Green Degree Research Articles

Analysis of two financing modes in green supply chains when considering the role of data collection

PurposeMore and more attention has been paid to the financing of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and environmental protection. Many literatures have done detailed research on them; yet, few of them studied the interaction between corporate financing behaviors and environmental concerns. This study aims to incorporate the impact of the role of data collection into the mathematical model to explore the optimal financial and ordering strategies when considering environmental protection.Design/methodology/approachA Stackelberg game modeling and backward induction methods are used to derive the optimal equilibrium solutions, using numerical experiments to further explore the influences of various financing strategies on the green degree of product and ordering policies.FindingsNo matter which financing modes the capital-constrained retailer chooses, both the loan interest rate and order quantity considering environmental protection are larger than that without environmental protection concerns. As the retailer's initial capital increases, the optimal loan interest rates under various financing modes are all decreasing. The application of big data technology would promote the environmental protection of enterprises and increase the accuracy of financing decisions.Originality/valueThis paper studies financing activities of a supply chain considering data collection and environmental protection behaviors, which provides meaningful guidance for the financing and environmental decision-making of enterprises.

Strategies on Pricing, Greenness Degree, and Carbon Emission Reduction in Supply Chains under Single and Cross Distributions of Green and Nongreen Products

Environmental sustainability has become a critical indicator in evaluations of the success and efficiency of supply chain management. In this study, we consider a two-echelon supply chain composed of two competing manufacturers, two retailers, and one third-party logistics firm. The first manufacturer produces a green product, while the second manufacturer produces a nongreen product. Each of the two retailers can sell only a green product, only a nongreen product, or both green and nongreen products. All products are initially stored by the third-party logistics firm and delivered to the retailers. This study investigates product pricing, the degree of greenness of the first manufacturer’s product, and carbon emission reduction as carried out by the third-party logistics firm. Using a three-stage Stackelberg game framework, we present the equilibrium strategy on pricing, the degree of greenness, and carbon emission reduction for five different distribution channel structures. One of our major findings is that competition between the two manufacturers has a positive influence on the profitability of the supply chain. We also find that it is desirable for each manufacturer to choose a cross-distribution channel for its products considering the sustainability and profitability of the supply chain.

Competitive Environment Between Green and Non-green Products Considering Disruption and Alliance Strategy

Nowadays, the effective supply chain is considered more than ever. In this study, a supply chain composed of a dominant retailer and a non-green product supplier is investigated. Base demand is always fluctuating in the real market. Thus, considering the base demand disruption risk is one of the factors approaching the problem to reality as discussed in this model. Then, the retailer encounters the challenge of entering a new supplier producing the substitutable product of the first product. New supplier produces the green product. Thus, the competition of green and non-green products in this study is considered with other factors. Another challenge for retailer is the type of optimal alliance, determining the optimal green degree of the second product, and determining the optimal refund amounts. In this study, some factors such as base demand disruption risk, green product, alliance selection, and return policy are considered. A game theory approach is used for solving the problem and getting optimal decisions. Finally, some sensitivity analysis based on the alliance strategies and greenness of the SCM has been done by numerical examples.

Contract Design for Enhancing Green Food Material Production Effort with Asymmetric Supply Cost Information

In order to improve green performance and achieve sustainability goals, food companies see the need to adopt green supply chain management. However, ensuring a green supply is a tough task since food companies do not always have full information of their suppliers’ efforts in improving their green performance. This information asymmetry issue will lead the food producers to make poor decisions and cause a profit loss. Therefore, to fill this research gap, this study investigates a two-stage supply chain, which consists of one dominated food producer and a food supplier who has private knowledge of its green food material producing (GFMP) cost. To figure out how green performance is the major parameter that influences the decision-making of supply chain members under information asymmetry, this study first expands demand functions for both a food supplier and a producer, considering their influence on the green degree of the food products and associated consumer acceptance. It is found that under certain conditions, information sharing will improve the supplier’s green performance and increase the food producer’s profit. This study then presents the prerequisite of green cost information sharing by the food supplier. Furthermore, a newly designed menu of contracts, which combine the wholesale price contract and cost sharing contract, is proposed for the asymmetric information case to incentivize the food supplier to disclose the green effort information and improve the environmental and economic performance of the food supply chain. Numerical experiments are conducted through a case analysis to illustrate and validate the proposed models.

