A Study of Linkage Effects and Environmental Impacts on Information and Communications Technology Industry between South Korea and USA: 2006–2015

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

My major concern with the paper is the relevance hereof. The hypothesis are not well founded in my view. There will also be a difference and some of these will be statistically significant - so what? Why is it important to compare Korea with the US in ICT CO2 emissions? I have read the paper and just shrere size alone is not a qualitative argument - what does the analysis show of relevant input for meeting the reduction targets? So until the research aim is more clear and relevant and the hypothesis reflect this I can't accept the paper.

Author Response

First of all, thanks for your comments. I have modified Abstract and Introduction overall to explain clearly why it is important to compare Korea with the US in ICT CO2 emissions. In addition, Part 5. Discussion and Conclusion was also modified to clear the research question and the aim of this study. The hypothesis verification process was carried out to divide ICT industry into manufacturing and service sector according to the standards of OECD, and once more to check whether there is a difference between the two groups. Again, thanks for spending your time for my better paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Abstract:
Line 19-21: What kind of practical and/or managerial implications arouse from your study? Please specify them.

Introduction:

Line 29: If you have to use abbreviations (BAU, GHG), please explain them. Sometimes the reader may not understand your main idea/point of view due to abbreviations without explanation.

Line 50 and Figure 1.: the figure title suggest different period than mentioned in the paper title. How do you explain such  differences?

Line 64: The Covid-19 period extends beyond the period mentioned in the title of this article (2006-2015). Why are you mentioning the pandemic? Explain it, please.

Line 94-95: you wrote: „Therefore, we think it is important to compare and analyze the connection between CO₂ emissions and Linkage effects in ICT manufacturing industry in Korea and ICT service industry in the United States.” Please, explain why is it so important? What was the reason for the research? Please provide one(few) scientific reason(s) for the analyzes.

Literature Review and Hypotheses Development:

Line 190-191: the same question as previously.

Line 197 (Table 3): please explain all your hypotheses and their theoretical foundations in the context of scientific aim(s) of the study.

 

Materials and methods:

Line 200: you wrote „2006-2015”. In the tiltle you have „2006-2016.

 

Results:

No remarks

Discussion and conclusion:

No remarks

Author Response

Line 19-21: What kind of practical and/or managerial implications arouse from your study? Please specify them.

• I added 2 sentences in Line 14-17 to make clear what our research question.
• In addition, to clarify the implications of our study, Abstract has been revised overall.

Introduction:

Line 29: If you have to use abbreviations (BAU, GHG), please explain them. Sometimes the reader may not understand your main idea/point of view due to abbreviations without explanation.

- I'm sorry for bothering you. I have modified the notation of the abbreviations.

Line 50 and Figure 1.: the figure title suggest different period than mentioned in the paper title. How do you explain such  differences?

- I think you are right and another reviewer said just like you. So, I erased Figure 1.

Line 64: The Covid-19 period extends beyond the period mentioned in the title of this article (2006-2015). Why are you mentioning the pandemic? Explain it, please.

- What I tried to say is that as COVID-19 worsens, the non-face-to-face lifestyle becomes a new normal and ICT service industry will grow further. However, COVID-19 occurred the year before last and it doesn't fit the period of our study. So I erased. 

Line 94-95: you wrote: „Therefore, we think it is important to compare and analyze the connection between CO₂ emissions and Linkage effects in ICT manufacturing industry in Korea and ICT service industry in the United States.” Please, explain why is it so important? What was the reason for the research? Please provide one(few) scientific reason(s) for the analyzes.

• It is because the world wants to foster industries with low carbon dioxide emissions and high productivity.
• And I put this sentence after the one you mentioned.

Literature Review and Hypotheses Development:

Line 190-191: the same question as previously.

- I corrected. 

Line 197 (Table 3): please explain all your hypotheses and their theoretical foundations in the context of scientific aim(s) of the study.

• I have revised Part 2. Literature Review and Hypotheses Development in general to make it more robust. Thanks for the comments and your time.

