

In terms of theoretical advancements, this study rebuilds the evaluation model of EE by incorporating eco-environmental indicators. The PVAR analysis framework is further introduced, along with regional threshold effect analysis. This research presents a novel scientific approach for exploring the ecological and economic mechanism of GB. Practical implications are also significant, as this article re-evaluates the efficiency of the construction industry using practical data, thereby addressing the absence of environmental impact in traditional efficiency measurements. Furthermore, the study delves into the mechanism, influencing factors, and regional heterogeneity of GB. The research provides an effective reference for promoting GB practices. (Please refer to Lines 744-752 in the revised paper)

Comments5: Results and discussions：The quality of the charts is poor; please use software that is more feasible for creating scientific charts.

Response 5: Thank you very much for your comments. Based on your comments, I have made corrections to the figures and tables in the article. Some of the figures are fixed program outputs of the analysis software and cannot be significantly modified. Adjustments can only be made within the software. I have made every effort to adjust the presentation and clarity of the figures, hoping that these works will be helpful in improving the presentation of the results. (Please refer to the charts and red highlighted section in the revised paper)

Comments 6: The main limitation of the paper is the current number of materials and sources that were considered. Therefore, the authors should extract some conclusions that can contribute to the worldwide application of the results.

Response 6: Thanks for the good suggestion. We have revised the Policy Implications section as follows:

Drawing upon the research findings above, several policy implications are pro-posed.

First, the development of regional heterogeneity strategies is of paramount im-portance. These strategies should be tailored to the unique mechanisms of EE in vari-ous regions. In response to the inefficiency of pure technology in central and western regions, it is necessary to enhance policy promotion and incentives for science, tech-nology, and green innovation. This will promote the accumulation of regional techno-logical innovation elements, including talents, capital, and equipment. For the eastern region, with an advanced level of technology, the scale effect of GB projects can be ex-panded, and the resource optimization allocation mechanism can be further refined. Based on the region's characteristics and the built environment, scientific and rational GB development strategies can be designed.

Second, the successful implementation of fiscal and tax incentive policies is vital for achieving fairness and efficiency in resource allocation. The government should develop corresponding taxation and incentive strategies to achieve these objectives. Specifically, implementing a construction pollution tax and fee system for polluters would be an effective approach. Moreover, the government should incentivize and provide subsidies for enterprises to bridge the gap between private and overall social costs in pursuing green building strategies. These policies can effectively stimulate the attainment of the optimal efficiency goal within the ecological mechanism.

Third, the development of an innovative system supportive of the ecological economy should be guided by the government. The concept of EE should be incorpo-rated into the evaluation system for measuring development, encompassing both eco-nomic and ecological aspects. The system should also integrate additional environ-mental indicators, and an innovative method, like the quota system, can be employed to establish new control measures for resource consumption, emission rights transfer, carbon tax, and emission rights trading.

Fourth, the public GB awareness should be cultivated. The government should deepen the mechanism for cultivating the public’s awareness of green buildings. Envi-ronmental protection campaigns and targeted green building education and training could be conducted for the enterprises and the public by making full use of the media, energy-saving education activities. In addition, the intermediary agencies or consult-ing service organizations are encouraged to participate in, thus promoting the im-provement of the level of GB awareness.

(Please refer to Lines 698-731 in the revised paper)

Comments 7: Discussion section. The discussion section is missing. In the discussion section, a clear correspondence and comparison between the results of this study and those in the literature should be provided. Please improve. Currently, the discussion section includes some comments and appreciation about the obtained results without any comparison with the literature.

Response 7: Thanks for the good suggestion. We have revised the Discussion section as follows:

(1)The comprehensive EE of China's provinces displays relatively strong effectiveness only in a few regions. The pure technical EE reaches a higher level of development in the middle and advanced stages, but there is no effective region, with only Beijing approaching the level of DEA effectiveness. Throughout the majority of re-search periods, the average annual pure technical EE has played a crucial role in enhancing the comprehensive efficiency. This indicates that although China's construction industry is developing rapidly, its performance is not good when measured with input-output models that take negative environmental effect into account. This is in line with the increasingly serious environmental pollution situation in China. And technology remains the optimal solution to address these issues at present.

