Optimal Decision-Making of Low-Carbon Supply Chain Incorporating Fairness Concerns

The optimal decision-making of the low-carbon supply chain incorporating fairness concerns, such as the effort of reducing carbon emissions, the whole sale price and retail price, is analyzed by taking the Nash bargaining solution as the fairness reference point. The following conclusions are found. Firstly, the wholesale price is strongly influenced by the fairness concern of the manufacturer but weakly influenced by that of the retailer, although both statistically significantly. Secondly, both the manufacturer’s and retailer’s fairness concerns reduce carbon emissions dramatically to nearly the same extent. Thirdly, the effect of the manufacturer’s fairness concern on the retail price is so tiny that it can almost be ignored, while the retailer’s fairness concern changes the retail price remarkably.