Fairness Concern Research Articles

Coordination Mechanism of E-Closed-Loop Supply Chain under Social Preference

This study investigates the effect of social preference on the recycling decision and coordination in an E-closed-loop supply chain (E-CLSC). Firstly, we set the dynamic E-CLSC game model including a manufacturer, an E-commerce platform (E-platform) and a recycler, where the manufacturer dominates the supply chain and both the E-platform and the recycler are followers. Secondly, we propose an E-CLSC information structure to depict four symmetry and asymmetry cases about the E-platform’s fairness concern and the manufacturer’s altruistic reciprocity, and the backward induction method is adopted to solve the equilibrium in each case. By comparative analysis, we propose a revenue-sharing and cost-sharing contract to optimize recycling decisions, coordinate the E-CLSC and Pareto-improve all parties’ profits. We show that whether information is symmetrical or not, only the wholesale price contract cannot coordinate the E-CLSC, whereas the revenue-sharing and cost-sharing contract can always achieve optimal recycling decisions, coordinate the supply chain and Pareto-improve all parties’ profits with a constant cost sharing ratio. In addition, the E-platform’s fairness concern can widen the range of the revenue sharing ratio and make it easier to coordinate the E-CLSC, but the manufacturer’s altruistic reciprocity may narrow the range of the revenue sharing ratio and make it harder to coordinate the E-CLSC.

Pricing Policies of Green Dual-Channel Supply Chain with Fairness Concerns and Altruistic Preferences Based on Consumers' Environmental Awareness and Channel Preference.

Taking into consideration fairness concerns and altruistic preferences of manufacturers, this paper aims to propose a green dual-channel supply chain that incorporates consumers’ environmental awareness (CEA) and channel preference. The purpose of this work is to explore and further compare the optimal outcomes in a green dual-channel supply chain in three scenarios, which are the fairness-neutrality scenario (Model N), the manufacturer is concerned with fairness scenario (Model F), and the manufacturer has altruistic preference (Model A), respectively. The game-theoretical models with different fairness preferences, comparative, and numerical analyses are used to put forward the impacts of consumers’ channel preference and CEA on pricing, profits, and utilities, and to identify the differences in decisional outcomes between the three models. The results indicate that CEA always contributes to developing the green market while adversely affecting common products. Moreover, consumers’ channel preferences might enable the manufacturer and retailer to enhance profitability under certain conditions. The findings also reveal that manufacturer’s fairness concerns can possibly increase the demand for green products but impair the overall performance of the supply chain in general. Moreover, while the manufacturer’s altruistic preference benefits the retailer’s profits, it has a detrimental effect on the performance of the green supply chain. The practical implications of this research come to promote green consumption and increasing consumer awareness of environmental protection are effective ways to develop a green supply chain. It is also important to note that in order to maintain the durability and stability of the sup-ply chain, the manufacturer must maintain a moderate level of fairness preference behaviors so that downstream retailers will remain enthusiastic about establishing long-term relationships.

Optimal production decision and financing strategy for a capital-constrained closed loop supply chain under fairness concern

This paper considers a capital-constrained closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) composed of one original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a single remanufacturer (RM), and investigates this CLSC's optimal production and financing strategy under fairness concerns. CLSC decision-making models under four cases, namely, the OEM has adequate funds, the OEM's funds are limited without financing, the OEM has limited funds with debt financing, and the OEM's funds are limited with advance payment financing, are formulated. The equilibrium solutions in different cases are obtained through the backward induction method, the impact of fairness concern behavior on the equilibrium solutions are analyzed, and the critical conditions for OEM to adopt optimal financing strategies are obtained. The results show that: compared with the advance payment financing, the yield of new product under the debt financing situation is higher, but the yield of remanufacturing products is lower, and the sales prices of both products are higher; furthermore, the fairness concern have a smaller marginal impact on the quantities of new products, but have a larger marginal impact on the quantities of remanufactured products. Moreover, only if the OEM's initial capital is constrained and the advance payment financing ratio is below a certain threshold, the OEM will adopt advance payment financing, and when the initial capital is exceedingly scarce and the advance payment financing rate is relatively large, the manufacturer tends to adopt debt financing; with financing, the environmental impact will increase as the fairness concern grows up, while with debt financing it is even more eco-friendlier.

