Operational Strategies In Low-carbon Supply Chains With Capital Constraints

In order to cope with the global climate change,more and more countries and regions launch low-carbon policies to curb carbon emissions.Climate change and the implementation of low-carbon policies make consumers' awareness of environmental protection continuously enhanced.Under the pressure of government and market,more and more firms begin to develop,produce,and sell low-carbon products.However,the low-carbon investment would occupy large amounts of working capital,which leads to the capital shortage of firms.The problem of capital shortage becomes the bottleneck of sustainable development of supply chain enterprises.The emergence of supply chain finance can effectively alleviate the financing problems of lowcarbon enterprises.Therefore,it is of great importance to investigate the financing strategy and the operation optimization under the low-carbon environment.Considering carbon emission reduction policies and consumers' low-carbon preference,this paper analyzes the pricing and emission reduction decisions of supply chain enterprises under different financing strategies to provide managerial implications for the low-carbon operation practice of supply chain firms.Meanwhile,the impacts of power structure,fairness concern and firm entrant on environmental and social performances are explored to provide guidance for the decision-making of government.The main research contents are presented as follows.First,we establish a retailer-led Stackelberg game model(RS model)in a supply chain consisting of a capital-constrained manufacturer and a capital-abundant retailer under the capand-trade regulation.To solve the financing problem of manufacturer,bank loans and early payment are introduced into the model,and the optimal emission reduction and pricing decisions under each financing mechanism are explored.By comparing the two financing mechanisms,it is found that there exsits a Pareto zone of initial capital where both the manufacturer and the retailer gain the higher profit under early payment than under bank loans.Therefore,the early payment is the unique financing equilibrium.In addition,the early payment produces the lower total carbon emissions and the higher social welfare when the cost coefficient of emission reduction is relatively low.Therefore,in the RS model,the supply chain with capital constraints can achieve both economic and environmental performances under the certain condition.Second,we construct the manufacturer-led Stackelberg game model(MS model)and investigate the emission reuction and pricing decisions under bank loans and early payment.Research results indicate that,similar to the RS model,the early payment is also the unique financing equilibrium in the MS model.But the early payment would produce the higher total carbon emissions and the lower social welfare than the bank loans.Therefore,different from the RS model,the economic goal and the environmental goal are in conflict in the MS moel.Meanwhile,we explore the impacts of power structure by comparing the RS model and the MS model.The results show that the power structure has no influence on retailer's financing strategy selection,but will affect that of the manufacturer.Numerical examples show that the cap-and-trade regulation has the important impact on environmental performance and social welfare.Third,the impacts of fairness concern on the low-carbon operational and financing strategies are investigated based on consumers' low-carbon preference and carbon tax policy.We establish a manufacturer-led Stackelberg game model in a two-echelon supply chain comprising a capital-abundant manufacturer and a capital-constrained retailer.The manufacturer provides the manufacturer finance(MF)and the manufacturer investment(MI)for the retailer.Under the fairness neutral,the results show that both the manufacturer and the retailer gain the higher profit under MI than under MF,and the MI can produce the lower total carbon emissions under the certain condition.However,when the retailer exhibits fairness concern,both the manufacturer and the retailer prefer MF to MI.Then the fairness concern changes the financing equilibrium.In addition,research results show that the high carbon tax rate can effectively reduce carbon emissions,but not always can improve the carbon emission reduction level to encourage the manufacturer to make more investment of emission reduction.Finally,based on the agent-selling mode of e-commerce,we construct a manufacturer-led Stackelberg game model in a low-carbon supply chain composed an incumbent manufacturer,an incumbent online retailer and a new entrant offline retailer.The optimal emission reduction and pricing decisions are obtained under three situations: without new entrant,enter through trade credit and enter through bank loans.It is found that the incumbent manufacturer does not always benefit from the entry of the offline retailer.When both the online commission rate and the cost coefficient of emission reduction level are relatively low,the entry would damage the manufacturer.When both the trade credit and bank loans are viable,there exsits a financing equilibrium,where the manufacturer and the retailer gain the higher profit under trade credit than under bank loans.In addition,when the commission rate is relatively high,the new entrant would damage the profit of incumbent retailer and increase the total carbon emissions.