The importance of sustainability has led governments worldwide to impose emission regulations on manufacturers. However, it is largely unknown how channel relationships between manufacturers (i.e., competitive or cooperative) affect government policies, such as the emission tax price. In this paper, we address this pertinent yet underexplored issue by building formal analytical models. In the context of different channel relationships and with the goal of increasing social welfare, we also explore whether providing positive incentives is more effective than imposing taxes. We show that although cooperation leads to better economic performance, competition may be the channel relationship that better improves sustainability and social welfare. We find that government incentives to promote green technology need not be effective in enhancing sustainability. If investment is needed to fund green technology, increasing taxes on greenhouse gas emissions (hereafter "emissions") can protect the environment only if the product's initial emission intensity is sufficiently high. We also reveal that the total emissions are not necessarily decreased when (i) the consumers are more environmentally aware and (ii) there is a reduction in emission-abatement costs. Finally, we generalize our model to the extended modeling cases with (i) N-manufacturer and (ii) market segments with a proportion of environmentally aware consumers. Our main conclusions remain valid in the extended cases. The practical relevance and real-world implications of these results are discussed.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

Although researchers have devoted great effort to explore the antecedents of altruistic behaviours (a type of organisational citizenship behaviours), the important role of technical factors (social media) remains unclear. Drawing on social comparison and organisational support theory, this study explored how social media affordances influence employees' altruistic behaviours from both positive and negative perspectives. In this study, 302 employees from organisations in China were surveyed. We found that social media affordances could facilitate employees' perceived organisational support and social comparison of ability. Perceived organisational support positively mediated the relationship between social media affordances and altruistic behaviours. Although the evidence did not support the notion that social comparison of ability could directly dampen altruistic behaviours, a post-hoc analysis found that it could dampen the positive impact of perceived organisational support on developing altruistic behaviours. This study expanded previous research focusing on only positive or negative effects of social media use in the workplace by investigating the dual effects and the interaction effect in between. Here, we discuss the results and provide practical guidance for managers and organisations.

Blockchain technology (BT) is widely implemented in businesses, yet its adoption within distinct channel leaderships in a supply chain has not been well studied. Following real-world practices, we build analytical models to study two strategies in which the manufacturer leads BT adoption (MLB) and the retailer leads BT adoption (RLB). Our results show that BT adoption does not necessarily create extra supply chain profits. Higher profits can be obtained when consumers show a strong preference for traceability or when the leader shares sufficient costs otherwise. Raising leaders’ cost-sharing proportions does not necessarily benefit followers, and the cost burden may motivate leaders to reduce the traceability level, thereby decreasing overall benefits. Interestingly, cost-sharing is not a “zero-sum” game for supply chain members, and sharing more costs as followers may help create mutual benefits. A comparison of the strategies of MLB and RLB reveals that the product price, traceability level, and carbon emissions in MLB can either be higher or lower than those in RLB. From an environmental perspective, we show that the carbon tax has a nonmonotonic effect on product retail prices. For the supply chain, it is possible to increase profits but simultaneously reduce emissions in each strategy, and a superior strategy that improves both economic and environmental performance exists. By modelling the regulator’s participation in BT adoption, we further show that emission taxes and BT subsidies are not concomitant, and surprisingly, we find that the emission tax may either increase or decrease with product emission intensity. Moreover, our extension shows that regular operational costs for BT may impact the economic performance of BT adoption but other key findings remain robust.

We consider dynamic competition between two platform-based products that exhibit two-sided network effects, such as game consoles and intelligent hardware. Firms compete in terms of pricing and Research & Development investment, which are driven by consumers' marginal utility of quality, indirect network effects, and the differentiation between consumers' preference for the products. We find that with a small marginal utility of consumers, the equilibrium investment of one firm increases first and decreases later with its product quality but is not obviously sensitive to the rival's. In contrast, with a large marginal utility, if the quality of the two products is comparable, the equilibrium investment increases substantially. However, if one product pulls ahead, the other firm will stop investing. Besides, we find that when the intrinsic value and the network value coexist, the market becomes more concentrated, even when consumers' marginal utility is small. The market concentration increases in both the consumers' marginal utility and the indirect network effect but decreases in the degree of differentiation between consumers' preference toward the two products. Interestingly, we show that differentiation plays an important role in shaping the market structure only when the network effect is weak. Counterintuitively, we show that the differentiation corrodes firms' total profits, which demonstrates that less fierce competition resulting from low substitution leads to a lower profit. Additionally, we reveal that dynamic interaction between quality and installed base motivates firms to improve from a low quality, the first-mover advantage does not ensure market dominance.

