Consumer Environmental Awareness Research Articles

Energy-saving and subsidy policy decisions for double competition manufacturers

With rising consumer environmental awareness (CEA) and strict carbon peak and carbon neutral targets, energy-intensive manufacturers are involving a fierce double competition in price and energy efficiency. However, their energy-saving and regulators' subsidy policy decisions are unclear. We addressed this gap here, where we have derived the manufacturers' optimal energy-saving decisions and have shown the effective conditions of the subsidy policy under three scenarios, including no difference, difference in unit original energy levels and difference in investment cost coefficients scenarios. Under the first scenario, we show the following: (1) those manufacturers in a weakly competitive environment should increase their unit energy saving, and counterintuitively, they should reduce it after the competitive intensity exceeds a threshold value; the increase in the CEA encourages the manufacturers to pursue a greater unit energy saving; (2) their profits are harmed by the increase in the competitive intensity; interestingly, the increase in the CEA is not always beneficial to those manufacturers; (3) The environmental concern degree of the regulator and society has a key impact on the effect of the subsidy policy. Under the latter two scenarios, many results depend on the manufacturers' type, such as dirty and clean manufacturers, outdated technology and advanced technology manufacturers.

Carbon emission reductions, pricing and social welfare of three-echelon supply chain considering consumer environmental awareness under carbon tax policy

With the rapid growth in carbon emissions from transport, reducing these emissions is becoming as important as reducing emissions from production. We took a transporter as a member of the supply chain system and constructed a three-echelon supply chain composed of a manufacturer, transporter, and retailer. This study applies the Stackelberg game and Nash game to research the optimal carbon emission reductions, pricing, and social welfare when the government imposes a carbon tax on carbon emitters and consumers are environmentally conscious. The four scenarios were designed as follows: 1) non-cooperative decision-making (NN model), in which neither carbon emission reduction cooperation nor pricing cooperation takes place; 2) local-cooperative decision-making Ⅰ (CN model), in which only cooperation in the field of carbon emission reductions takes place; 3) local-cooperative decision-making Ⅱ (NC model), in which cooperation in the field of pricing without cooperation in the area of carbon emission reductions takes place; and 4) overall-cooperative decision-making (CC model), in which both cooperation in the field of carbon emission reductions and cooperation in the area of pricing take place. The results show that economic (as profit of the supply chain system), social (as pricing and social welfare), and environmental benefits (as the optimal carbon emission reductions) for the three-echelon supply chain will improve with the deepening of cooperation among the supply chain members. Carbon tax policies have different impacts on clean and polluting supply chains. High carbon tax can encourage clean supply chain to increase carbon emission reduction, but will lead to the reduction of carbon emission of polluting supply chain. A cross-shareholding contract is designed to coordinate the supply chain and achieve the optimal state of the overall cooperative decision. Finally, the paper provides suggestions on carbon emission reductions for enterprises and policymaking for the government.

Green Investment Decision and Coordination in a Retailer-Dominated Supply Chain Considering Risk Aversion

With the sustainable development of the global economy, environmental problems and the green economy are increasingly becoming points of concern for the community. However, the large amount of capital invested in green technology and the high price of green products have become the key problems hindering the development of a risk-averse green supply chain. In order to promote the supply chain to increase green investment level, improve the green degree of products, and reduce the impact of risk aversion on green investment, this paper studies a two-echelon green supply chain composed of a risk-averse manufacturer and a risk-neutral retailer, in which the retailer is the leader and the manufacturer is the follower. We construct the wholesale price contract model, cost-sharing contract model, and two-part contract model, respectively, and use the Optimization Theory and Methods to discuss the impact of the three contracts on the green degree, expected utility of supply chain, retail price, consumer surplus, and social welfare. The results show that in the cost-sharing contract, compared with the wholesale price contract, the green degree of the product has been significantly improved, but the expected utility of the supply chain enterprises cannot achieve Pareto improvement, and the higher consumer environmental awareness will cause the manufacturer’s expected utility to decline. In the two-part tariff contract, compared with the wholesale price contract, the expected utility of supply chain enterprises achieves Pareto improvement, and the green degree of products is the highest in the three contracts; more importantly, in the two-part contract, the product green degree, the retail price, and the expected utility of the supply chain are not related to the manufacturer’s risk aversion; meanwhile, the retail price in the two-part tariff is the lowest among the three contracts, and the consumer surplus and social welfare are the highest. Our main contribution is that the two-part contract eliminates the influence of the manufacturer’s risk aversion on the above decision variable and realizes the unification of manufacturers, retailers, consumers, and social benefits. Finally, this paper uses numerical examples to verify the above conclusions and then analyzes the sensitivity of the supply chain system.

