Fairness Concern in Remanufacturing Supply Chain—A Comparative Analysis of Channel Members’ Fairness Preferences

Xuemei Zhang, Jian Cao, Yang Zhao and Jiansha Lu
Additional contact information
Xuemei Zhang: School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China
Jian Cao: School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China
Yang Zhao: School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China
Jiansha Lu: School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-23

Abstract: Remanufacturing is a sustainable product reutilization strategy to realize responsible consumption and production. However, it has remained a largely untapped opportunity for enhancing productivity due to some behavioral matters such as fairness concerns of remanufacturing related firms. Concerning the emerging and development of remanufacturing industry, this paper provides a game-theoretic analysis for a remanufacturing supply chain (RSC) consisting of one leading manufacturer and a following retailer, with the inclusion of fairness concern. We propose and compare several scenarios of channel members’ fairness preferences as, both members are fairness concerned, only one member is fairness concerned, and both members are fair neutral, to expound how fairness concern affects RSC strategies and resulting utilities. We also demonstrate dynamic evolution and stable state of channel members’ selections of whether being fairness concerned in the long term. Analytical results show that favorable scenarios for the RSC to achieve desired objective are relevant to its preference for improved supply chain performance or enhanced environmental benefit. Whatever the preference is, however, it is detrimental for both members to be fairness concerned in the short term. In the long term, evolutionary stable strategies of fairness concerns indicate that both members or only one member would choose to be fairness concerned. The eventual status relies on the initial state of fairness preference. The results are especially relevant as a reference for remanufacturing related strategies, thus enhancing production sustainability as well as environmental benefits.

Keywords: remanufacturing supply chain; fairness concern; dynamic evolution; supply chain performance; environmental benefit; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3813/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3813/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:7:p:3813-:d:778156

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().