A two-stage multi-attribute group consensus model based on distributed linguistic assessment information from the perspective of fairness concern

The consensus reaching process (CRP) is a key step in group decision-making (GDM), in which reaching a satisfactory consensus often requires certain costs, such as time, money, and effort. Moreover, benefits from the CRP are often compared among decision-makers, which raises fairness issues. Given these, this paper comprehensively considers these two factors in linguistic GDM modeling. Aiming at the problem of multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) under distributed linguistic assessment (DLA) information, a two-stage group consensus model that considers psychological behaviors with fairness concern is proposed. Subsequently, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed model are illustrated by a case of selecting emergency material warehouses related to urban flood disasters. The main innovations and contributions of this paper are as follows. (a) The psychology of individual fairness concern is integrated into the MAGDM process with DLA information. (b) The DLA-based two-stage group consensus model, including the first-stage consensus model with maximum fairness satisfaction degree and the second-stage consensus model with minimum cost, is developed. Compared with the existing consensus models for distributed linguistic MAGDM, the proposed consensus model can not only improve the consensus level on the opinions with minimum cost but also promote the fairness satisfaction degree of decision-makers.

Consumer Fairness Concerns and Dynamic Pricing in a Channel

Effect of consumer fairness concerns on wholesale and retail price dynamics and manufacturer and retailer profits.

Fixed cost allocation in two-stage system: A data-driven approach from the perspective of fairness concern

Fixed cost allocation is the common issue for decision maker in real case, especially in the two-stage system such as banks, insurance companies, schools and other enterprises. Due to the complexity of two-stage system, fixed cost allocation in two-stage system between two stages is always worthy of investigation. Numerous studies have emerged to address the issue on the basis of data envelopment analysis (DEA). However, fairness concern is frequently ignored in those studies. Fairness concern is regarded as one of the most important factors guiding human behaviour in daily life. This paper studies how fairness concern impacts allocating fixed cost between two stages among all decision making units (DMUs). On the basis of cooperation and conflict between two stages, we investigate the fixed cost allocation under non-cooperative mode and cooperative mode respectively, and minimize the maximal fairness concern disutility by proposing max–min model. Further, we give some theorems to illustrate our proposed models and give algorithms for models to obtain the unique allocation plan under different modes. Lastly, a numerical example is presented, and we apply our approaches to address fixed cost allocation issue of a commercial bank which has 27 branches. Results shows that our proposed approaches can obtain an equitable allocation plan as much as possible compared with previous studies.

A fairness-concern-based LINMAP method for heterogeneous multi-criteria group decision making with hesitant fuzzy linguistic truth degrees

Heterogeneous multi-criteria group decision making (MCGDM) is a hot topic in the decision analysis field. This paper proposes a fairness-concern-based LINMAP (Linear Programming Technique for Multidimensional Analysis of Preference) method for heterogeneous MCGDM with hesitant fuzzy linguistic (HFL) truth degrees. Heterogeneous evaluation information includes crisp numbers, interval numbers, intuitionistic fuzzy values (IFVs), trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (TrFNs) and hesitant fuzzy sets (HFSs). This paper introduces the fairness concern to calculate the HFL consistency and the HFL inconsistency indices. Based on the framework of LINMAP, a bi-objective HFL programming model is built to derive the criteria weights, the positive ideal fairness vector (PIFV) and the negative ideal fairness vector (NIFV) for each decision maker (DM) simultaneously. Based on the TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution), a multi-objective programming model is built to obtain DMs’ weights. The alternatives ranking is derived by comprehensive collective relative closeness degrees. Finally, a real example is applied to verify effectiveness and superiority of this heterogeneous MCGDM method. The proposed heterogeneous MCGDM method provides a very useful approach for MCGDM with heterogeneous information.

Cost-benefit allocation of collaborative carbon emissions reduction considering fairness concerns—A case study of the Yangtze River Delta, China

As the country with the highest carbon emissions, the main focus of China has become carbon reduction. At present, the governance of carbon reduction is mainly based on the division of administrative regions, which leads to the governance inefficiency and high costs because of spatial spillover and regional mobility of carbon emissions. The need for collaborative governance to promote carbon reduction performance has been recognized. However, because of differences in both costs and benefits between developed and less developed regions, a clear cost and benefit allocation mechanism must be established first. Fairness is very important when all members are to actively participate in collaborative carbon emission reduction efforts. In this paper, one of the regions renowned for collaborative governance—the Yangtze River Delta region—is used as example, and a cost-benefit allocation mechanism is constructed that incorporates members’ fairness concerns. The carbon emission efficiency, carbon reduction efforts, and total carbon emission amount are compared under two scenarios: a cost-sharing scenario and a centralized decision-making scenario. The results indicate that, compared with the centralized decision-making scenario, the cost-sharing scenario achieved greater regional carbon reduction efforts, a higher carbon emission efficiency, and more total emissions. Furthermore, under the cost-sharing scenario, in less developed regions, fairness concerns increase carbon emission efficiency and total carbon emissions. The fairness concern in developed regions reduces the profit proportion, while the fairness concern in less developed region increases the profit proportion. The impact of fairness concern on carbon reduction is stronger in developed regions.