(2) In the eastern region, despite having a relatively low scale, pure technical EE is higher due to talents, capital, and resources, significantly contributing to the overall EE. In contrast, the western region, influenced by its geographical location and diverse development factors, heavily relies on economies of scale to improve its comprehensive EE. The pure technical EE in the western region has significantly strengthened since 2011, and the subsequent research period mainly attribute the improvement in comprehensive EE to the enhancement of pure technical EE. This indicates the western region is undergoing green production methods and technological transformations. Concurrently, the central region's pure technology EE and scale EE enhancement is obscure, both remaining at relatively low levels. Consequently, the EE in the western region has been gradually catching up and surpassing the central region, urgencyiting targeted adjustments and improvements in the central region.

(3) The economic level has a long-term inhibitory effect on the EE of the construction industry. Historically, EE has been neglected and has become a victim of economic growth. Although the awareness of GB has a negative impact on the current period, it will promote the improvement of EE in the long run. In addition, the development of GB has a significant impact on EE. However, its impact is relatively short, and more effective promotion of GBs is required for long-term efficiency improvement. Early EE and economic level are the main contributing factors that affect the current EE. The construction market brought by urbanization has not significantly improved the EE. The effect of urbanization on the ecological and economic performance of buildings is uncertain.

(4) The impact of GB on EE of construction industry presents a threshold effect. When the economic level develops to a certain level, GB can significantly promote the improvement of EE. For the EE that considers both economic and environmental benefits, the current core driving factor is still economic benefits. The ecological role of GB only has a significant impact on promoting the improvement of EE in some cities with high economic levels.

(Please refer to Lines 661-696 in the revised paper)

Comments 8: Conclusions section: Please improve the conclusions and present them following the main recommendations by academia of giving the conclusions of the study in points with highlights. Also, the conclusions section is too long; please move most of the conclusions to a discussion section and provide only short, clear, and quantitative conclusions.

Response 8: Thanks for the good suggestion. We have revised the conclusion section as follows:

The impact mechanism of GB on EE in the construction industry has been tested. The research results indicate that the EE is relatively low in most regions. Pure technical efficiency is the most important driving force. The EE in the eastern region is relatively high, while the western region surpasses the central region due to its scale and pure technological efficiency. The economic level has a significant long-term negative impact on EE. GB awareness has a negative impact on the current period, but it is expected to gradually show a positive impact in the future. The coverage of GB has a significant positive impact on EE, but the impact period is relatively short. Economic level, urbanization, and EE have a negative impact on the development of GB. Early EE was identified as the main variable affecting current EE. The ecological effect of GB is only significant in cities with high economic levels. (Please refer to Lines 733-742 in the revised paper)

Comments9: Future directions and limitations: Please provide some future directions and limitations of the study. This section is very important for this study because some strict or limited parameters were considered (the calculations are only related to a specific period and a limited region, China).

Response 9: Thanks for raising the concern. We have added a section on future directions and limitations in Part 6, with detailed modifications as follows:

There are limitations in this paper. The openness of government and industry data restricts the acquisition of GB data, resulting in time limitations and deviations from objective reality during EE analysis. Future research could focus on the practical ap-plications and social appraisal of GBs, using social surveys and questionnaires to ex-amine social determinants. Further research on the universal impact mechanisms of the worldwide will also be conducted. (Please refer to Lines 753-757 in the revised paper)

3. Additional clarifications

Thank you very much for your detailed comments. Your meaningful suggestions have made a qualitative change to the paper. We hope that with your help, the paper can make better contributions.

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corrections highlighted in the re-submitted files.

2. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: In the abstract the perimeter of the study is not declared.

Response 1: Thanks for raising the concern. I have added the perimeter of the study in the abstract.

. To fill this gap, based on panel data in 30 regions of China from 2003 to 2018, a comprehensive analysis of the EE and sustainable impact of GB is conducted using Super Slacks-Based Measure (SBM-DEA), Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR), and Threshold models in this study. (Please refer to Lines 11-14 in the revised paper)

Comments 2: References (i.e. line 158) and definitions (i.e. green building, green technologies, total output value, etc.) are missed.

Response 2: Thanks for raising the concern. We have reorganized the content of this section based on your comments and added references and variable explanations as follows:

As shown in Table 1, the indicator system is constructed from the three aspects of resources, environment, and economy, including the input indicators, undesirable output and desirable output.

Input indicators: Capital investments play a vital role as input resources and a fundamental condition for construction enterprises' operation. Fixed asset is used to evaluate capital investments [28]. Given the labor-intensive nature of the construction industry, the number of employees is used as measure of human resources [29]. The industry's technical level can be assessed to some extent through its machinery and equipment. Thus, the proportion of technical equipment is chosen to measure technique level [30].

