Fairness Concern Research Articles

Alternating-Offers Bargaining with Nash Bargaining Fairness Concerns

The Rubinstein alternating-offers bargaining game is reconsidered, where players show fairness concerns and their fairness references are characterized by the Nash bargaining solution. The objective of this paper is to explore the impact of fairness concerns in the alternating-offer bargaining game. Alternating-offer bargaining with fairness concerns is developed. We construct a subgame perfect equilibrium and show its uniqueness. Then, it is shown that players' payoffs in the subgame perfect equilibrium are positively related to their own fairness concern coefficient and bargaining power and negatively to the opponents' fairness concern coefficient. Moreover, it is shown that the limited equilibrium partition depends on the ratio of discount rates of the two players when the time lapse between two offers goes to zero. Finally, the proposed model is applied to the bilateral monopoly market of professional basketball players, and some properties of equilibrium price are shown. Our result provides the implication that players should carefully weigh their own fairness concerns, bargaining power and fairness concerns of their opponents, and then make proposals, rather than simply follow the suggestion that the proposal at the current stage is higher than that at the past stages.

The Signaling Mechanism of Fairness Concern in E-CLSC

The E-CLSC (E-closed-loop supply chain) game model dominated by manufacturer is set, and information value about asymmetry fairness concern of E-platform (E-commerce platform) is calculated for manufacturer, recycler, and E-platform. By signaling model under various signal costs, the authors study the condition for E-platform to transmit real information about fairness concern so as to reduce profit loss for all parties in E-CLSC. The authors prove that E-platform has the motivation to disguise or exaggerate fairness concerns in order to obtain more profit, and manufacturers must try to identify the E-platform's real fairness concern to avoid profit loss. Besides, only when different types of E-platforms need significantly different signaling cost, both of them would like to send real fairness-concern signal, and thus manufacturer can effectively identify E-platform's real information about fairness concern so as to improve recycling rate and optimize the whole E-CLSC operation.

Research the effect of anticipated regret and fairness concerns on retailer-led supply chain.

Considering the consumer's anticipated regret caused by price discount, the impact of anticipated regret and manufacturers' fairness concerns on pricing and profits is explored, and a revenue-sharing contract to optimize the profits of supply chain is explored. In centralized decision-making model with manufacturer's fairness neutrality and retailer-led decentralized decision-making model with the manufacturer's fairness concerns, numerical simulation and model comparison is used to analyse regret sensitivity coefficient, consumer heterogeneity, the fairness concern coefficient on pricing decisions and profit coordination. Our results reveal that consumer's anticipated regret has a negative impact on product prices, retailer's profit and manufacturer's profit. Manufacturer's fairness concerns also increase product price and reduce profits of all parties. Retailer-led supply chain can share the revenue to achieve Pareto optimization. When formulating promotional strategies, retailers should consider the characteristics of anticipated regrets of consumers.

Optimal Decision-Making of Retailer-Led Dual-Channel Green Supply Chain with Fairness Concerns under Government Subsidies

Green innovation is the inevitable trend in the development of the supply chain, and thus the government adopts subsidy policies for the relevant enterprises to enhance their enthusiasm for green development. In view of the manufacturers’ fairness concerns in the dual-channel green supply chain that is composed of manufacturers and retailers, we propose a novel Stackelberg game model led by retailers and analyze the impact of manufacturers’ fairness concerns on the decision-making of manufacturers and retailers in the dual-channel green supply chain under government subsidies. The results show that only the wholesale price of products, manufacturers’ profits, and retailers’ profits are affected by manufacturer’s fair concerns. When manufacturer has fair concerns, product greenness and profits of supply chain members rise with the increase in government subsidies. The results can offer an effective reference for the dual-channel supply chain members with fairness concerns to make optimal decisions under government subsidies.

