Investment decision and coordination of green agri-food supply chain considering information service based on blockchain and big data

Researches about the fusion application of Big Data and blockchain have appeared for a long time, many information service providers have launched information service business based on Big Data and blockchain (hereafter, ISBD). However, in the green agri-food area, the ISBD application does not popularized. A vital reason is that many decision makers do not know how to make an optimal investment decision and coordinate chain members after adopting ISBD. The core of this problem is to study the issue of investment decision and coordination in a green agri-food supply chain. To solve this problem, firstly, combining with the status of Chinese agricultural development, we proposed a more suitable supply chain structure in the fusion application environment of Big Data and blockchain. Then, we chose a green agri-food supply chain with one producer and one retailer as research object and revised the demand function. Afterwards, considering the changes of agri-food freshness and greenness, we built and analysed the benefit models of producer and retailer before and after using ISBD, and then a cost-sharing and revenue-sharing contract was put forward to coordinate the supply chain. Findings: 1) When the total investment cost payed by producer and retailer is in a certain range, using ISBD will help chain members gain more benefits. 2) If chain members want to gain more benefits after using ISBD, they should try their best to optimize costs by extracting valuable information. Results can offer a theoretical guidance for producer and retailer in investing in ISBD, pricing decision and supply chain coordination after applying ISBD.