Desirable output indicator: The most direct indicators to measure output are products and output value. The study uses the total output value of the construction industry from Industry Statistical Yearbook as output value [29].

Undesirable output indicator: The undesired output of the construction industry usually includes wastewater, exhaust gas, and solid waste. The most significant environmental impact of the construction industry is the emission of greenhouse gases, which is also one of the most important advantages of GBs. Therefore, the undesired output in this study is quantified by CO2 emissions [28,30].

(Please refer to lines 137-152 in the revised paper).

Comments 3: The overall quality and readability are very low. too much data in the same graph (figures 2, 3 and 4) do not allow to really appreciate results.

Response 3: Thank you very much for your comments. Based on your comments, I have made corrections to the figures and tables in the article. Some of the figures are fixed program outputs of the analysis software and cannot be significantly modified. Adjustments can only be made within the software. I have made every effort to adjust the presentation and clarity of the figures, hoping that these works will be helpful in improving the presentation of the results. (Please refer to the figures and red highlighted section in the revised paper)

Comments 4: Mathematical formatting is very hard to understand and there are a lot of typos in variables format (i.e. line 210 defines “s” but in the formula we find “S”, in table 3 “baidu” is not defined) it is very complicated to follow the methodology and the paper loses in interest.

Response 4: Thanks for raising the concern. I am very sorry for any inconvenience caused to the understanding of the formula. I have sorted out the expression in this section, hoping to help readers better understand the formula.

 s^-, s^d, s^u are slack variables of input, desirable output and undesirable output；s_1，s₂ are the number of desirable output and undesirable output；S represents the symbol of the set of all output indicators. (Please refer to lines 196-203 in the revised paper). The definition of Baidu has been added to the paper. (Please refer to lines 234-236 in the revised paper).

Comments5: In order to really appreciate the interest and results of the study, I think the paper should be improved in every aspect and simplified where it is possible.

Response 5: Thank you very much for your comments. I have corrected the issue of English language quality and made sentence by sentence corrections and English editing to the overall article. Your meaningful suggestions have made a qualitative change to the paper. We hope that with your help, the paper can make better contributions.

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corrections highlighted in the re-submitted files.

2. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: What are the main challenges encountered in the development of the innovative economic model of green buildings, and how can they be overcome to promote their widespread adoption, apart from the initial costs and stakeholder resistance to change mentioned in the text?

Response 1: Thanks for raising the concern. We believe that the main challenge at present is to increase people's in-depth understanding of green buildings. Based on our research and understanding of the Chinese market, green buildings with LEED and other green labels are very rare in China. Meanwhile, professionals in non-specific research fields and practitioners in non-specific green building projects have little professional understanding of green building. Furthermore, there are very few professionals engaged in green building related work in China. And academic research is more based on technology, with less research from market and non-technical perspectives, which is also the characteristic of this article. We believe that the most useful way is to establish a model for promoting and demonstrating benchmark green buildings through collaborative efforts among the government, market, and consumers.

Comments 2: How do the Super-SBM, PVAR models, and threshold analysis contribute to a better understanding of the eco-economic efficiency of green buildings in the Chinese construction industry, and what are the specific advantages/disadvantages of each model in this study?

Response 2: Thank you for pointing this out.

Super-SBM model not only addresses the problem of slack variables but also distinguishes effective decision-making units. Consequently, the Super-SBM model is employed in this paper to analyze the EE via super-efficiency, non-radial, and undesired output calculations. This model can more effectively compare and analyze the ecological and economic efficiency of China's construction industry.

Nonlinearities can be detected through the threshold analysis method, which captures the structural mutation non-linear threshold in the regression model, enabling the identification of the threshold function. Through the analysis of the threshold method, we also found that green buildings have a more significant threshold effect on the ecological economy in economically developed regions. This further enriches the research results.

Comments 3: How does the article propose to address the implications of the results, especially regarding regional policies and the promotion of green buildings to improve the construction industry's EE in China?

Response 3: Thanks for raising the concern.

In response to the inefficiency of pure technology in central and western regions, it is necessary to enhance policy promotion and incentives for science, technology, and green innovation. This will promote the accumulation of regional technological innovation elements, including talents, capital, and equipment. For the eastern region, with an advanced level of technology, the scale effect of GB projects can be expanded, and the resource optimization allocation mechanism can be further refined. Based on the region's characteristics and the built environment, scientific and rational GB development strategies can be designed.

