Abstract This paper studies retailers' environmental sourcing strategies in supply chains by taking into consideration environmental quality investment and consumers' environment awareness. We attempt to identify the equilibrium sourcing strategies in two scenarios: with and without supplier competition, respectively. We find that environmental sourcing always arises, and the suppliers' incentives are also in line with the retailers’ sourcing strategies in equilibrium. However, adding more environmental sourcing channels does not necessarily benefit consumers and the whole society. Interestingly, retailers have better incentives to select environmental sourcing channels when supplier competition is present. In fact, even without risk consideration, we show that retailers should diversify procurement by choosing different suppliers, which better promotes environmental sourcing and enhances consumer welfare, if the synergy effect is weak or environmental investment is sufficiently inefficient. We also examine the supplier-initiated sourcing strategies and find that the equilibrium strategies depend upon factors including the synergy effect and environmental investment efficiency.

中文翻译：

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供应链中的竞争性环境采购策略

摘要 本文综合考虑环境质量投资和消费者的环境意识，研究零售商在供应链中的环保采购策略。我们试图在两种情况下确定均衡采购策略：分别有和没有供应商竞争。我们发现环境采购总是会出现，并且供应商的激励也与零售商的采购策略保持均衡。然而，增加更多的环保采购渠道并不一定对消费者和整个社会都有好处。有趣的是，当存在供应商竞争时，零售商更有动力选择环保采购渠道。事实上，即使不考虑风险，我们表明零售商应该通过选择不同的供应商来实现多元化采购，如果协同效应较弱或环境投资足够低效，则可以更好地促进环境采购并提高消费者福利。我们还研究了供应商发起的采购策略，发现均衡策略取决于协同效应和环境投资效率等因素。