How Do Consumer Fairness Concerns Affect an E-Commerce Platform’s Choice of Selling Scheme?

Considering consumer fairness concerns, this paper investigates an e-commerce platform’s selling scheme choice when it adopts a wholesale selling scheme or an agency selling scheme to create a contract with a manufacturer. We find that the intensity of the fairness concerns and the platform fee are key factors affecting the platform’s optimal selling scheme choice. Specifically, when these two factors are relatively high or low, the wholesale selling scheme outperforms the agency selling scheme in terms of the e-commerce platform’s profit. Otherwise, the e-commerce platform should adopt the agency selling scheme. Moreover, when these two factors are sufficiently large or small, the wholesale selling scheme will yield a win-win result for the players of the e-commerce supply chain. Interestingly, we find that, considering fairness-minded consumers, a larger platform fee may be harmful to the platform. We also extend the baseline model to consider the consumer heterogeneity of fairness concerns, proportional platform fee, fairness concern about the manufacturer’s profit, and endogenous platform fee. We find that the main insights remain qualitatively unchanged under these model extensions.

Advertising Decisions of Platform Supply Chains Considering Network Externalities and Fairness Concerns

With the popularization of platform economics, many manufacturers are shifting their operations from offline to online, forming platform supply chains (PSCs), which combine e-commerce with supply chain management. To study the influences of network externalities and fairness concerns on advertising strategies of the platform supply chain (PSC), we construct decentralized decision-making models, with and without fairness concerns. Then, we solve the optimal decisions regarding PSC and use numerical examples to verify the conclusions of the decision models. We further analyze the internal influences of advertising strategies on network externalities in the extended model. We find that the network externalities are beneficial to the PSC system, but the manufacturer’s fairness concerns are not beneficial to the PSC. The advertising strategies of the network platform are not affected by network externalities and fairness concerns. In the extended model, the manufacturer can obtain more profits, but the network platform yields less profit than the decentralized model without fairness concerns. Moreover, the more sensitive the network externalities are to the change in advertising strategies, the greater the profits for the PSC members.

Carbon emission reduction and green marketing decisions in a two-echelon low-carbon supply chain considering fairness concern

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of fairness concern on the optimal pricing, carbon emission reduction (CER), green marketing efforts (GME) and utility of supply chain members in a two-echelon low-carbon supply chain composed of one manufacturer and one retailer. First, three basic models that consider the manufacturer’s different attitudes toward the retailer’s fairness concern are constructed. The optimal decisions of these models are obtained. Second, these optimal solutions are compared, and the effects of some key parameters including fairness concern on the optimal decisions and utility are examined for the three models. Furthermore, the manufacturer may misestimate the retailer’s fairness concern; therefore, an extended model is proposed.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt the manufacturer-led Stackelberg game theoretic framework, where the manufacturer decides the wholesale price and CER level and, then, the retailer determines the retail price and GME.FindingsThe results show that fairness concern has a negative impact on the wholesale price, the level of CER and GME, and fairness concern are not always beneficial for maximizing utility, although it is related to whether the manufacturer pays attention to the retailer’s fairness concern. The manufacturer will gain more utility when considering the fairness concern of retailers than non-consideration. Overestimating or underestimating the fairness concern of the retailers does not lead to benefits for the manufacturer.Research limitations/implicationsThis study has the following two limitations that need to be addressed in future research. First, the authors only consider the fairness concern of a single retailer but not peer-induced fairness among multiple competing retailers, which can be taken into account in future studies. Second, the demand function is linearly related to price, CER and GME. Because of the uncertainty of market information, the uncertainty demand function can be further considered.Originality/valueThis paper simultaneously considers the factors CER, GME and fairness concern. The utility function of the retailer is established according to taking the Nash bargaining solution as a fairness reference point, and four different models are constructed and compared.

