Internal incentives and operations strategies for the water saving supply chain with cap-and-trade regulation

Faced with the rapid development of modern industries of agriculture, manufacturing, and services, water resources are becoming increasingly scarce. Industries with high water consumption are generally regulated by the government's water cap-and-trade (CAT) regulation to solve the contradiction between the limited water supply and the rapid growing water demand. Supply chain equilibrium and coordination models under the benchmark scenario without water saving and CAT regulation, water saving supply chain equilibrium and coordination models under the scenario without/with CAT regulation are developed, analyzed and compared. The corresponding numerical and sensitivity analyses for all models are conducted and compared, and the managerial insights and policy recommendations are summarized in this article. The results indicate that (1) Conducting water saving could improve effectively the operational performance of the water-saving supply chain under the scenario without/with CAT regulation. (2) The coordination strategy based on the revenue sharing contract could efficiently coordinate the water-saving supply chain, enhance water consumption reduction rate, and improve the operational performance of the water-saving supply chain. (3) The implementation of CAT regulation enhances effectively water-consumption reduction in the water-saving supply chain and improves the operational performance of water-saving supply chain. (4) Simultaneous implementation of CAT regulation by the government and adopting coordination strategy by the water-saving supply chain would be superior to any other scenarios/strategies. (5) A suitable water cap based on the industrial average water consumption and historical water consumption data are beneficial for constructing reasonable and effective incentive mechanism. (6) A higher marginal trade price could induce more reduction in water consumption and create better operational performance for the manufacturer and water-saving supply chain, both under the equilibrium and coordination strategies.