Complexity analysis of production, fertilizer-saving level, and emission reduction efforts decisions in a two-parallel agricultural product supply chain

Abstract

This paper analyses the complexity of production, fertilizer-saving level, and emission reduction efforts decisions in a Cournot agricultural products supply chain system. A two-parallel agricultural products supply chain consisting of traditional agricultural producers and green agricultural producers was established. Based on bounded rationality, the decision competition model between the two supply chains was investigated in two scenarios: horizontal Nash (HN) game and long-term Stackelberg (LS) game with traditional agricultural producers as the leader. The Nash equilibrium points of the two models were obtained, and the impact of different decision-making adjustment speeds and critical parameters on the stability of the system and the expected profit of agricultural producers was discussed. The study found that production adjustments had a more significant impact on the stability of the system, decision variables, and expected profits than the adjustment of fertilizer-saving level and emission reduction efforts in the two scenarios. In the HN game, the impact of nitrogen tax or low nitrogen preference on traditional agricultural producers was opposite to that of green agrarian producers. Although the increase of these parameters was beneficial to green agricultural producers, the system’s stability would decrease. In addition, the stability of the LS game model can be divided into two decision-making systems to judge, and the adjustment speed of traditional agricultural producers' decisions had a more significant impact on the whole system. Finally, the feedback control method was used to control the chaos of the system of the HN game.