Manufacturers’ efforts and platform’s demand information sharing in eco-friendly actions

Abstract

More and more consumers have an awareness of environmental protection, and platforms and manufacturers invest in eco-friendly operating and manufacturing to stimulate demand and fulfill their social responsibilities. Our paper investigates whether the platform should share her private demand information with two manufacturers in the reselling or agency selling. The manufacturers offer consumers two substitutable products through the platform. By incorporating eco-friendly efforts into our game-theoretic model, we show that information sharing always benefits manufacturers when the platform serves as a reseller. However, hiding information is preferable for the platform, considering the low efficiency of eco-friendly investment. For the platform, she is willing to disclose information to one or both manufacturers with relatively high efficiency. Nevertheless, the platform is willing to disclose information to both manufacturers (only one manufacturer) when the efficiency is low (high) in the agency selling. Moreover, when manufacturers compete more intensely on eco-friendly levels, the platform is more likely to disclose information to one or both manufacturers in the reselling, but more intense competition for eco-friendly levels prevents the platform from disclosing information to more manufacturers in the agency selling. Furthermore, both manufacturers’ eco-friendly levels always respond positively to the demand signal. Finally, we consider the disparity in carbon emissions between green and non-green manufacturers in the extension. We find that disclosing the demand information to both manufacturers is more efficient in reducing carbon emissions than sharing with only one manufacturer.