Comments 4: How do you envision the implementation of policy implications, particularly regarding the promotion of green buildings and the improvement of energy efficiency in the construction sector?

Response 4: Thanks for raising the concern.

The public GB awareness should be cultivated. The government should deepen the mechanism for cultivating the public’s awareness of green buildings. Environmental protection campaigns and targeted green building education and training could be conducted for the enterprises and the public by making full use of the media, energy-saving education activities. In addition, the intermediary agencies or consulting service organizations are encouraged to participate in, thus promoting the improvement of the level of GB awareness.

Based on these, the government's incentive policies are particularly important for the current green building market in China. The government needs to further increase incentives and implement precise policies based on the characteristics of the region and relevant participants.

Comments5: Results and discussions：The quality of the charts is poor; please use software that is more feasible for creating scientific charts.

Response 5:  Thank you very much for your comments. Based on your comments, I have made corrections to the charts. I have made every effort to adjust the presentation and clarity of the charts, hoping that these works will be helpful in improving the presentation of the results. (Please refer to the figures and red highlighted section in the revised paper)

Comments 6: A number of elements in this article do not follow the journal template:

- Line 5: Replace "a, b" with "1, 2".

- Lines 6 and 7: Also replace "a, b" with "1, 2" and add indentation.

- Lines 31, 70, 134, 322, 682, 774: Replace "1.0" with "1."

- Equations: Equations should be centered with numbers aligned to the right.

- All Figures: Replace "Fig X" in the text with "Figure X".

- Tables 4, 8, 9: Follow the template by reducing the size of the footer.

- Starting from line 775: All references must be reviewed to comply with the journal template.

Response 6: Thanks for raising the concern. Based on your comments, I have made corrections to the elements. (Please refer to the figures and red highlighted section in the revised paper)

Comments 7: These following elements need to be corrected to improve the quality of the paper:

- Line 1: It would be nice to find a word other than "based" in the title to avoid repeating it.

- Figures 2, 3, 4: The representation of these figures needs improvement because they consist of too many curves over too many years. It is very difficult to observe the evolution of a city over time.

- Line 502: A footer needs to be added in Table 5 to explain the significance of the *.

- Tables 4, 5, and 6: Limit the number of significant digits to 3 after the decimal point; such precision does not add any value to this study.

- Figures 2, 3, 4, 5: It is essential to include titles for both axes on the graphs, adding the units in parentheses.

- Figures 6, 7, 8, 10: Units for the variables need to be added in parentheses.

- Figure 9: Improve the quality of this figure by removing the background. The issue is that there are too many small figures, making them less visible.

- Figure 10: Enhance the quality of this figure by removing the background and adding a legend (explaining the meaning of the blue and red curves).

- Line 630: Add a reference for the software used.

Response 7: Thank you very much for your comments. Based on your comments, I have made corrections to the figures and tables in the article. Some of the figures are fixed program outputs of the analysis software and cannot be significantly modified. Adjustments can only be made within the software. I have made every effort to adjust the presentation and clarity of the figures, hoping that these works will be helpful in improving the presentation of the results. (Please refer to the figures and red highlighted section in the revised paper)

3. Response to Comments on the Quality of English Language

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I saw a number of spelling mistakes in the article. It is necessary to correct the following mistakes, but above all, to thoroughly and carefully proofread the entire article, checking for spelling and punctuation errors:

- Line 122: Replace "the return of GBis" with "the return of GB is".

- Line 143: "Technique" needs to be corrected.

- Lines 203/2024: There is an issue with: "Then the matrix form are".

- Lines 239/240: There is an issue with: "This paper used the ratio of annual green building area 'to completed' building area to measure the GB coverage".

- Line 289: "previous" needs to be corrected.

- Line 312: Correct the word "bootstrap".

- Line 318: There is an issue with: "the above process was repeated".

- Line 327: There is a missing period at the end of the sentence.

- Line 334: Remove the repeated word "of".

- Line 368: Replace "shaanxi" with "Shaanxi".

- Line 380: There is an issue with: "In this section, the average annual changes in EE was further analyzed".

- Line 506: There is an issue with: "this paper choosed one period of lag".

- Line 541: Replace "reps" with "répétitions" and add a period at the end of the sentence.

- Line 557: "stratege" needs to be corrected.

- Line 597: Check the spelling of: "the contribution of each variable to EE present".

- Line 607: Replace "can not" with "cannot".

