Abstract
In the context of low-carbon economy, supply chain members’ joint emission reduction issue has become a research hotspot, while there are few researches which synthetically studies the effect of consumers’ reference low-carbon effect and supply chain members’ altruistic behavior on their decisions. To study the impact of supply chain members’ altruistic behavior and consumers’ reference low-carbon effect on their joint emission reduction decisions and profits, we build optimization models under four decision scenarios, in which we solve the manufacturer’s and the retailer’s optimal emission reduction strategies and other equilibrium solutions by differential game theory. We obtain some findings. First, consumers' reference low-carbon effect will harm the profits of the manufacturer and the retailer, discourage the manufacturer's enthusiasm to reduce emissions and retailer's enthusiasm for low-carbon publicity. Second, the altruistic behavior of the manufacturer and the retailer can not only weaken the negative impact of the reference low-carbon effect, but also promote both parties to actively reduce emissions, help achieve Pareto improvement of their own profits and utilities, and obtain additional social welfare. Third, the cost-sharing contract can encourage the manufacturer to increase emission reduction investment without affecting the retailer’s low-carbon publicity investment, and can achieve a Pareto improvement of both parties’ profits and utilities. In addition, the cost-sharing ratio is only proportional to the marginal profits and altruistic intensity of both parties, and is not affected by the reference low-carbon effect. Meanwhile, the cost-sharing ratio will decrease as the manufacturer’s marginal profit and altruistic intensity increase, and will increase as the retailer’s marginal profit and altruistic intensity increase. In particular, when the retailer is completely altruistic, the cost-sharing contract can achieve perfect coordination of the supply chain.
Low Carbon Distribution Channel Coordination with a Capital-Constrained Retailer