Research On Decision-making And Coordination Mechanism Of Low-carbon Operation Of Fresh Products Cold Chain

The cold chain can effectively reduce the spoilage and loss of fresh products during storage and transportation.However,the cold chain’ freshness-keeping activities generate a large amount of carbon emissions due to the energy consumption,which causes environmental pollution.With the development of a low-carbon economy and consumer environmental awareness,the cold chain is forced to accelerate the low-carbon transformation,which faces the prominent contradiction between scale expansion and carbon emission control.Reducing carbon emissions during cold chain long-term operation has become a key issue concerned by the government and cold chain.Thus,this paper applies the game theory to study decision-making optimization and coordination of low-carbon operation of fresh products cold chain composed of one supplier and one retailer.The main works of this paper are as follows:Firstly,focusing on the feature of cold chain low-carbon operation is that the increase in freshness-keeping investment can enhance the fresh products’ freshness,which positively affects goodwill,but at the same time leads to increased energy consumption and reduces the fresh products’ environmental friendliness,thus negatively affects goodwill.From a long-term and dynamic perspective,this research established a differential game model to study the equilibrium strategies and effective coordination mechanism of the cold chain’ low-carbon operation,taking the freshness level,carbon abatement level and goodwill as state variables.Secondly,this research introduced the government subsidy into the long-term low-carbon operation of the fresh products cold chain and regarded the government as the game participant.A differential game model in which the government and the cold chain participate together to study the optimal subsidy strategy of the government to promote the low-carbon operation of the cold chain,as well as the long-term optimal cooperation strategy among the cold chain members under the government subsidies.The results show that the freshness level trajectory of fresh products is monotonous,the carbon abatement level trajectory changes direction at most once,and the goodwill trajectory is volatile.The improvement of freshness preference helps improve the economic benefits of the cold chain,but it is not beneficial to the environmental benefits.Consumers’ low-carbon and goodwill preferences and carbon abatement cost coefficient have a greater impact on the economic and environmental benefits.The bilateral cost sharing contract that satisfies certain conditions can improve the economic and environmental benefits of the cold chain system at the same time,and the improvement effect is more obvious when the consumers’ goodwill preference is higher or the carbon abatement cost coefficient is lower.Only when consumers’ freshness preference is higher than the threshold,should the government subsidize the supplier’s freshness-keeping costs.For fresh products with high price sensitivity,government should reduce the subsidy ratio of freshness-keeping costs and increase the subsidy ratio of carbon abatement costs.When consumers’ low-carbon preference is high,the government can reduce the subsidy ratio of both freshness-keeping costs and carbon abatement costs.The revenue-sharing-bilateral cost-sharing contract can perfectly coordinate the cold chain under government subsidies in a dynamic setting.Cooperation between the cold chain members can save government subsidy expenditures when consumers have a high enough preference for freshness of fresh products.This research can provide theoretical evidence for the freshness-keeping,carbon abatement and publicity decisions of low-carbon operation of fresh products cold chain and the formulation of government subsidy strategies.It is of great significance for the cold chain to achieve low-carbon and high-quality development and improve its economic and environmental benefits and social welfare.