Pricing, carbon emission reduction and recycling decisions in a closed-loop supply chain under uncertain environment

This paper studies the pricing and recycling decision problems in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) containing a manufacturer, a downstream retailer, and a third-party recycling center. The manufacturer is subjected to the cap-and-trade regulation and determines the wholesale price of products and carbon emission reduction rate. The retailer determines its resale price to meet customer demands. The third-party recycling center determines the collection rate of recycling and remanufacturing used products. The new product demands, total carbon emissions, and recovery of these products are characterized as uncertain variables due to lack of historical data or insufficient data collected for research. By constructing three decentralized game models, we explore the equilibrium solutions under the corresponding decision-making situation and the corresponding analytical solutions. Finally, numerical experiments are performed to show the total profit of supply chain members for each structure and some special insights are drawn.