The Effects Of Consumers’ Preference For Low-Carbon Technique On Carbon Reduction Strategies

With the environment becoming worse and worse, government step up efforts to close down outdated production, save energy, reduce emissions and cope with climate changes. Meanwhile, enterprises are facing more and more risk of policy changes. Therefore, their competitive advantages and operational strategies are affected directly:the manufacturers will be eliminated by the market or government probably if it give up industry transformation. Transform and it will face great technical challenges and risks threats. With the consumers’awareness of environmental protection improving rapidly, it seems to provide demand guarantee for low-carbon products but actually they are always forced to carry out low-carbon technique innovations by the policy regulations.Considering the situation where consumers have preference for low-carbon technique, the enterprise’strategies and impacts of technology selection are studied when faced regulations and market competition. Applying the game theory, operations research and differential knowledge, the optimal corporate profits, the consumer surplus and social welfare under different strategies’ choice are analyzed, compared. Finally, these conclusions are found. (1) Developing low-carbon products can not only effectively restrain the rival’s market expansion and research progress, but also improve the performance and demand of their products. Interestingly, the increase in the proportion of green consumers has different effects on manufacturers’profit, as well as the impact of preferences levels for low-carbon technique. Advantageous or adverse, it depends on different market structures. (2) No matter there are compulsory policies of taking responsibility to curb emissions, the best response strategies have to be in accordance with the number of environmental consumers and levels of preference for low-carbon technique when the opponent choose to research. With the proportion of green consumers increasing or the level of preference for low-carbon technique, the manufacturer should give up the development strategy in order to avoid the fierce price and technical competition. (3) If there is no compulsory policy of taking responsibility to curb emissions and the opponent choose to produce common products, the manufacturer’s best response strategy is unique——research and development low-carbon technique. (4) Under the policy that companies are forced to undertake the due obligations to reduce carbon emissions, when the rival choose to produce common products, the manufacturer’s optimal strategy depends on the proportion of green consumers:the more the green consumers are, the more beneficial the development choice is. Otherwise, the manufacturer should alter to adopt govern strategy. (5) With respect to this two-person game, different pure Strategy Nash Equilibriums exist under different conditions. For instance, (Reduce, Reduce) might be Pareto optimal equilibrium or Prisoner’s Dilemma if there is no policy to require manufacturer to take the responsibility of curbing emissions. On the contrary, (Research, Research) is definitely Prisoner’Dilemma under the compulsory policy of taking social responsibility to curb emissions. (6) In dynamic environment, the enterprise’s carbon reduction effort and level will increase with time. (7) Regardless of the compulsory policy of curbing carbon emissions, consumer surplus and total social welfare can be improved as long as the enterprises develop low-carbon technique.