Sustainable supply chain management considering technology investments and government intervention

Abstract

With the aggravation of the global environmental crisis, consumers are keen to use green products, and enterprises are more committed to technology investment and innovation to meet consumers’ green preferences. This study considers a supply chain system composed of one manufacturer and one retailer, where the manufacturer invests in green emission reduction technology (GERT) to reduce carbon emissions, and the retailer invests in information disclosure technology to transmit the higher greenness quality of products to consumers. We discuss the technology investment decisions and cooperation strategies between the manufacturer and the retailer, as well as the impacts of government regulations on supply chain members’ decisions. We consider three scenarios: decentralized, government intervention, and cost sharing and government intervention. We derive the optimal technology investment decisions of the manufacturer and retailer. In addition, we identify the conditions for the manufacturer to subsidize the retailer’s disclosure technology costs. The results show that a higher emission reduction subsidy encourages GERT investments and increases supply chain members’ profits. However, when the government sets a higher emission reduction standard, the subsidy neither increases the emission reduction nor benefits the retailer, and hurts the manufacturer’s profit. We also demonstrate that when there is cost sharing and government intervention, emission reduction and supply chain performance are always better than in the other scenarios.