A game between green and non-green supply chains considering two-way government intervention and manufacturer competition

Enterprise competition has been transformed into chain-to-chain competition, and green development is imperative under the promotion of policies. Horizontal cooperation between green and non-green manufacturers provides a new direction for the supply chain to improve its core competitiveness. This paper develops competition and cooperation models between two manufacturers for the green and non-green supply chain under two-way government intervention to explore the impact of manufacturers’ horizontal cooperation on decisions and profits of supply chain members. In particular, for a situation without cooperation, we consider a Stackelberg game between two manufacturers. Model solutions and numerical analysis have shown that: 1) Cooperation among manufacturers can not only improve their own profits, but also strengthen environmental welfare. However, cooperation will damage consumer surplus. 2) When consumers are more sensitive to product prices, manufacturers’ cooperative behavior is not conducive to retailers, but with the improvement of consumer environmental awareness, retailers will gradually support their upstream cooperation. 3) Under the simultaneous implementation of government subsidy and punishment strategies, whether green consumption can be promoted is related to the adjustment factor of government subsidies, while the relationship between the green level floor for subsidy and product greenness is affected by the adjustment factor of subsidies and manufacturers’ cooperation. 4) The impacts of fierce price competition and green level competition on supply chain members are opposite; when the price competition is moderate or the green level competition is weak, the manufacturers’ cooperation is also beneficial to the improvement of retailers’ profits. This provides ideas for the development of green supply chain, and provides a reference for the implementation of two-way government intervention policy.

Agency selling or reselling? Channel selection of green products with consumer environmental awareness

ABSTRACT Motivated by the growing consumer interest in new energy vehicles, this paper studies a manufacturer's pricing and channel selection issues when selling green products to environmentally conscious consumers. Three channel structures are examined: (1) a single agency selling channel, (2) a single reselling channel, and (3) dual channels of agency selling and reselling. Agency selling refers to the case in which the manufacturer directly sells products to consumers on the platform by paying a fixed fee. Reselling refers to when the manufacturer wholesales products to the platform, which is then responsible for selling to end consumers. We find that an increase in consumers' green awareness has a positive impact on green technology levels, retail prices, and the profits of the manufacturer, platform, and retailer. When consumers' green awareness and the revenue-sharing rate are relatively low, the manufacturer will choose the single reselling channel, which is beneficial for both the manufacturer and retailer. When consumers' green awareness is moderate, the manufacturer will choose the hybrid channel in which the manufacturer and platform will reach a win-win situation. When consumers' green awareness is high, the dual channel is simultaneously beneficial for the manufacturer, platform, and retailer, which reveals that Pareto optimisation occurs.

Research on Recycling Strategies for New Energy Vehicle Waste Power Batteries Based on Consumer Responsibility Awareness

Due to the limited service life of new energy vehicle power batteries, a large number of waste power batteries are facing “retirement”, so it will soon be important to effectively improve the recycling and reprocessing of waste power batteries. Consumer environmental protection responsibility awareness affects the recycling of waste power batteries directly. Therefore, under the two recycling modes of new energy vehicle manufacturers and third-party recycling enterprises, this study analyzes the impact of consumer environmental protection responsibility awareness on the recycling price of waste power batteries and profit in the supply chain. The influence of factors such as recycling income, recycling input cost, and black-market recycling prices on consumer awareness of responsibility is also analyzed. Through theoretical research, it was found that: Under the model that third-party recycling enterprises are responsible for recycling, it can obtain better overall supply chain benefits; consumer environmental protection responsibility awareness and recycling benefits are positively correlated with supply chain benefits overall; and recycling benefits have a certain role in promoting consumer awareness of responsibility, while the increase in informal recycling prices inhibits consumer awareness of responsibility.

Optimal bundling of products with different environmental impacts considering consumer environmental awareness

Emission reduction has become a critical and urgent issue in marketing. We notice that some companies develop new products to exclusively solve the pollution emission from the existing polluting products. This paper aims to research the optimal bundling problem of a monopoly seller who offers a polluting product and the new green product when considering consumer environmental awareness. First, by comparing the maximum profit of bundling strategies, we reveal that bundling strategies always dominate the pure component (PC) strategy. More specifically, the pure bundling (PB) strategy dominates when the marginal costs are low and the green product performs well in emission reduction; otherwise, mixed bundling dominates. Second, by analyzing the net pollution emission of different strategies, we show that although bundling strategies benefit the seller economically, they may not be optimal environmentally when the green product is not effective. Numerical studies are constructed to show our findings intuitively. Further, this provides useful managerial insights to enterprises and government regulators. To help achieve emission reduction target, government regulators should implement emission regulations to regulate enterprises’ behavior. Besides, the enterprise should be more cautious when the emission regulation exists or when the enterprise itself is also environmentally aware since more profit may also mean more pollution.