Given the significance of achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs), carbon emission plays a crucial role in realizing sustainability. Our paper investigates the topic from the perspective of regional carbon emission control. We build analytical models for two supply chain structures, which are composed of one manufacturer and one retailer (Case 1), and two manufacturers and one retailer (Case 2), to explore the joint impact of the region-cap and competition on the optimal decisions of supply chains consisting of manufacturer(s) and platform(s). Platform power is considered to reflect the platform’s ability to enlarge the market share. Interestingly, we find that (i) the optimal production quantities in Case 2 may decrease with the region-cap; and (ii) the manufacturers’ optimal profits in Cases 1 and 2 firstly decrease and then increase with the region-cap. In Case 2, low-carbon products can be promoted and the manufacturer’s profit can be enhanced with the low region-cap. By comparing the two cases, we find that introducing a new manufacturer producing low-carbon products always damages the incumbent’s production and profit. Also, we show that with fiercer competition, the total carbon emission gets decreases when a competitive manufacturer joins the supply chain. In the extension, we incorporate platform competition (Case 3) in the supply chain and find that the government’s reduction in the region-cap can help expand the market size of low-carbon products in some situations. Besides, the optimal production quantities in Case 1 and Case 2 always increase with the platform power, while the optimal production quantities may move in the opposite direction in Case 3. In addition, we provide guidance for governments, platforms, and manufacturers to take effective measures in achieving the SDGs, providing them with a scientific basis for decision-making, and promoting the transformation of sustainable development concepts into practical operations in controlling regional carbon emission.

This paper considers a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. The manufacturer sells its products through the retailer and an online platform and adopts green technology in the blockchain era. The platform can operate with marketplace mode or reselling mode. The network effect is considered to reflect the power of the platform to enlarge the potential market size. In the decentralised supply chain, the online platform encroaches the offline demand despite the same retail price. The increase of the network coefficient improves the abatement level, and benefits the manufacturer and the platform but damages the retailer’s profit. For the supply chain coordination, the abatement level with reselling mode in the centralised supply chain is less than that in the decentralised supply chain if the network coefficient is high. Both marketplace mode and reselling mode can coordinate the supply chain if the network coefficient is low. Blockchain technology helps the products become greener and brings more profits for the manufacturer and the platform. And it induces supply chain coordination. Based on real data of a supply chain, its profit is increased by 3% after coordination.

Under carbon tax regulation, we jointly measure the environmental and economic performances of three closed-loop supply chains, where remanufacturing is implemented through the reverse channels of retailer collection, manufacturer collection, and third-party collection. The equilibrium results for each supply chain are derived, and the impacts of emission-related factors are characterized. Through a numerical study, we explore the impacts of the emission intensities of both new and remanufactured products on the entire emissions. Additionally, the government’s policy concerning environmental protection is discussed. The results show that the collection rate and the first-period product quantity are piecewise monotonously related to the tax price and emission intensities. Either manufacturer collection or retailer collection can be the most eco-efficient reverse channel, while third-party collection is the least preferred. Retailer collection can be both environmentally and economically better off to achieve Pareto improvement. Otherwise, when manufacturer collection is the most eco-efficient reverse channel, it can be motivated by the government through subsidizing. Interestingly, numerical studies show that reducing the emission intensity of remanufactured products can be eco-efficient, while lowering the emission intensity of new products may harm the environment. In addition, with one subsidy, two tax prices can be set by the government, among which a higher tax price leads to better environmental sustainability.

The book explores optimal decisions for companies and government to develop a sustainable economy by applying established analytical models.

This chapter considers a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. The manufacturer sells its products through the retailer and an online platform and adopts green technology in the blockchain era. The platform can operate in marketplace mode or reselling mode. The network effect is considered to reflect the power of the platform to enlarge the potential market size. In the decentralized supply chain, the online platform encroaches on offline demand despite the same retail price. The increase in the network coefficient improves the abatement level and benefits the manufacturer and the platform but damages the retailer’s profit. For supply chain coordination, the abatement level with the reselling mode in the centralized supply chain is less than that in the decentralized supply chain if the network coefficient is high. Both marketplace mode and reselling mode can coordinate the supply chain if the network coefficient is low. Blockchain technology helps products become greener and brings more profits for the manufacturer and the platform. This induces supply chain coordination.