Effect of Urban Expansion Intensity on Urban Ecological Status Utilizing Remote Sensing and GIS: A Study of Semarang-Indonesia

The rapid urban expansion will drive land-use conversion and cause substantial environmental and ecological impacts. The ability of remote sensing to record spatial and temporal data on the land surface with complete coverage has been proven effective for recognizing spatiotemporal changes in the regional eco-environment quickly. This study utilized Landsat TM / ETM + and Landsat-8 OLI remote sensing data to assess the effect of urban expansion intensity on the urban ecological status with the study area in Semarang, Indonesia. The method to measure urban expansion uses the urban expansion intensity index and to assess the urban ecological status using an integrated ecological index (IEI). The IEI generated from four parameters which include the degree of greenness (i.e. the soil adjusted vegetation index, SAVI), the moisture degree (i.e. the normalized difference moisture index, NDMI), dryness degree (i.e. the normalized difference soil index, NDSI) and built-up aggregation degree (i.e. the normalized difference built-up index, NDBI). Principal component analysis (PCA) is used to compress the four indicators to construct the index of ecological status and Pearson correlation analysis was used to determine the effect of urban expansion intensity on urban ecological status. The result showed that the urban land area increased by 38.98 km2 with an average expansion area of 3.9 km2 y-1 from 2005 to 2015. The index of urban expansion intensity during 2011-2015 increased about 2.1 times from 2005-2011. The pattern of deteriorating urban ecological status of the city of Semarang spreading towards the west, south, southeast, and east. The lowest integrated ecological index is in the central and northern parts of the city of Semarang. The extent of good and excellent urban ecological status continues to decline in a decade, on the contrary, the urban ecological status of poor and extremely poor increased. The negative linear relationship of the index of urban expansion intensity and urban ecological status shows that the intensity of urban expansion influences the urban ecological status in Semarang city.

Green subsidy modes and pricing strategy in a capital-constrained supply chain

This paper investigates green credit (GC), manufacture subsidy (MS), and sales subsidy (SS) modes in a supply chain with a capital-constrained green manufacturer and attempts to find the win-win subsidy mode. We show that when the bank loan is infinite and the total subsidies of different modes are equal, GC can bring the highest returns with respect to green degree, market demand, social welfare, and environmental benefit. However, under the finite loan scenario, GC is the optimal choice for the government only when the credit line of the manufacturer is relatively high; otherwise, MS is the optimal subsidy mode.

LTA zeolite synthesis using natural materials and its evaluation by Green Star methodology

The industrial costs of zeolite synthesis can be diminished by the substitution of traditional raw materials by natural sources. In this work, we obtained LTA zeolite from four natural materials, three different diatomites and expanded perlite, and characterize them by X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence and scanning electron microscopy. It was possible to observe the formation of the zeolitic materials through the identification of the Bragg reflections and the cubic morphology characteristic of the aluminosilicate. The Si/Al ratio of the samples resulted next to the unit as expected for this topology. We found small differences between the zeolitic products, remarking the possibility of adapting this process using natural materials to industry. These results were used for the Green Star evaluation, calculating the synthesis degree of greenness, resulting greener due to the complete substitution of the traditional silica source.