Carbon emission reduction cooperation of three-echelon supply chain under consumer environmental awareness and cap-and-trade regulation.

Considering that both the manufacturer's production process and the transporter's freight process produce carbon emissions, this paper constructed a three-echelon supply chain composed of a manufacturer, a transporter, and a retailer. This article studies the cooperative carbon emission reduction among the supply chain members under the carbon cap-and-trade policy and consumer environmental awareness. We used the Stackelberg game to explore four scenarios as follows: (1) in the non-cooperative decision model, no cooperation takes place among all supply chain members; (2) in the local cooperation decision of the manufacturer and the transporter alliance model, the manufacturer and the transporter work together to make decisions reducing carbon emissions, but each member of the supply chain makes its own pricing decisions; (3) in the local cooperation decision of the retailer-transporter alliance model, there is no cooperation except that the retailer and the transporter cooperate with each other to determine the selling price of the product; and (4) in the overall-cooperative decision model, there is complete cooperation among the members of the supply chain, who collectively decide on carbon emission reduction and the selling price of the product. Then, using the backward induction method, we derived and compared the equilibrium solutions and the profits of the supply chain system. The results showed that the scenario of complete cooperation among all supply chain members had the best performance in carbon emission reduction, market equilibrium quantity, and the supply chain system's profit, but the selling price of the product was likely to be higher than other scenarios. Two contracts have been proposed to coordinate the supply chain system. The cost-sharing contract is effective but imperfect under limited constraints. The two-part tariff contract can realize perfect coordination of the supply chain. Finally, we obtained several interesting conclusions from the numerical example and provide managerial insights and policy implications from the analytical results.

Online channel structures for green products with reference greenness effect and consumer environmental awareness (CEA)

By formulating a stylized model in an e-commerce supply chain comprising of one green manufacturer and one e-tailer, this paper investigates the choice of selling formats (reselling or agency selling) with consumer reference greenness effect and environmental awareness. The results indicate that online channel structures depend on the cost efficiency of greenness improvement. Specifically, when the cost efficiency is lower or higher, both parties in the supply chain prefer reselling; in contradistinction, when the cost efficiency is medium, agency selling is preferable. We find that, as reference greenness effect and consumers environmental awareness (CEA) increase, firms will have a greater preference for agency selling for which greenness improvement and supply chain performances are better, compared to reselling. Differing from the common belief that the manufacturer will produce products with higher greenness under the reference greenness effect, we show that the manufacturer may instead opt to produce low greenness products. Specifically, when the reference greenness is low, the manufacturer tends to produce products with higher greenness; while when the reference greenness is high, they tend to produce low greenness products. This is because the negative effect of high costs will dominate the positive effect of the reference greenness effect, firms benefit less and slow the rate of greenness improvement. We show that the main conclusions still hold and provide some new insights when considering manufacturers competition, different types of green products, and reference price effect further.

Coordination of Prefabricated Construction Supply Chain under Cap-and-Trade Policy Considering Consumer Environmental Awareness

The construction industry accounts for over one third of excessive CO2 volume, so it is essential that this amount be curbed. Prefabricated construction has superior strengths in terms of both the environment and economy, but low carbon is not one such strength. Meanwhile, the increasing number of consumers with environmental awareness makes it necessary to investigate consumer preferences and behaviors. Therefore, we firstly built a prefabricated construction supply chain consisting of a prefabricated company (leader) and a manufacturer, using the Stackelberg model. To regulate and mitigate carbon emissions, this study investigated the implementation of a cap-and-trade policy. Consumer environmental consciousness was considered from preferences on improving the prefabricated rate and carbon reduction. This study provides decision-making suggestions, not only from a pricing point of view but also for green production, i.e., the prefabricated rate and carbon reduction. We find that consumer environmental consciousness and the cap-and-trade policy improve decision making. To effectively limit the manufacturer’s emissions, we suggest governments set a cap below a certain threshold. However, under the policy, the prefabricated company has free-rider behaviors and gains greater profits as the leader, which results in an unfair profit distribution. Hence, for the sake of optimizing the supply chain’s profits, the cost-sharing contract and the two-part tariff were discussed. Both contracts achieved Pareto improvement, while the two-part tariff contract realizes coordination and reaches the desired level under a centralized system. Numerical analysis also verified the theoretical feasibility.