Pricing and green decision-making in a three-echelon supply chain considering fairness concern with the participation of green logistics

Pricing and green decision-making in a three-echelon supply chain considering fairness concern with the participation of green logistics

Unfair and Risky? Profit Allocation in Closed-Loop Supply Chains by Cooperative Game Approaches

Behavioral factors (i.e., risk aversion and fairness concern) are considered for profit allocation in a closed-loop supply chain. This paper studies a two-echelon closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) consisting of a risk-neutral manufacturer, a risk-averse fairness-neutral retailer, and a risk-neutral retailer having fairness concerns. Cooperative game analysis is used to characterize equilibriums under five scenarios: a centralized, a decentralized and three partially allied models. Analytical results confirm that even when factoring in retailers’ risk aversion and fairness concern, the centralized model still outperforms decentralized. This paper makes a numerical study on the effects of risk aversion and fairness concern on profit distribution under these five models. It reveals that the impact of the risk aversion parameter and fairness concern parameter is dynamic, not always positive or negative. These research results provide helpful insights for CLSC managers to find out available choices and feasible ways to achieve fair profit allocations.

A Fair and Cooperative MAC Protocol for Heterogeneous Cognitive Radio Enabled Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

Advancements in intelligent transportation necessitate a dependable medium access control (MAC) protocol to enable high-priority safety broadcasts. Implementing cognitive radio-based vehicular ad-hoc networks (CR-VANETs) alleviates the significant growth in spectrum demand. The architecture must deploy multiple networks to make CR-VANET viable; however, the MAC design is a substantial challenge. The hardware-limited vehicles have varied characteristics and do not attain the same performance when provided with equal resources, posing a fairness concern. The resource allocation should balance two conflicting objectives: performance should be increased, prioritizing a few users under better conditions, and fairness among users should be emphasized, which reduces the overall performance. This paper presents a Fair and Cooperative MAC protocol for heterogeneous CR-VANETs (FCCR-MAC) to find this balance. In the event of a primary user appearance, cooperation allows pro-active channel switching. In FCCR-MAC, mode selection and retransmission of unsuccessful broadcasts are enabled by including additional control signals. By assisting users in determining the identities of others, cooperation also improves the system’s fairness. Markov Chain and the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions are utilized to offer a unified mathematical explanation of the throughput versus fairness trade-off optimization problem. According to the findings, the FCCR-MAC protocol outperforms other protocols with better fairness.

Ex-ante versus ex-post buyback pricing: An experimental study

We investigate behaviors and performance of a supply chain, in which a supplier uses buyback contracts to transact with a retailer under stochastic market demand. We compare ex-ante versus ex-post buyback pricing—the supplier decides the buyback price before demand realization in the former, but after demand realization in the latter. Theoretical analyses predict that the retailer order quantity and the supply chain efficiency are lower under ex-post buyback pricing. However, in experiments with human subjects playing both the supplier and retailer, we observe the opposite: the retailer order quantity and the supply chain efficiency are significantly higher under ex-post buyback pricing. Several behaviors are found significant. First, the supplier exhibits weaker advantageous fairness concern under ex-ante buyback pricing than under ex-post buyback pricing. Second, the supplier over-weights the buyback cost under the former, but under-weights (reciprocates) under the latter. Third, the retailer’s fairness concern is weaker under the latter. Fourth, the retailer exhibits trust behavior with the supplier under the latter. These drivers lead to less rejection and higher order quantity under ex-post buyback pricing than under ex-ante buyback pricing. Our results shed light on how human behaviors change with the decision timing and benefit supply chain performance.

Green Supply Chain Decision-Making considering Retailer’s Fairness Concerns and Government Subsidy Policy

Government’s green subsidy and retailer’s fairness concerns have great implications for enterprise’s operation strategy in the green supply chain (GSC). With the continuous deepening of retailer’s participation in supply chain management, the green services they provided by retailer have become a crucial role in promoting the terminal sales of green products. To further research the government subsidies and retailer’s fairness concerns on the optimal decisions of product pricing, green R&D, and service level, we construct four two-stage GSC models: no subsidy and fairness concerns, subsidizes manufacturer without retailer’s fairness concerns, subsidizes manufacturer with retailer’s fairness concerns, and subsidizes all members with retailer’s fairness concerns. The results show that subsidizes to manufacturers has significantly improved supply chain performance and environmental governance, but it exacerbates the unfair distribution of profits among members, and retailers’ fairness concerns drive them to offer lower green service level. With the green demand of consumers being unable to be fully satisfied, the consumer surplus and effectiveness of government environmental governance decrease accordingly. To eliminate the adverse effect caused by unfair distribution of profits, it is necessary to subsidize retailers so as to share their green service costs and increase their share of profits.