- Line 660: Correct the word "also".

- Line 681: Replace "Gbs" with "GBs".

- Line 716: Correct the word "findings".

- Line 724: Remove the repeated word "the".

Response : Thank you very much for your comments. I have corrected the issue of English language quality following your instructions and made sentence by sentence corrections and English editing to the overall article. (Please refer to red highlighted section in the revised paper)

4. Additional clarifications

Thank you very much for your detailed comments. Your meaningful suggestions have made a qualitative change to the paper. We hope that with your help, the paper can make better contributions.

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corrections highlighted in the re-submitted files.

2. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: I suggest to add a glossary in the beginning of the paper in order to quickly find all the signification of the acronyms and symbols

Response 1: Thanks for raising the concern. We have provided detailed explanations of the acronyms and symbols in the text.

Comments 2: Pay attention to the page setting and format (i.e. the text does not follow always the same bords)

Response 2: Thanks for raising the concern. We have made corrections to the page settings and formatting, and I will work with the editor to make further corrections. (Please refer to the revised paper).

Comments 3: The abstract was improved and now is clearer, however I suggest to explain the concept “period” in order to better understand “1period” “6 period” and “2 period” information.

Response 3: Thank you very much for your comments. We have made explanation to the content. (Please refer to the Line 19 in the revised paper)

Comments 4: Figure 1: the horizontal axis is not readable, I suggest to improve the format.

Response 4: Thanks for raising the concern. We have updated the chart settings and added the title and readability of the horizontal axis in Figure 1. (Please refer to Figure 1 line 174 in the revised paper).

Comments 5: Formulas (3) and (5) some variables are still missed, and others are not in capital in the explication (i.e. s2).

Response 5: Thank you very much for your comments. Please refer to lines 193-196、198-201、204-211 for variable explanations. Particularly, S₂ is on line 198. This model is the classic Super SBM model, please refer to the following references for details:

[31] Tone, K. A slacks-based measure of efficiency in data envelopment analysis. European Journal of Operational Research. 2001, 130(3), 498-509.

[32] Tone, K. A slacks-based measure of super-efficiency in data envelopment analysis. European Journal of Operational Research. 2002, 143, 32-41.

Comments 6: Table 3: I suggest to explain p25, p50 etc.

Response 6: Thank you very much for your comments. We have made explanation to the content. “Note：P25, p50, and p75 are quartiles. “(Please refer to the Line 228 in the revised paper)

Comments 7: There are some formulas in lines 258 and 259, I suggest to see if it is not possible to put it as a compact system of formulas.

Response 7: Thank you very much for your comments. The compact system of formulas is formula (7) in line 266. (Please refer to line 266 in the revised paper).

Comments 8: In equations from (7) to (14) variable explanation is missed (please check the reference number of the equation in the text)

Response 8: Thank you very much for your comments.  Please refer to lines 267-269 for variable explanations of (7)-(12). Please refer to lines 295-299 for variable explanations of (13) and (14).

Comments 9: Table 4 the explanation of the test and a recall of the variable are missed; is the t* related to the note under the table?

Response 9: Thank you very much for your comments. “Adjusted t*” is a universal expression for the Levin Lin Chu bias adjusted t-statistic. (Please refer to “[36] Maddala, G.S. and S.W. Wu. A comparative study of unit root tests with panel data and a new simple test. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics. 1999, 61, 631-652.”in the revised paper).

Comments 10: Line 473: AIC, BIC and HQIC definitions are missed I suggest to explain them or to put a reference to be checked.

Response 10: Thank you very much for your comments. We have made explanation to the content.” To estimate the PVAR system, this study adopted the AIC (Akaike Information Criterion), BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion), and HQIC (Hannan-Quinn Information Criterion) screening criteria to identify the optimal lag period [33,34]. These three indicators all add a penalty term (number of parameters) on the basis of the error term. The more complex the model, the larger the indicator will become. But overall, it is re-quired that the information loss criterion indicator be as small as possible. The guiding principle involves selecting the minimal amount of information as the optimal lag period for the model. The results are summarized in Table 5.” (Please refer to lines 475-482 in the revised paper).

Comments 11: Line 479: lag period definition is missed, and I suggest to explain how we can choose the optimal one for each rule.