The tax price in a carbon tax regulation may vary from time to time. In this chapter, we model a manufacturer who produces new products in the first period and makes new and remanufactured products in the second period under carbon tax regulation where the tax price differs over the two periods. It is shown that improving the first-period tax price always decreases the total emissions, while improving the second-period tax price may increase the overall emissions. With the decrease in the remanufacturing emission intensity, the overall emissions could either increase or decrease. To effectively control the total emissions, the tax price could be raised selectively by the regulator according to the manufacturer’s production decision and the characteristics of remanufacturing. In addition, the subsidizing strategy for employing green technology during remanufacturing pays off in obtaining environmental benefits only when the original remanufacturing emission intensity is low enough. With this two-period tax regulation, regulators are enabled to improve both the economic and environmental benefits.

In modern manufacturing operations, green technologies are becoming increasingly popular. Meanwhile, trade-in programs are widely implemented to boost sales and enhance product recycling, which would benefit the environment. It is widely observed that many companies implement green technology (GT) and trade-in programs together. However, whether this act is always beneficial to the environment is unclear. We hence build analytical models to address this issue. To conduct a comprehensive study, we follow real-world practices and examine both the retailer collect (R-collect) and manufacturer collect (M-collect) scenarios in a supply chain. Our results show that the "R-collect scheme with GT" leads to the highest levels of supply chain profit and social welfare, but more emissions may be generated. In addition, implementing GT does not always benefit the environment in both R-collect and M-collect schemes. Considering from the environmental protection perspective, we interestingly show that governments should advocate the "M-collect with GT" and "R-collect without GT" schemes. Correspondingly, to motivate both the supply chain and consumers to accept the advocated strategies, we characterize the carbon tax and subsidy based "carrot-and-stick" policy. We further show that our main results hold when consumers are environmentally conscious.

This chapter investigates the optimal production and pricing decisions of a self-pricing manufacturer and the optimal cap-setting decisions of a regulator under cap-and-trade regulation. The objectives of the manufacturer and the regulator are to maximize profit and social welfare, respectively. We first derive the optimal joint production and pricing decisions and the corresponding total emissions of the manufacturer, with given parameters of the cap-and-trade regulation. Based on these results, we then solve the optimal cap of the regulator. In addition, we show the impacts of the emission intensity on the optimal total emissions and the optimal cap. Surprisingly, we find that both the optimal total emission and the optimal cap first increase and then decrease as the emission intensity increases.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the operational decisions of a manufacturer who produces multiple products and the government's selection of cap-and-trade and carbon tax regulations.Design/methodology/approachThis paper explores the production decisions of a multi-product manufacturer under cap-and-trade and carbon tax regulations in a cap-dependent carbon trading price setting and compares carbon emission, the manufacturer's profits and social welfare under the two regulations. Game theory and extreme value theory are used to analyze our models.FindingsFirst, the authors find that the optimal profit of the manufacturer (the optimal cap) increases and then decreases with the cap (the unit carbon emission of product). Second, if the environmental damage coefficient is moderate, the optimal cap of unit environmental damage coefficient is independent of the product carbon emission or other related product parameters. Ultimately, cap-and-trade regulation always generates more carbon emission than carbon tax regulation. And cap-and-trade regulation (carbon tax regulation) can generate more social welfare if the environmental damage coefficient is low (high), and the social welfare under the two regulations is equal to each other, or otherwise.Originality/valueThis paper contributes the prior literature by considering the inverse relationship of the allocated cap and the carbon trading price and discusses the social welfare under cap-and-trade and carbon tax regulations. Some important and new results are found, which can guide the government's implementation of the two regulations.