How to reduce overpackaging of food in China: Analysis based on evolutionary game

At the beginning of the 21st century, China was calling for a reduction in packages, but to this day overpackaging of food in China remains a serious problem. It is widely believed that the government needs further legislation, and researchers also think that consumers' environmental awareness should be raised. Focusing on food overpackaging, this paper develops a tripartite evolutionary game model of government, enterprises, and consumers, and introduces the effort level of government enforcement and publicity to explore the best strategy for government. The results show that (1) the government must adopt penalties and environmental publicity, otherwise, it is difficult to develop an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) that enterprises give up overpackaging by only relying on consumers' power. (2) The increase of the initial size of government and the environmental awareness of consumers have significant positive effects on promoting enterprises to return to normal packaging, but the increase of the initial proportion of consumers against overpackaging does not always forward the evolution of the government. (3) Best strategy for government is primarily influenced by the initial size of government and consumers. When the initial sizes rise, enforcement needs to improve while environmental publicity is adjusted to a basic level, which allows the government to achieve both low-cost and environmental goals. This study provides theoretical and practical values for reducing food overpackaging in China, and the conclusions provide a reference for the government to formulate effective packaging policies.

Dump or recycle? Consumer's environmental awareness and express package disposal based on an evolutionary game model.

Along with the rapid development of the express industry and the inevitable trend of sustainable development, the disposal of express packaging is an urgent problem that needs to be solved. With the objective to the effective disposal mode for express packaging, this paper introduces the consumers’ environmental awareness into the framework and establishes an evolutionary game model to explore the governing measures of the express packaging recycling industry. It is found that without considering consumers' environmental awareness, the government's reward and punishment mechanism alone cannot restrain the recycler's decision-making effectively, while the participation of the consumers with environmental awareness could drive the strategy of the recycler to converge to the ideal state effectively, which is recycling the express packaging actively. The sensitivity analysis shows that the participation of consumers with environmental awareness significantly weakens the recycling difficulty and reduces the recycling cost of the recycler, which is helpful to improve the willingness of the recycler to recycle the express packaging continually. Thereby, the express packaging recycling industry can be improved better when the consumer's awareness of environmental protection is enhanced.

Optimal production and subsidy rate considering dynamic consumer green perception under different government subsidy orientations

Consumers have dynamic perception on product’s green quality, which will have an important impact on the production strategy of the supply chain. Focusing on a three-player supply chain consisting of a government, a manufacturer and a retailer, the paper investigates the optimal production and subsidy rate of the supply chain considering consumer environmental awareness (CEA) is dynamic. The paper develops a differential game based model to explore the optimal production and subsidy rate considering government’s different goals of social welfare maximization and governmental utility maximization. Our study shows that the subsidy rate increases with the CEA under social welfare orientation but decreases with the CEA under governmental utility orientation. Moreover, we find that the subsidy policy under governmental utility orientation can target more consumer groups compared to the subsidy policy under social welfare orientation. The social welfare under the social welfare orientation is always negative, while governmental utility under governmental utility orientation is positive in some cases. However, under governmental utility orientation, the profit of the centralized supply chain is lower than that of the decentralized supply chain. Further, the limited subsidy under governmental utility orientation can avoid this disadvantage while achieving improvement in green quality.

Decision-Making and the Contract of the Complementary Product Supply Chain Considering Consumers' Environmental Awareness and Government Green Subsidies.

The environmental awareness of consumers and enterprises has gradually increased, and green production and green consumption have become the main theme of social economy. On the other hand, the complementary product market has become an important source of competitive advantage for enterprises. Considering a complementary product supply chain, and taking account of the consumers’ environmental awareness and the green subsidies provided by the government, this paper examines members’ decisions in relation to four contract models based on game theory. By solving the model, it is shown that the government’s green subsidy plan improves the green degree of subsidized products and complementary products. Furthermore, compared to wholesale price contracts, revenue-sharing and cost-sharing contracts motivate manufacturers to improve the greenness of subsidized products, and they achieve a Pareto improvement for the whole supply chain and its members, when the contract parameters are appropriate. Numerical experiments also reveal that both the greenness of the complementary products and the profit for members increase with the green innovation spillover effect as a result of the complementary products and the scale of green consumers with environmental awareness in the market. This study provides good guidance for decision-making concerning the complementary product supply chain, and further contributes to environmental protection.