Procedural fairness concern in tourism supply chain: The case of a dominant OTA and a sustainable hotel

Environmental tourism has drawn widespread attention and has encouraged hotels to use sustainable materials or equipment in rooms to attract environmentally conscious consumers. Hotels must cooperate with the Online Travel Agent (OTA) to increase sales. This paper considers a hotel’s procedural fairness concern when the environmental sales effort is the OTA’s private information. An OTA decides the level of environmental sales effort and whether to afford the commission decision right to the hotel. The hotel decides the room price and environmental effort. Equilibrium solutions show a positive minimum environmental cost in the centralized model at which both the hotel and OTA can achieve the optimal channel profit. In the decentralized model, we find that when the hotel only considers his profit, the OTA always imposes commission. When the hotel has procedural fairness concern, however, the optimal choice scheme exists whereby the OTA relinquishes his right to make a decision regarding commission.

Differential decision of low-carbon supply chain based on market preferences with fairness concerns

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Under the dual background of energy economy and environmental protection, expanding the optimal decision-making of the low-carbon supply chain is significant to the energy manufacturing industry. This paper discusses the impact of low-carbon preference, price elasticity, and low-carbon research and development investment (LR & DI) on equilibrium decisions of a three-echelon supply chain system under the scenarios of market segments and fairness concerns. Firstly, it is found that the optimal price and yield are positively correlated with the counterparty's demand elasticity coefficient and sensitivity coefficient, and the supply chain profit is better under the decentralized decision of the retailer's fairness concerns. Secondly, there is a positive correlation between each member's interests and the degree of the manufacturer's fairness concern. While considering the retailer, the manufacturer is responsible for the supply chain income loss. Finally, because the optimal pricing and yield are positively correlated with consumers' low-carbon preference and LR & DI, manufacturers may optimize profits by raising LR & DI within a tolerable range. In addition, it is verified that the Stackelberg game optimizes the traditional model by a numerical example, providing theoretical support for decision-making in different scenarios.</p>

Game analysis on general purpose technology cooperative R&D with fairness concern from the technology chain perspective

General purpose technologies (GPTs) are regarded as a major source of productivity advancement and economic growth. As a kind of platform technology, GPTs have strong knowledge spillovers, which causes a single subject to lack R&D motivation and adopt a wait-and-see strategy. Cooperation R&D is an effective mode choice for GPTs. For this, three models based on upstream-led, downstream-led and balanced power structures were constructed to study the cooperation R&D modes of GPTs and influencing factors from a technology chain perspective. This study aims to reveal the effects of fairness concerns and power structures on three models. This study also focuses on the roles of knowledge spillovers and government support. The results indicate that different power structures will lead to an unequal distribution of profits between firm U and firm D in the technology chain. The balanced power structure should be the preferred model. The profits of firms in the leading position are always higher than those of firms in the following position. In addition, fairness concerns negatively impact the performance of firms, which may improve the bargaining ability of firms in the following position, but this does not bring a sustainable benefit. Government support (e.g., knowledge and technology support and R&D subsidies) and knowledge spillovers are two key factors influencing the decisions and outcomes of the technology chain. When a firm's relative innovation contribution level is greater, its profits in the leading position are the highest, followed by those in the balanced power structure, and they are lowest in the following position. In contrast, profits under balanced power are the highest, and those in the following position are still the lowest. This study enables a theoretical understanding of how and why the R&D process of GPTs can be regarded as a technology chain. It also sheds light on the fact that the balance power structure model should be the preferred choice and that both fairness concerns and government support should be considered for improving the R&D efficiency of GPT cooperation R&D in practice.

A game theoretic strategic model for understanding the online-offline competition and fairness concern under community group buying

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>The continuous growth of e-commerce leads to the emergence of a new supply chain model known as community group buying, which is advantageous to address the inefficiencies and higher costs of intermediate processes. However, its appearance results in fairness concerns for other participating merchants. In this regard, we construct a model with two suppliers, one wholesaler, and two retailers for three different scenarios of the initial status, fairness neutrality, and fairness concern, and comparatively analyze the game equilibria in different scenarios. The results show that the profits of the suppliers and the wholesaler significantly increase after the online retailer enters into the market, whereas the offline retailer's profit has multiple prospects. The online retailer's entry into the marketplace weakens the market position of the offline retailer and significantly erodes its pricing advantage. Additionally, our paper finds that the entry of the online retailer is beneficial for social welfare, and investment conversion efficiency on the platform construction is the core factor for the improvement of social welfare. On the contrary, the influence of fairness concern on social welfare is quite limited and only affects the internal distribution of benefits.</p>