Materials and methods:

Line 200: you wrote „2006-2015”. In the tiltle you have „2006-2016.

- I corrected. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The biggest problem of this research is that the originality of the research is unclear, and it is not clear where it has academic value. The analytical method is very general, and the authors' ingenuity is not recognized. This study compares ICT in the United States and South Korea, but its validity is not fully explained. Besides, the significance of investigating the relationship between ICT and CO2 emissions is not fully explained.

Author Response

First of all, thanks for your comments. I have modified Abstract and Introduction overall to explain clearly why it is important to compare Korea with the US in ICT CO2 emissions. In addition, Part 5. Discussion and Conclusion was also modified to clear the research question and the aim of this study. The hypothesis verification process was carried out to divide ICT industry into manufacturing and service sector according to the standards of OECD, and once more to check whether there is a difference between the two groups. Again, thanks for spending your time for my better paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

1. Please use the full name of ICT in the title.
2. There are many typos and grammar errors in the manuscript. The authors should further polish the language of the manuscript.
3. Figure 1 and Table 1 are unnecessary.
4. Section 1 and Section 2 are focused on the same contents. More literatures about the research methods should be reviewed.
5. How did the authors divide the ICT manufacturing and service industry? Where did the authors obtain the disaggregation data? Please provide more information.
6. What’s the main innovation of this study, especially in the methodology section? As the methods used in this manuscript were widely-adopted and I cannot find any innovation.
7. What statistical test is used? Please provide more information.
8. There are only 10 samples in the test, which might affect the results significantly. Did the authors check the assumptions of the test? Please provide more information to prove the sample satisfy the requirements for the test.
9. Figure 2 and Figure 3 provide the same information as Table 4, 5, 7.
10. Many of the results and discussion cannot be derived through the results. Please further improve the related contents.

Author Response

First of all, thanks for your comments. In order to make our research question and aim clear as you mentioned, I have revised our paper overall. 

1. Please use the full name of ICT in the title.
   -I corrected.
2. There are many typos and grammar errors in the manuscript. The authors should further polish the language of the manuscript.
   -I tried to correct all my grammar errors.
3. Figure 1 and Table 1 are unnecessary.
   -I erased.
4. Section 1 and Section 2 are focused on the same contents. More literatures about the research methods should be reviewed.
   - I tried to explain by adding literature research why our study analyzed ICT industry by dividing it into manufacturing and service sectors, and why we chose Input-Output Analysis to understand the economic effects of the industry.
5. How did the authors divide the ICT manufacturing and service industry? Where did the authors obtain the disaggregation data? Please provide more information.
   -I have added more information in Part 2. Literature Review and Hypotheses Development
6. What’s the main innovation of this study, especially in the methodology section? As the methods used in this manuscript were widely-adopted and I cannot find any innovation.
   -We wants to find out whether ICT industry is a sustainable industry. To explain that, we chose Input-output analysis which presents linkage effects of industries in the national economy. And by analyzing carbon dioxide emissions of the industry, we tried to show whether it has a significant effect on air pollution.
7. What statistical test is used? Please provide more information.
   -It means that we conducted T-test to find out whether there is a difference between the manufacturing sector and the service in ICT industry.
8. There are only 10 samples in the test, which might affect the results significantly. Did the authors check the assumptions of the test? Please provide more information to prove the sample satisfy the requirements for the test.
   -Because it is the data that OECD provides. We used Input-output table which they provide by International Standard Industry Classification Revision 4.
9. Figure 2 and Figure 3 provide the same information as Table 4, 5, 7.
   - We want to visually show Backward and Forward linkage effects and CO₂ emissions at once, so they are re-expressed in Figures.
10. Many of the results and discussion cannot be derived through the results. Please further improve the related contents.
    - I have modified part 5 in order to make the results and contribution clear.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

The formulation contains several errors:

(1-A)^-1 of A is not correct

These calculations should be made with the domestic flow tables.

The subscripts are confused.