Optimal Decisions of a Green Supply Chain under the Joint Action of Fairness Preference and Subsidy to the Manufacturer

Government subsidy promotes the development of green supply chain, and the influence of decision-makers’ behavioral preferences becomes increasingly prominent in green supply chain management. In order to further enrich the research content of green supply chain, we first use Stackelberg game theory to construct game models by taking the product green degree, wholesale price and retail price as the decision variables, then we work out the equilibrium strategies of the manufacturer and the retailer under four decision scenarios, and reveal the impact differences between the two parties’ fairness preference behaviors. Our research mainly has the following findings: Firstly, the government subsidy to the manufacturer can benefit these two parties and can have certain impact on the optimal decisions only by working with the green product market expansion efficiency. Secondly, these two parties’ fairness preference behaviors can cause serious damage to the other party’s profit and the overall profit of green supply chain, and increase the rate of their own profit in the overall profit of green supply chain, but the difference is that the retailer’s fairness preference behavior can cause a greater decline in product green degree and wholesale price, and when certain conditions are met, its own profit may rise compared to its fairness neutral, while the manufacturer’s fairness preference behavior can cause a greater damage to the overall profit of green supply chainand make its own profit always be lower than its fairness neutral. Thirdly, the government subsidy to the manufacturer and the fairness preference behaviors of both parties can cause a stack effect on the optimal solutions, which means that the subsidy government provides for the manufacturer can aggravate the negative influence caused by these two parties’ fairness preference behaviors.

Evaluation Research on Green Degree of Green Packaging Materials

Green packaging materials are packaging materials which are harmless to human health, have a good protective effect on ecological environment and can be recycled in packaging materials that people produce, manufacture, use and recycle. Green packaging materials can save resources and energy; they can be naturally degraded or reused without breaking ecological balance after being discarded, moreover, green packaging materials have a wide range of sources, low energy consumption, easy recovery and high recycling efficiency. Green packaging materials are the premise and foundation of green packaging design. Based on the analysis of the shortcomings of traditional material selection methods, this paper establishes the selection principles of materials in green packaging design, and elaborates on how to use theoretical method of pan-environmental function to evaluate the green degree of green packaging materials, and finally select the best green packaging materials.

Information sharing in a green supply chain with promotional effort

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the retailer’s strategy of information sharing in a green supply chain with promotional effort, and the impact of information sharing on the decisions and profits of the manufacturer and the retailer.Design/methodology/approachThe developed models aim to maximize the profits of the manufacturer, the retailer and the green supply chain system. The game theory is used to obtain the equilibrium solutions of both the manufacturer and the retailer. A two-part compensation (TPC) contract is designed to motivate the retailer to share information with the retailer. Numerical examples are used to show the impact of parameters on decisions by Matlab 2014.FindingsThe results show that the green degree increases while the promotional effort level decreases when the manufacturer receives the larger demand information from the retailer; information sharing leads to a profit increase to the manufacturer and a profit loss to the retailer, but can increase the profit of supply chain under a certain condition; information sharing reduces the expected consumer surplus. The TPC contract designed in this paper can not only motivate the retailer to share information but also increases the consumer surplus.Research limitations/implicationsThe study has been done in a monopoly environment where only a retailer can forecast demand information. It is an interesting direction of future research when considering there are more retailers who can forecast such information in a supply chain.Originality/valueThere exist two main aspects that are different from the existing literature. The stochastic demand function related to the retail price, the green degree and the promotional effort have never appeared in previous literature. This paper considers a green product supply chain with a manufacturer who produces green products and a retailer who has an information advantage because of her promotional effort; this paper investigates the impact of information sharing on the consumer surplus and designs a contract to coordinate the green supply chain.

Evaluation of ship’s green degree using a novel hybrid approach combining group fuzzy entropy and cloud technique for the order of preference by similarity to the ideal solution theory

The pollution and emission caused by the manufacturing, operation, and scrapping of marine ships have considerable impact on the environment. Therefore, it is essential to develop an effective and efficient approach toward evaluating the environmental impact of ships. This study uses the green degree of ships concept to evaluate different alternatives. Because environmental evaluation involves several criteria, the problem can be formulated as a traditional multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model. In this regard, the main innovation of this study is the development of an improved MCDM model using a novel hybrid method, namely the group fuzzy entropy and cloud technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution theory. The developed model calculates the criteria weight and rank based on the selected criteria and alternatives. Finally, a criteria system is developed to evaluate several classical alternatives, and various sensitivity analyses were carried out to validate the robustness of the proposed methodology. The results revealed that the model and criteria system can provide several quantitative and qualitative indicators for governmental policy-makers and agencies, environmental consultants, and environmental service organizations.