Low carbon joint strategy and coordination for a dyadic supply chain with Nash bargaining fairness

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>In the paper, fairness concern criterion is utilized to explore the coordination of a dyadic supply chain with a fairness-concerned retailer (acting as a newsvendor), who is committed to low carbon efforts. Two models are developed for stochastic demand disturbances in the forms of multiplicative case and additive case, respectively. Firstly, the optimal joint decision of the retailer and the supply chain are proposed in two scenarios, i.e., decentralized decision and the centralized decision. Secondly, in order to realize channel coordination, the contract of revenue sharing combined with the mechanism of low-carbon cost sharing is designed. Moreover, the influences of the retailer's fairness concern and bargaining power on the joint decision and the contract parameters are also investigated. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the theoretical results and some suggestions to supply chain management are also provided. The results show that the revenue sharing contract can make the supply chain achieved coordination with the cost sharing mechanism of low-carbon efforts. Furthermore, the optimal low-carbon effort level and ordering quantity decrease in terms of fairness-concerned parameter and Nash bargaining power parameter, which increases in unit cost. However, the optimal pricing makes the opposite change.</p>

Modeling the relationship between fairness concern and customer loyalty in dual distribution channel

Modeling the relationship between fairness concern and customer loyalty in dual distribution channel

Fairness Concerns in Heterogeneous Teams: Optimal Team Formation and Contract

Fairness Concerns in Heterogeneous Teams: Optimal Team Formation and Contract

Research on Pricing and Coordination of Fresh Supply Chain with Altruistic Fairness Concern

Considering a fresh supply chain consisting of one supplier and one retailer, this paper studies the pricing and coordination of fresh supply chain under altruistic fairness concern of the supplier. Based on the centralized decision and Stackelberg game theory, the decentralized decision model of supplier’s altruistic fairness concern is constructed, the pricing decision is analyzed, and the cost-sharing contract based on altruistic fairness concern is designed for coordination. The results show that the altruistic fairness concern of supplier can inspire retailer to improve the freshness-keeping effort level, which can help to the operation of retailer and supply chain, but damage the profit of himself. Freshness-keeping efficiency has an important impact on the marketing strategy of retailer: the retailer will implement the “high-quality with high price” if the freshness-keeping efficiency is low, otherwise implement the “high-quality with low price”. Cost-sharing contract based on the altruistic fairness concern can realize the perfect coordination of supply chain within a certain range.

Complex dynamics of Cournot-Bertrand duopoly game with peer-induced fairness and delay decision

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>This paper establishes the Cournot-Bertrand duopoly game models with bounded rationality expectations under the assumption that the players are fair-minded agents who may adopt the delay decision. The existence and local stability of the equilibrium points are investigated. The effects of key parameters on the long-term dynamical evolution process of the models are investigated by numerical simulation. Furthermore, the performance of the players is examined using average profit and utility indexes. The results reveal that the excessively fast adjustment speeds and the higher fairness concern coefficients have a strong destabilizing impact on the system's stability. The product differentiation degree and delay strategy may be strong stabilizing or destabilizing factors for the game, which indicates that an appropriate product differentiation degree or delay weight is conducive to the system preserving its stability. In addition, when the system falls into periodic cycles or chaotic motions, the change trends of the players' performance may elevate or decline depending on the specific parameter conditions. Therefore, the chaos does not always necessarily detrimental to all the players in the Cournot-Bertrand duopoly game.</p>

Who exhibits fairness concern is better for supply chain stability and the environment

In practice, long-term unfair distribution of profit may cause cooperation partnerships between firms to break down. For example, Xuzhou Wanji Trading Co., as a distributor, terminated the business cooperation with Procter & Gamble. Thus, to maintain supply chain cooperation, firms no matter reap high profits or low profits begin to be concerned about fairness. Based on this, we explore how fairness attitudes affect operation and emission reduction decisions in a supply chain with one manufacturer and one retailer, especially under cap-and-trade (C&T) regulation. This paper develops three Stackelberg game models: no fairness concern, with retailer’s fairness concern, and with manufacturer’s altruistic preference, respectively, and then derive equilibrium outcomes to analyze the joint effect of fairness attitudes and C&T regulation. First, the results demonstrate that the retailer’s fairness concern increases his own profit while decreases the manufacturer’s optimal emission reduction and profit. Second, the manufacturer’s altruistic preference not only facilitates a more equitable distribution of overall profits but also results in lower emissions of unit product, achieving a win–win situation. Consequently, the manufacturer’s altruistic preference performs better than the retailer’s fairness concern in balancing fairness and emission reduction. Interestingly, if the manufacturer decides to reduce emissions, the total emissions are lower under a loose C&T regulation; otherwise, the total emissions are lower under a strict C&T regulation.