Response 11: Thank you very much for your comments. We have made explanation to the content. “Lag order is an important concept in time series analysis, which reflects the degree to which the historical state of time series data affects the current state. In practical applications, selecting the optimal lag order is one of the key issues in time series prediction. To estimate the PVAR system, this study adopted the AIC (Akaike Information Criterion), BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion), and HQIC (Hannan-Quinn Infor-mation Criterion) screening criteria to identify the optimal lag period [33,34]. These three indicators all add a penalty term (number of parameters) on the basis of the error term. The more complex the model, the larger the indicator will become. But overall, it is required that the information loss criterion indicator be as small as possible. The guiding principle involves selecting the minimal amount of information as the optimal lag period for the model. The results are summarized in Table 5.”(Please refer to lines 475-485 in the revised paper).

Comments 12: Line 483: can the acronym GMM be developed ?

Response 12: Thank you very much for your comments. We have developed GMM. (Please refer to lines 494-496 in the revised paper).

Comments 13: Table 6: better explain all the parameters and the procedure.

Response 13: Thank you very much for your comments. We have made explanation to the parameters and the procedure. “Note：Coef. is the coefficient of the independent variable in the regression equa-tion; Std. Err. is the standard deviation of each regression coefficient; z is the z-test sta-tistics for each regression coefficient; P>|z| is the p-value of each regression coefficient; 95% Conf. Interval is the "95% confidence interval for each regression coefficient". *, **, and *** denote a significance of 10%, 5% and 1%, respectively.” (Please refer to lines 501-505 in the revised paper).

Comments 14: Table 7 is not clear I suggest to better explain in the text how it should be read, is it normal that we have dlneco in vertical and as an explained variable?

Response 14: Thank you very much for your comments. We have highlighted the ten-year changes in the effects of each variable on the explained variable, which is a common expression of the variance decomposition function. We have provided a paragraph of explanation for the results in Table 7. (Please refer to lines 564-567 in the revised paper).

Comments 15: Table 8: better organize and explain the table (try to arrange the formulas in a better way, recall the variable and explain how to read the table.

Response 15: Thank you very much for your comments. We have made corrections. (Please refer to lines 605-608 in the revised paper).

Comments 16: Table 9: a note inticating the signification of ** is missed.

Response 16: Thank you very much for your comments. We have made corrections. (Please refer to lines 627-628 in the revised paper).

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

1. Summary

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corrections highlighted in the re-submitted files.

2. Point-by-point response to Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments 1: Check the quality of your English and it would be good to have it thoroughly reviewed by a native English speaker.

Response 1: Thanks for raising the concern. We have corrected the issue of English language quality and made sentence by sentence corrections and English editing to the overall article. (Please refer to the revised paper)

Comments 2: The quality of Figures 9 and 10 needs to be improved by removing the gray background and adding a legend for Figure 10.

Response 2: Thanks for raising the concern. We have corrected Figures 9 and 10 (Please refer to Figures 9 and 10  in the revised paper).

Comments 3: Line 143: "Fixed assets is used" => "Fixed assets are used"

Response 3: Thank you very much for your comments. We have corrected the content. (Please refer to the line 143 in the revised paper)

Comments 4: Line 235: I recommend rephrasing the sentence as follows to be clearer => "This paper measures the coverage of green buildings by calculating the ratio of annual green building area to total building area."

Response 4: Thanks for raising the concern. We have corrected the content. (Please refer to lines 235-236 in the revised paper).

Comments 5: Line 388: "thecomprehensive." needs to be corrected.

Response 5: Thank you very much for your comments. We have corrected the content. (Please refer to the line 388 in the revised paper)

Comments 6: Line 394: Correct: "brokefthe."

Response 6: Thank you very much for your comments. We have corrected the content. (Please refer to the line 394 in the revised paper)

Comments 7: Line 482: Replace "this paper selectes" with "this paper selects."

Response 7: Thank you very much for your comments. We have corrected the content “this paper selects one lag period as the optimal choice for further analysis.” (Please refer to the lines 481-482 in the revised paper)

Comments 8: Line 637: Reformulate this sentence to avoid the repetition of the word "threshold."

Response 8: Thank you very much for your comments. We have reformatted the content “The threshold estimate for 11.063 in the GB-EE model lies within the 95% confidence interval.” (Please refer to the lines 637-638 in the revised paper)

Comments 9: Line 681: "urgencyiting" needs to be corrected.

Response 9: Thank you very much for your comments. We have corrected the content. “Consequently, the EE in the western region has been gradually catching up and surpassing the central region, there is an urgent need for targeted adjustments and improvements in the central region.” (Please refer to the lines 680-682 in the revised paper)