Research on the current situation of ultrafiltration combined process in treatment of micro-polluted surface water

At present, most of the source water of domestic urban water supply treatment plants is taken from micro-polluted surface water. With the further improvement of drinking water sanitation standards, the traditional “coagulation-sedimentation-filtration-disinfection” process cannot meet the requirements of the new standards. Ultrafiltration, as the core technology in the field of water treatment in the 21st century, is increasingly applied to water treatment due to its advantages of green efficiency, simple operation, small footprint, and high degree of automation. However, the use of ultrafiltration membrane alone has some problems such as substandard water quality and serious membrane pollution. Therefore, the combination of ultrafiltration and traditional water treatment technology to treat micro-polluted surface water has become the mainstream choice for treatment plants. This article mainly introduces the current research status of domestic ultrafiltration combined technology, trying to explore more reasonable and effective ways to apply ultrafiltration membranes in actual projects.

Evaluation research on green degree of equipment manufacturing industry based on improved particle swarm optimisation algorithm

Evaluation research on green degree of equipment manufacturing industry based on improved particle swarm optimisation algorithm

Energy Enterprise Management in China under the Perspective of Green Development

With the aggravation of climate change, energy enterprises will gradually assume more and more responsibilities for environmental protection and energy conservation. How to incorporate green ideas into their business management has become an important theme. After reviewing the past background and policies, based on the supply chain model established in the past literature, this paper determines the more important indicators that affect the sustainable development of the company, and based on this, puts forward the points that should be paid attention to in the future management of the enterprise. First, energy companies should incorporate green ideas into their corporate training to raise the morale of their employees. Second, through strict control of upstream and downstream suppliers and the establishment of environmental requirements, so as to improve the green degree of the entire supply chain. Third, in the current society with advanced information technology, the operation of information means to achieve the goal of green management should be the focus of future management.

Evaluating Green Degrees of China’s Endowment Communities

With the aging population problem becoming more and more serious, how to effectively promote green development of endowment community has become a research hotspot in academia. Based on literature research, this paper establishes the index system from the whole process of site selection, design planning, construction, operation and maintenance, and the evaluation model combining with AHP-ANP-entropy method-distribution maximization method. The constructed system and model are applied to measuring greening degrees of China’s four typical endowment communities in 2017. The findings showed that the greenness score of Shanghai Shenyuan is significantly higher than other three communities, and the average score of the construction criterion layer for four communities is larger than other three criteria layers. Based on comparative analysis, the greenness scores of design planning, construction, and operation and maintenance of Shanghai Shenyuan were much higher than that of other three communities. Except for site selection, the greening degrees of other three criteria layers in Dalian Lechunxuan were significantly lower than other three communities. Additionally, the green development of endowment community is affected by regional economic basis and ecological environment.

Pricing and Coordination Strategy in a Green Supply Chain with a Risk-Averse Retailer

This paper addresses the pricing and coordination strategy in a green supply chain in which a manufacturer produces a green product and sells it to a risk-averse retailer. The product’s demand is a random variable influenced by the green level and the retail price. The problem is modeled in three different structures, a centralized and two decentralized models, in which the upstream manufacturer and the downstream retailer act as the channel leader, respectively. This paper presents the optimal decisions for all supply chain members, analyzes the effects of green degree and risk-averse coefficient on the supply chain members’ decision-making and their profits, and performs the numerical analysis. The results show that the green degree and the whole supply chain’s expected profits are highest in the centralized scenario, followed by the retailer-led scenario, and lowest under the manufacturer-led scenario; the green degree and the manufacturer’s expected profit increase with the risk-averse coefficient, no matter who dominates the channel; however, the risk-averse coefficient’s effects on the retailer’s expected utility and the retail price depends on who dominates the channel and on the greening investment parameter.