Decisions and Coordination of the Green Supply Chain with Retailers’ Fairness Concerns

The development of a green economy has become a global consensus. More and more manufacturers are greening their production to build green supply chains. At the same time, retailers are employing green marketing efforts for green products. In addition, members who are followers of the green supply chain are prone to fairness-concern behavior. To investigate the impact of fairness concerns on green supply chain decisions, this study develops a two-tier green supply chain in which the manufacturer makes green input and the retailer makes green marketing effort input. The retailer in the follower position of the supply chain has fairness concerns. Stackelberg game models are constructed and compared in three scenarios: one without fairness concerns, one where the manufacturer considers the retailer’s fairness concerns, and one where the manufacturer does not consider the retailer’s fairness concerns. After the manufacturer decides whether to consider the retailer’s fairness concerns, a two-part tariff contract is used to coordinate the green supply chain based on optimal decision-making and profit under a centralized decision-making condition. The study found that: (1) when the manufacturer considers the retailer’s fairness concerns, fairness concerns will negatively impact greenness, green marketing efforts, wholesale price, and retail price. When the manufacturer does not consider the retailer’s fairness concerns, fairness concerns will not impact greenness or wholesale price, but will negatively impact green marketing efforts; (2) the retailer’s fairness concerns have a negative impact on the green supply chain’s profit, and from the supply chain perspective, the retailer should abandon its fairness concerns; (3) it will be more beneficial if the manufacturer can consider the retailer’s fairness concerns; (4) when the manufacturer does not consider the retailer’s fairness concerns, the retailer can make fairness concerns according to the parameter conditions; (5) when a fixed fee meets a certain range, the two-part tariff contract can coordinate the green supply chain when the retailer has fairness concerns. The results will help manufacturers and retailers better understand fairness concerns and provide them with decision-making guidance and coordinated choices.

A maximum fairness consensus model with limited cost in group decision making

Fairness has attracted extensive concern in manufacturing, service sector, and government agencies. In group decision making (GDM), decision makers (DMs) may destroy the consensus and reject the final solution when they feel unfair. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a consensus model which incorporated fairness concern. The paper focus on the fairness of compensations that (DMs) get from moderator in consensus reaching process (CRP). Social comparison theory and Gini coefficient are employed to define the fairness degrees of (DMs). We propose a maximum fairness consensus model with limited cost to provide balanced consensus solution. Meanwhile, some properties of (DMs') fairness are explored. Furthermore, we present a numerical analysis to verify the applicability of the proposed model. Finally, some simulation analyses are used to explore the effectiveness of the proposal.

Green Supply Chain Decision and Management under Manufacturer’s Fairness Concern and Risk Aversion

This study focuses on the impact of a supply chain manufacturer’s fairness concern and risk aversion on the green supply chain and constructs a two-level green supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. It compares three models: the manufacturer is a risk-neutral and fair-neutral, the manufacturer is a risk-averse and fair-neutral, and the manufacturer is a risk-averse and fair-concerned decision maker. In three cases, this paper examines how the manufacturer’s risk aversion and fairness concerns the impact product green level, retail price, and the wholesale price in the green supply chain. Consumers are sensitive to pricing strategies and product green level. The results are as follows: the manufacturer’s risk aversion leads to an increase in the retailer’s profit, and the manufacturer’s profit decreases with the increase in the risk aversion coefficient. Second, when demand meets certain conditions and the manufacturer has advantageous fairness concerns, the manufacturer benefits from fairness concerns, the retailer’s profit decreases with the manufacturer’s fairness concerns coefficient, and the manufacturer’s risk aversion will lead to a decline in the product green level. Third, when the manufacturer believes that the risk is relatively large, they reduce the technology investment of green products; thus, the fairness concerns of the manufacturer will affect the investment of green products and increase the green level of products. For enterprises: When supply chain members face various risks, they need to consider the specific needs of consumers and other members’ behavioral preferences. They can put forward a more scientific prediction of market demand and rational decision making. For customers: they should not only pay attention to changes in market prices, but should also pay attention to changes in the behavioral preferences of supply chain members, as customers are in line with their own interests based on the choice of high-quality green production.