In modern manufacturing operations, green technologies are becoming increasingly popular. Meanwhile, trade-in programs are widely implemented to boost sales and enhance product recycling, which would benefit the environment. It is widely observed that many companies implement the green technology (GT) and trade-in program together. However, whether this act is always beneficial to the environment is unclear. We hence build analytical models to address this issue. To conduct a comprehensive study, we follow the real-world practices and examine both the retailer collects (R-collect) and manufacturer collects (M-collect) scenarios in a supply chain. Our results show that the "R-collect scheme with GT" leads to the highest levels of supply chain profit and social welfare but more emissions may be generated. Besides, implementing GT does not always benefit the environment in both R-collect and M-collect schemes. Considering from the environment perspective, we interestingly show that governments should advocate the "M-collect with GT" and "R-collect without GT" schemes. Correspondingly, to motivate both the supply chain and consumers to accept the advocated strategies, we characterize the carbon tax and subsidy based "carrot-and-stick" policy. We further show in the extended analyses that our main results hold under competition, when the emission abatement cost takes different analytical forms, and when consumers are environmentally conscious. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Purpose Considering the cross-market network externality, this paper aims to explore the platform's pricing decisions and its optimal profit under the given government investment, and then investigate the investment decision to improve social responsibility, which is measured by the social welfare. Design/methodology/approach When exploring the optimal pricing decisions under the given government investment, extreme value theory and sensitive analysis are used. When investigating the investment level, game theory and optimization method are used. Numerical examples are conducted to further illustrate the results. Findings First, after considering the government investment, whether the buyers and the sellers are charged depends on the investment level and the difference of the cross-market network externality (CNC) of the sellers and the buyers. Second, the optimal price on the sellers is decreasing (increasing) in the CNC of the buyers (sellers). The optimal price on the buyers is significantly affected by the investment level. Finally, the government investment is win-win for both the platform and the government, and Chinese Government should invest on the sellers heavily. Originality/value This study specifies the role of the government investment on the sellers in determining the platform's pricing decisions and the improvement of the social responsibility, which is measured by social welfare.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to solve the problem of low accuracy in new product demand forecasting caused by the absence of historical data and inadequate consideration of influencing factors. Design/methodology/approach A hybrid new product demand forecasting model combining clustering analysis and deep learning is proposed. Based on the product similarity measurement, the weight of product similarity attributes is realized by using the method of fuzzy clustering-rough set, which provides a basis for the acquisition and collation of historical sales data of similar products and the determination of product similarity. Then the prediction error of Bass model is adjusted based on similarity through a long short-term memory neural network model, where the influencing factors such as product differentiation, seasonality and sales time on demand forecasting are embedded. An empirical example is given to verify the validity and feasibility of the model. Findings The results emphasize the importance of considering short-term impacts when forecasting new product demand. The authors show that useful information can be mined from similar products in demand forecasting, where the seasonality, product selling cycles and sales dependencies have significant impacts on the new product demand. In addition, they find that even in the peak season of demand, if the selling period has nearly passed the growth cycle, the Bass model may overestimate the product demand, which may mislead the operational decisions if it is ignored. Originality/value This study is valuable for showing that with the incorporation of the evaluation method on product similarity, the forecasting model proposed in this paper achieves a higher accuracy in forecasting new product sales.

平台管理者需要在考虑双边网络外部性的条件下对两边用户进行定价决策,除此之外投资策略也愈显重要.文章以视频平台为对象,用博弈模型研究视频平台在两边定价和UGC(用户生成内容)投资策略上的利益权衡.不同的内容来源具有不同的属性,UGC内容相对于版权视频对广告商的吸引力不同,从而影响平台的投资策略.考虑了3种情况:垄断、广告商多归属的寡头竞争以及广告商单归属的寡头竞争.研究提供了不同情况下视频平台的定价和UGC投资的决策指导,并比较了与传统市场的视角下决策的不同之处.结论显示不同的竞争条件下平台对于用户定价和UGC内容的投资策略如何受到UGC内容的特性以及平台间差异性的影响.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to use role expectation theory to identify potential determinants of user voting avoidance on mobile social media. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected through a survey of 602 WeChat users, and the proposed model was analysed using structural equation modelling. Findings Results indicate that user voting avoidance was positively influenced by unfair competition, perceived inauthenticity, perceived information insecurity, over-consumption of renqing (a unique Chinese human relation) and organisation placement in the context of mobile social media. Originality/value This study illustrates mobile user voting avoidance from the perspective of role expectation theory and clarifies the importance of avoidance in current voting research.

Many two-sided platforms categorize consumers into distinct groups according to their levels of activity. This study investigates a platform's pricing strategy when consumers are categorized into two distinct groups. By modeling a per-transaction fee in the platform's profit-maximizing objective, equilibrium results are derived for scenarios with and without consumer categorization. Then, the two scenarios are compared to explore the impact of categorizing consumers on the fees charged to users on both sides and the platform's profit. It is shown that, under consumer categorization, although sellers are charged a higher per-transaction fee, the expected profit is enlarged, and both the market scale and platform profit increase. The incremental profit of the platform first increases and then decreases in relation to the proportion of active consumers, and the benefit of categorizing consumers is maximized when active consumers are more than a half of the total.