As for the formal aspects, I suggest in first place that matrix notation should be introduced. It is recommendable to ensure that the notation used in the text is coherent Miller R.E. and Blair P.D. Input–Output Analysis: Foundations and Extensions (2nd Ed.), Cambridge University Press (2009).

Net multipliers should also be calculated.

Author Response

Thanks for spending your time. It really helped a lot to improve our paper. 

Please see the attachment. The response to your review is in there.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper needs to be even more sharp on the comparison and also provide a bit of qualitative explanation of the differences found and project these in the future with regards to a greener ITC sector.

Author Response

Thanks for spending your time. As you commend, we added the following sentences at the beginning of the Discussion and Conclusion part to provide qualitative explanation for green ICT sector.

“ICT industry is good for reaching environmentally sound practices because it maintains high productivity while improving overall energy productivity in the national economy. At the same time, due to the ICT, all economic sectors can become more energy efficient. By increasing the energy efficiency, it reduces the environmental impacts of other sectors because ICT allows existing processes to be optimized or enables entirely new, more energy efficient processes[인용].”

In addition, to express more sharp on the comparison USA with Korea, we have revised the Discussion and Conclusion part throughout.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors addressed most of the proposed issues. 

Figure 2 and 3 are repetition of the information of those tables. Please either delete the figures or delete the tables. 

The authors didn't provide clear response of the question "How did the authors divide the ICT manufacturing and service industry? Where did the authors obtain the disaggregation data? Please provide more information." Did the authors divide the ICT manufacturing and service industry from one industry? Or did the authors aggregate some industries?

Author Response

Thank you for spending your time.

1. Figure 2 and 3 are repetition of the information of those tables. Please either delete the figures or delete the tables.

- Figure 2 is about ICT Service Sector and Figure 1 is about ICT Manufacturing Sector. We divided the research results of each country into Figures 1 and 2 to compare them by industry. The results are presented by referring to previous studies in order to visually express as Min et al (2019)* presented linkage effects in tables and figures.

* Min, Y. K., Lee, S. G., & Aoshima, Y. (2019). A comparative study on industrial spillover effects among Korea, China, the USA, Germany and Japan. Industrial Management & Data Systems.

Doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2018-0215

 

2. How did the authors divide the ICT manufacturing and service industry?

- We did it according to the 4th revision of International Standard Industry Classification (ISIC) and it is written on Table 3 and Table 4. In addition, Table 5 shows other researchers who divided ICT industry into manufacturing and service sector.

3. Where did the authors obtain the disaggregation data? Please provide more information.

- We obtained the data on OECD. Stat, Online which includes data and metadata for OECD countries and selected non-member economies.

4. Did the authors divide the ICT manufacturing and service industry from one industry? Or did the authors aggregate some industries?

- An ICT industry can be divided into 2 sectors by the 4th International Standard Industry Classification.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

I think the paper needs to be started over with more clear objectives and theoretical aims and a view to more generalized findings.

Author Response

Thanks for your cooperation. 

Here is the response to your review. 

Point 1: I think the paper needs to be started over with more clear objectives and theoretical aims and a view to more generalized findings.

 

Response 1: We revised the introduction part overall to make the research question and theoretical method clear.

For example, 

From the first line of the paper,

Global warming is the most serious problem facing mankind today. It is because, due to human activities, greenhouse gases(GHG) are increasing at an unprecedented rate and are accumulating in the atmosphere. Such global warming raises the global temperature, leading to abnormal weather conditions and destruction of ecosystems and it will soon affect a wide range of areas beyond them, from energy supply to human health. The necessity of reducing GHG for the survival of mankind has become an important agenda of the international community.

 

Line 100 to 106

the research question of this study are

1. We confirm that ICT industry in the US and Korea is a sustainable industry.
2. We check whether there is a difference in the influence of the manufacturing sector and the service sector of ICT industry on the national economy.

We select Input-output analysis as the theoretical method, and compare changes in ICT manufacturing and ICT service industries in the US and Korea.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript could be accepted now.

Author Response

Thank you for everything you've done for us.

We submit the latest version. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx