A low-carbon supply chain pricing mechanism considering CSR under carbon cap-and-trade policy

In the context of environmental deterioration and people’s growing environmental protection awareness, governments or regions have put forward corresponding carbon emission reduction policies. Among them, the carbon trading mechanism, as an effective means to promote enterprises to implement emission reduction measures, plays a crucial role in regulating enterprise behavior and promoting social sustainable development. Since various industries and sectors support each other in social and economic development, it is more reasonable to study the carbon emission reduction optimization decisions of society and enterprises from the perspective of the supply chain. To achieve the carbon reduction target of the supply chain system, manufacturing enterprises usually need to incur additional costs to invest in emission reduction technologies, and retail enterprises also need to conduct low-carbon publicity to increase product market share. On one hand, considering the impact of the government’s emission reduction constraints and consumers’ low-carbon preferences, manufacturers will take corporate social responsibility (CSR) into consideration to enhance product competitiveness. On the other hand, smaller retailers are more concerned about being treated fairly than about their own profits due to the extra cost of low-carbon advertising. In this paper, considering the background of carbon trading, the manufacturer’s CSR and retailer’s fairness concern behavior are introduced into the decision-making process of the low-carbon supply chain (LCSC), and the relevant emission reduction decision-making model is constructed by using Stackelberg game theory and backward derivation method. Through comparative analysis of relevant parameters, members’ profits and utilities, this paper focuses on the influence of CSR and fairness concerns on system decision-making. The results show that the optimal way for LCSC decision-making is to cooperate with fair-concerned retailers and manufacturers with CSR. When manufacturers consider social responsibility within a certain range and retailers bear part of the cost of social responsibility as followers, it can not only effectively improve the emission reduction level of the supply chain and the profits of each entity, but also help to increase the enthusiasm of each entity for carbon emission reduction and the overall social welfare.