关键词: 低碳经济, 演化博弈, 供应链, 碳减排

Abstract: The development of a low-carbon supply chain is an important pathway to achieve the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. How to realize the spontaneous development of low-carbon economy in the secondary supply chain of manufacturers and retailers? Based on various theoretical perspectives, including the signal theory, legitimacy theory, and stakeholder theory, this paper systematically expounds the strategy choice of manufacturers and retailers considering the engagement of the government, enterprises, and consumers. Under the premise that the government and consumers participate in the low-carbon development of enterprises, the development strategies chosen by manufacturers and retailers will inevitably be influenced by the government and consumers, and evolve to a direction that is conducive to their own development. There are two ways for manufacturers to choose strategies: the negative or the positive development of low-carbon economy, and retailers can choose strategies to negatively or positively develop low-carbon economy. The combination of two pairs produces four strategic combinations: low-carbon technology and low-carbon marketing; traditional technology and low-carbon marketing; low-carbon technology and traditional marketing; and traditional technology and traditional marketing. And we innovatively divide the four strategic combinations of manufacturers and retailers into Cash Cow, Star, Question Mark and Dog ones. Then, the method of evolutionary game is used to explore the equilibrium conditions under different strategy combinations, Propositions 2 and 3 are proposed according to the equilibrium conditions, and the parameter value ranges of Propositions 2 and 3 are analyzed in realistic scenarios. Besides, the equilibrium conditions of the Cash Cow combination are explained economically. Finally, a numerical simulation is used to analyze the impact of internal and external factors on the equilibrium profit of manufacturers and retailers under the low-carbon technology and low-carbon marketing strategy, including the sensitivity coefficients of carbon emission reduction and marketing effort, carbon trading price, low-carbon subsidy, and carbon tax ratio.
The results show that only when the sensitivity coefficients of carbon emission reduction and marketing efforts, carbon trading price, low-carbon subsidy and carbon tax are within a certain range, the low-carbon technology and low-carbon marketing strategy can become the stabilization strategy of the system, and the government, enterprises and consumers can effectively collaborate. Meanwhile, the carbon tax ratio has a certain complementarity with the low-carbon subsidy, meaning that an appropriate increase in the carbon tax ratio can reduce the fiscal expenditure. Under the equilibrium condition of the low-carbon technology and low-carbon marketing strategy, the level of manufacturers’ low-carbon effort positively affects the level of retailers’ low-carbon marketing, and retailers can only obtain greater benefits by actively cooperating with manufacturers to develop low-carbon economy. Additionally, the overall profit of the low-carbon supply chain can be achieved by increasing the sensitivity coefficient of carbon emission reduction, the sensitivity coefficient of marketing efforts, and the low-carbon subsidy, and reducing the carbon emission per unit product. When the carbon emissions per unit product are low, the increase in carbon trading prices can also achieve the same goal.
By analyzing the game process of manufacturers and retailers, we can understand the critical value of the resource input level of the government and consumers under the four strategy combinations, e.g. Cash Cow, Star, Question Mark and Dog combinations. It is conducive to the precise allocation of resources by the government and consumers, enhancing the efficiency of social resource allocation and ultimately achieving the goal of carbon emission reduction. A numerical simulation is a simulation analysis in a more ideal situation, but it does not fully reflect the reality, so future research can be combined with real data to make a further empirical analysis.

Key words: low-carbon economy, evolutionary game, supply chain, carbon emission reduction