Optimal pricing and service level in supply chain considering misreport behavior and fairness concern

In the supply chain, there exists the phenomenon that misreport behavior and fairness concern coexist. The reference point for fairness concern is usually upstream publicly disclosed profit, whereas upstream may hide its true information. Few research investigates the phenomenon deeply. To address the gap, this paper studies a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer with possible misreport behavior and one retailer with possible fairness concern. Four Stackelberg game supply chain models are constructed. Optimal decisions and profits under different scenarios are solved simultaneously and compared, and find that: Firstly, the manufacturer’s misreporting behavior is harmful to the retailer. Secondly, the retailer’s fairness concern behavior will shorten the manufacturer’s profit and help itself to face manufacturer’s misreport behavior. Thirdly, face to the retailer’s fairness concern, the manufacturer can benefit from appropriately misreporting. Through numerical analysis and extension to one-to-many general situation, the above findings are verified and analyzed.

The Decision Strategy of Extended Warranty Service for Supply Chain with the Consideration of Vertical Fairness Concern

While the extended warranty services bring profits to the supply chain, they also have adverse unfair aversions in the game process of retailers or manufacturers, and affect supply chain stability and performance. With the consideration of vertical fairness concerns, a supply chain decision model that provides extended warranty services by manufacturers or retailers and considers the other party's fairness concerns is established, which is used to analyze the relationship between the vertical fairness concerns and supply chain performance (supply chain profit and supply chain equity concerns). Simulation experiments show that: under the two situations, manufacturers provide extended warranty services and consider retailers' fairness concerns and retailers provide extended warranty services and consider manufacturers' fairness concerns, the vertical fairness concern coefficient has an important impact on the decision of product wholesale price, retail price, and extension services price, as well as supply chain profit and supply chain fairness concern utility; in turn, supply chain companies can develop corresponding extended service strategies based on supply chain profit and supply chain performance optimization, and make a vertical equity concern strategy for providing extended warranty services based on expected supply chain profit or supply chain performance.

Modeling and analysis of a sustainable supply chain with fairness concerns and green-sensitive consumer demand

PurposeWith the global spread of environmental education, environmental awareness is becoming increasingly important in daily life and economic activities. Sustainable development, as the most effective development approach to address global climate change, has gradually become a research hotspot in countries around the world. The authors combine sustainable development with supply chain management and incorporate into the study the objective issue of corporate fairness preferences in real society to explore the pricing and product greenness decision problem of a secondary sustainable supply chain consisting of a manufacturer producing green products and a retailer selling green products. In particular, the authors explore how supply chain decisions change when both the manufacturer and the retailer focus on fairness and how this fairness behavior affects pricing and product greenness decisions in sustainable supply chains.Design/methodology/approachThe authors consider that the manufacturers' greening efforts lead to expanded demand at the retail end. Upstream and downstream firms in the supply chain have preferences for the fairness of transactions. The impact of the fairness behavior of upstream and downstream firms in the supply chain on supply chain decisions is explored by building a Stackelberg game model.FindingsThe results of this study show that the fairness concern behavior of manufacturers and retailers in the supply chain has an impact on product greenness, product pricing and corporate profits.Originality/valueThis study on the fairness concern behavior of supply chain firms integrates behavioral economics and supply chain management. First, the authors consider the equilibrium problem of supply chain members in the centralized channel when there are no fairness preferences. Second, the decision problem of firms in the decentralized channel when fairness is considered and when fairness preferences are not considered is explored. The authors compare these three cases to derive the corresponding propositions. Finally, the authors verify the previous conclusions and draw other conclusions using arithmetic analysis.