Implications of CSR Practices for a Development Supply Chain in Alleviating Farmers’ Poverty

To alleviate farmer poverty, this paper investigates the effect of a retailer’s different socially responsible practices on a two-echelon supply chain consisting of one rural (poor) farmer, one suburban farmer, and one common retailer. Different from a commercial supply chain (whose members’ objectives are to maximize their profits) and a humanitarian supply chain (whose objective is to save more people, rather than to prioritize profits), the paper aims to study a development supply chain where the CSR-conscious retailer aims to lift the poor farmer out of poverty through cost sharing, altruistic practices, or fairness practices. Can the CSR-conscious retailer (and the development supply chain) do well by doing good? To answer the above question, four models of potential CSR investment are established and analyzed. Considering the different influences of the retailer’s CSR practices, this paper uses a Stackelberg game to analyze the decisions and profits of the farmers and the retailer in these four models. Our study finds that, first, the retailer’s CSR practices can improve the whole supply chain’s performance, which means that the supply chain has the potential to achieve the Pareto improvement for both the farmers and the retailer. Second, the retailer’s CSR practices yield benefits while implementing cost-sharing or fairness practices. Third, the rural farmer always benefits from the retailer’s CSR practices and may prefer the altruistic practice from which they can benefit the most. In addition, to benefit their profit more, the rural farmer should grow high- or low-value-added crops rather than medium-value-added ones. Fourth, from the suburban farmer’s perspective, the retailer’s CSR practices are not beneficial for their performance. However, the extent to which the suburban farmer’s performance decreases is much lower than the extent to which the rural farmer’s performance improves. The results of this paper might be used by stakeholders to alleviate poverty.