Wholesale-price vs cost-sharing contracts in a green supply chain with reference price effect under different power structures

PurposeThis research aims to examine which cooperative contract (wholesale-price contract or cost-sharing contract) can more effectively upgrade the green degree of product and promote demand when considering consumer reference price effect under different power structures.Design/methodology/approachThis research investigates a dyadic green supply chain composed of one manufacturer and one retailer. Four Stackelberg game models with a cost-sharing contract or a wholesale-price contract are built in retailer-led and manufacturer-led scenarios, respectively. Using backward induction, the optimal green decision under each model is obtained. In addition, the optimal cooperative contract is proposed by comparing these four models.FindingsIt is found that under consumer reference price effect, a cost-sharing contract outperforms a wholesale-price contract in upgrading product greenness and promoting demand. Under any single contract, the retailer-led situation is more conducive to improving product greenness than the manufacturer-led situation. Moreover, consumer reference price effect would reduce the sharing ratio of a cost-sharing contract when the manufacturer dominates, but it could mitigate the problem of double marginalization by reducing wholesale and retail prices under both types of contracts, which would enhance consumer surplus.Originality/valueIt is a new attempt to incorporate consumer reference price effect and power structure into a green supply chain framework and proposes a novel demand function that simultaneously emphasizes consumer reference price effect, consumer environmental awareness and product green attribute. In addition, it provides managerial insights for business managers to choose green cooperative contracts with consumer reference price effect under different power structures.

Consumer environmental awareness and privatization

Resource shortages, environmental degradation, and pollution have forced businesses to change their business practices to become more sustainable. In addition, consumers increasingly demand eco-friendly products. This paper examines whether governments should privatize a company whose production process generates environmental pollution. We assume that the firm is in competition with a foreign private firm, that the firm invests in eco-friendly programs, and that consumers are environmentally aware. We find that: (a) Consumers' environmental awareness influences firms' decisions regarding production levels and environmental investments. (b) As the government increases the degree of privatization, the public firm decreases its eco-friendly level and the level of its production. In contrast, if the government deceases the level of privatization, the public firm increases its eco-friendly level and its level of production. The private firm subjected to change in the extent of privatization, both its eco-friendly level and the level of its production are determined by the magnitude of the consumer environmental awareness. (c) The optimal privatization policy that maximizes the social welfare is partial privatization.

A Multi-Dimensional Analysis on Manufacturers' Strategy Selection of Carbon Emission Reduction and Pricing Under Carbon Trading Policy and Consumer Environmental Awareness

A Multi-Dimensional Analysis on Manufacturers' Strategy Selection of Carbon Emission Reduction and Pricing Under Carbon Trading Policy and Consumer Environmental Awareness

Analysis of Urban Residents’ Willingness to Pay for Forest Ecological Services Based on the Multilayer Linear Model

This study takes 8 cities in Shaanxi province as the research object and uses the multilayer linear model specifically for nested structure data to introduce the urban macroexplanatory variables on the basis of individual level of residents and influence the willingness of urban residents to pay for forest ecological services. The factors are analyzed in multiple layers to find out the prediction effect on ecological payment, and on this basis, corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward. The results show that regional differences have a significant impact on residents’ willingness to pay for forest ecological services; individual characteristics and regional characteristics can independently have a significant impact on residents’ willingness to pay; after introducing macrolevel variables, individual‐level environmental awareness and per capita income, five variables, such as education level, place of residence, and age, have significant predictive effects on residents’ willingness to pay; among them, the interaction between consumer price index and environmental awareness is the largest, followed by the interaction between consumer price index and age. Per capita social security is the interaction between expenditure and environmental awareness. Finally, that is the interaction between the per capita social security expenditure and age and the interaction between the average salary of employees and the monthly per capita income.

A Systematic Literature Review: Fuel subsidy and consumer environmental awareness in urban road transport

Using a systematic literature review, we explore fuel subsidies and consumer environmental awareness among users in urban road transport. Fuel subsidies given by the government to the public have to some extent brought them to more using own transport as the fuel cost is now cheaper. A growing number of vehicles and usage in the urban road transport sector worldwide has increased CO2 emissions and impact on environment. The misalignment of benefits from the implementation of fossil fuel subsidies and high emissions has grown attention to limit global warming since the Paris Agreement 2015 was signed. Nonetheless, consumer environmental awareness is interesting to bring forward for future research. Keywords: Fuel Subsidy, Consumer Environmental Awareness, Urban Road Transport, Systematic Literature Review eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6i18.3097

Pricing policy in green supply chain design: the impact of consumer environmental awareness and green subsidies

Pricing policy in green supply chain design: the impact of consumer environmental awareness and green subsidies