Research on the Coordination of Fresh Food Supply Chain Based on the Perspective of Blockchain and Low Carbon

Abstract

We consider a three-stage fresh agricultural product supply chain consisting of a supplier, a third-party logistics service provider (TPLSP), and a retailer and discuss the coordination mechanism of “revenue sharing + double cost sharing” contracts and “two-part tariff + revenue sharing + double cost sharing” contracts between the supplier, TPLSP, and the retailer. Based on this, we not only explore the conditions for supply chain full coordination and Pareto improvement but also analyze the effect of blockchain technology application cost, consumer environmental protection awareness, freshness preference, green trust level on carbon emission reduction level, fresh-keeping effort level, price decisions, and profits by comparing three different decision-making models. Results show that the improvement of the green trust level can help to improve the carbon emission reduction level, fresh-keeping effort level, price decisions, and profits. The application of blockchain technology can reduce transaction costs and improve consumer green trust levels, thereby increasing market demand and profits. When environmental protection awareness and freshness preference are higher than a certain value, the unit retail price of fresh products under decentralized decision-making is the highest with the blockchain technology applied. TPLSP can increase the wholesale, service, and retail prices of fresh products by appropriately increasing the blockchain technology application cost-sharing ratio. When $15<T_1<29.2416$ and $47<T_2<66.0408$ , “two-part tariff + revenue sharing + double cost sharing” contracts can achieve the Pareto improvement.