Bargaining optimization model for risk renegotiation with fairness concerns in infrastructure PPP projects

PurposeReasonable risk sharing is the key to the smooth implementation of infrastructure public-private partnership (PPP) projects and the optimization of benefit distribution among the participants. This study aims to explore the risk redistribution ratio between the government and the private sector under different degree of fairness concern.Design/methodology/approachRenegotiation is a mechanism to provide flexibility and make up for incompleteness of PPP contracts. However, the threshold value of risk redistribution ratio and negotiation cost are not explicitly considered in previous studies. In addition, these studies do not consider the influence of the fairness concern psychology on the negotiation process. To address these gaps, based on risk-income equilibrium analysis, this paper established the bargaining optimization model of PPP projects renegotiation considering the fairness concerns of the negotiating parties. Furthermore, this study analyzed the influence of fairness concern degree on negotiation thresholds, negotiation results, and negotiation incomes under three scenarios.FindingsThe results showed that excessive focus on the fairness of incomes may exclude the risk redistribution ratio that is most beneficial to project incomes from the negotiation threshold. Moreover, the increase in the fairness concerns of negotiating parties can reduce the negotiation success period, but the net income may not necessarily be improved.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this paper is to propose a new risk renegotiation methodology based on the risk-income equilibrium analysis, which is helpful to develop risk management strategies in the construction field. The research results can provide government with reference about renegotiation in decision making and provide theoretical support for the practice of PPP renegotiation.

Game theoretic analysis of prices and low-carbon strategy considering dual-fairness concerns and different competitive behaviours

The issues of rationality and fairness in channel profit distribution have gradually attracted the attention of channel members. In this paper, considering a manufacturer concerned with distributional fairness and two competitive retailers, where one is a fairness-neutral retailer and the other retailer is concerned with peer-induced fairness, prices and carbon emission reduction (CER) decisions are explored in a two-echelon supply chain. Four models are established for different behaviours and dual-fairness, and the optimal decisions are obtained. Furthermore, the impacts of the coefficient of CER, competition coefficient and dual-fairness concern factors are examined. The results show that Cournot competition is more beneficial for the CER level and utility of the manufacturer, while Stackelberg competition is more conducive to increasing the retailers' prices and utilities. Regardless of the type of pattern that the retailers play, the distributional fairness concern of the manufacturer has a negative impact on the CER level but has a positive effect on wholesale and retail prices, while peer-induced fairness increases the CER level and reduces wholesale and retail prices.

Dynamic analysis of a dual-channel closed-loop supply chain with fairness concerns under carbon tax regulation.

In this work, we study a dual-channel closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) where the manufacturer sells the new products via one fair caring retailer in the traditional channel and distributes the remanufactured products through her own direct channel in the presence of the carbon tax regulation. After solving the single-period Stackelberg game model by backward induction and analyzing the impacts of key parameters on the optimal pricing strategies and the performance of channel members, a multi-period dynamic Stackelberg game model with heterogeneous players is further established. The local stability of the Nash equilibrium point and complexity properties of the model are investigated by numerical simulation. The results reveal that (1) the retailer's fairness concern degree is negatively related to the optimal wholesale price as well as positively related to the optimal retail price of the new product. A high level of consumer discount perception for the remanufactured product is conducive to the manufacturer obtaining more profits while it is detrimental to the retailer. (2) The excessive value of the price adjustment speed, carbon tax rate or retailer's fairness concern degree has a strong destabilization effect on the system's stability. (3) The manufacturer suffers profit loss while the retailer's utility levels are elevated when the system falls into periodic cycles and chaotic motions. (4) The delay feedback control method can eliminate the chaos effectively in the dual-channel CLSC system.

Fairness Concern in Remanufacturing Supply Chain—A Comparative Analysis of Channel Members’ Fairness Preferences

Remanufacturing is a sustainable product reutilization strategy to realize responsible consumption and production. However, it has remained a largely untapped opportunity for enhancing productivity due to some behavioral matters such as fairness concerns of remanufacturing related firms. Concerning the emerging and development of remanufacturing industry, this paper provides a game-theoretic analysis for a remanufacturing supply chain (RSC) consisting of one leading manufacturer and a following retailer, with the inclusion of fairness concern. We propose and compare several scenarios of channel members’ fairness preferences as, both members are fairness concerned, only one member is fairness concerned, and both members are fair neutral, to expound how fairness concern affects RSC strategies and resulting utilities. We also demonstrate dynamic evolution and stable state of channel members’ selections of whether being fairness concerned in the long term. Analytical results show that favorable scenarios for the RSC to achieve desired objective are relevant to its preference for improved supply chain performance or enhanced environmental benefit. Whatever the preference is, however, it is detrimental for both members to be fairness concerned in the short term. In the long term, evolutionary stable strategies of fairness concerns indicate that both members or only one member would choose to be fairness concerned. The eventual status relies on the initial state of fairness preference. The results are especially relevant as a reference for remanufacturing related strategies, thus enhancing production sustainability as well as environmental benefits.