Exploring a two-layer green supply chain game theoretic model with credit linked demand and mark-up under revenue sharing contract

In this paper, a two-layer green supply chain has been considered consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. Also in this study two game theoretic models have been analyzed where, in the first model the market demand depends on green degree of the produced products and selling price of the retailer, whereas for second model, demand depends not only on green degree and selling price of the retailer but also on the credit period, offered by the retailer to the customers. Here, the manufacturer produces green products and his/her production cost depends on green degree of the products and after that s/he wholesales the products on a mark-up based on his/her production cost, while the retailer decides his/her mark-up based on manufacturer’s wholesale price for Model I and for Model II s/he decides the mark-up on the basis of both wholesale price and the credit period. All models have been solved by considering three decision scenarios as centralized, decentralized and revenue sharing contract. Under revenue sharing contract, through numerical investigations we reveal that not only Model II gives better profit structure for both manufacturer and retailer compared to Model I but also for Model II a win-win situation can be achieved, though the contract is unable to improve the green degree of the product. We have also analyzed, how retailer can improve his/her individual profit structure along with other supply chain members by offering credit period. Finally, sensitivity analysis has been performed with respect to some key demand sensitivity parameters and retailer’s interest loss rate due to offered credit period to make important insights on several optimal decisions.

Evaluation research on green degree of equipment manufacturing industry based on improved particle swarm optimization algorithm

Abstract The paper constructs the green degree evaluation system of equipment manufacturing industry, and then the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to measure the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry. The results show that the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is a better method to evaluate the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry. The paper measure the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry is 0.51, which is at a low level. So it is need to adopt policies to promote green degree to achieve sustainable development goals. In view of this, the paper proposes policy recommendations for the green degree of China's equipment manufacturing industry from the perspectives of improving relevant policies, technological upgrading and environmental protection input, applying legal policy systems, and increasing financial support.

Optimal financing and operational decisions of capital-constrained manufacturer under green credit and subsidy

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>To stimulate the capital-constrained manufacturer to produce green products, the government often adopts two incentive mechanisms: green credit (i.e., subsidy offered directly to bank) and subsidy (i.e., subsidy offered directly to manufacturer). This paper examines the optimal interest rate of the bank, and the optimal product green degree and sales price of the manufacturer under the two mechanisms, respectively. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of these mechanisms on the optimal decisions, the profits of players, the social welfare and the environmental benefits. Several important results are obtained. First, when the total government subsidy is low, the green credit mechanism can bring the higher green degree, product sales price and demand, as well as higher profits for the bank and manufacturer, rather than the subsidy mechanism. Otherwise, the result is opposite. Second, the government should adopt the green credit mechanism to support the manufacturer to develop green products when the budget is limited and relatively low. If the government budget is sufficient, the subsidy mechanism is the best choice, which can bring higher economic and environmental benefits.

Green Manufacturing Strategy Considering Retailers’ Fairness Concerns

This paper addresses the problem of green manufacturing decision making for a green dual-channel supply chain (SC). In the investigated SC, the manufacturer will decide whether to adopt green manufacturing under the influence of the retailer’s fairness concern-based dual-channel. Thus, we discuss two decision scenarios: the no green manufacturing strategy with retailer fairness (NM model), and green manufacturing with retailer fairness (GM model). Our study has several findings: Firstly, adopting a green manufacturing strategy is not always beneficial to supply-chain members when a retailer has fairness. In particular, when fairness is at a relatively high level, the manufacturer will not adopt green manufacturing. Secondly, under green manufacturing, the product’s green degree and subsidies have a positive impact on the price and demand and the members’ profit and utility. Besides, the subsidies and retailer fairness have a counter effect on the optimal decision. Thirdly, comparing the two scenarios (NM &amp; GM), we found that the channel price of the GM model is lower than the NM model. Finally, from the perspective of the supply chain system, the system tends toward the manufacturer adopting green manufacturing and maintaining retailer fairness concerns at a lower level.