Strategic low-carbon technology supervision in the closed-loop supply chain: An evolutionary game approach

The low-carbon technology (LCT) implementation, regarded as a sustainable management practice, contributes to carbon reduction of production activities for manufacturing plants. The local government encourages manufacturers to adopt low-carbon technology for better realizing carbon neutrality and sustainable achievement by environmental regulations. However, it is not enough to only rely on governmental regulation. The supervision of the media on LCT adoption is also indispensable. Therefore, the multi-participants’ supervision strategy on LCT is proposed to fill the gap, consisting of the government, manufacturer, and media. To help manufacturers perform low-carbon production, an evolutionary game model is formulated to investigate the strategic behaviors of involved tripartite participants. We disclose the evolution process of the manufacturer's LCT adoption decision under joint supervision-the government and media. Besides, the detailed influences of parameters such as the cost of LCT and carbon emission ratio on participants' strategies are explored to help better understand the involved participants' behaviors. The numerical results show that the manufacturer is more likely to adopt LCT under joint supervision. When the manufacturer could gain more benefits by adopting LCT, they would always choose to employ LCT even if there is no stimulus from the government and media. The information lied factor would reduce the degree of governmental supervision, which is not conducive to performing regulation responsibility for the government. This study examines the strategic supervision behaviors of multiple participants by formulating an evolutionary game model while giving support to decision-making management on LCT promotion for manufacturers.