Green supply chain decision-making and coordination considering consumer's environmental mindset and fairness concerns in the context of sustainable development

Based on the environmental protection concept and green needs of consumer in the context of green sustainable development, we study how to enhance the economic benefits of green enterprises under the premise of green, environmental protection and health and create a pure, healthy, and efficient supply chain system, thus promoting the economic development of the whole society. This paper introduces the concepts of consumer environmental awareness and consumer's expectation of product greenness in the green supply chain formed by manufacturer and retailer, and uses a game theory approach to study the interaction between these factors and their impact on the overall efficiency of the upstream and downstream of the supply chain by combining the greenness of products, retail price, and consumer's sensitivity to price; finally, the numerical analysis verifies the reasonableness of the results and draws new conclusions. The study found that the level of greenness, retail price, and total supply chain profit are closely related to consumers’ environmental mindset, which increase as consumer environmental awareness increases but decrease as consumer's expectation of product greenness increases. The profit of each member of the supply chain and the total profit of the supply chain vary with the degree of fairness concerns of the manufacturer, and the strength of consumer environmental awareness also makes the retail price show different trends with the increases in the fairness concerns factor. It can also be found that the level of decision-making and performance of the supply chain members and the whole, as well as the influence of important parameters on the level of decision-making and performance, are different in each of the three models. In addition, cost-sharing contract can enhance cooperation between manufacturer and retailer, achieve Pareto improvement for supply chain members, and improve the operational performance of green businesses. In conclusion, this paper aims to achieve the parallel development of social, environmental, and economic aspects by studying the green supply chain considering the level of product greenness, consumer mentality, fairness concerns, and cost-sharing.