Intense media scrutiny and public backlash stimulate consumers to be conscientious about sustainability issues from the supply chain (SC) perspective. Accordingly, our focus in this article is on joint sustainability issues in a manufacturer–supplier relationship under a contract that possibly shares sustainability-related costs, when there exists a supplier's potentially deficient sustainability effort. We find that the manufacturer may prefer indirect (i.e., paying a higher component price to its supplier) rather than direct support (i.e., increasing subsidies for a supplier's sustainability expenditures) when consumers are sensitive to the supplier's sustainability. We further find that as consumers' sensitivity to the supplier's sustainability increases, an uncoordinated SC will gradually approach the coordinated SC. This occurs because the increased sensitivity encourages greater cooperation among SC members. Our findings will help establish a better understanding of the joint sustainability development issues in an SC.

中文翻译：

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供应链中的联合可持续发展

激烈的媒体审查和公众强烈反对促使消费者从供应链 (SC) 的角度认真对待可持续性问题。因此，我们在本文中的重点是在可能分担可持续性相关成本的合同下制造商-供应商关系中的共同可持续性问题，当供应商存在潜在的可持续性努力不足时。我们发现，当消费者对供应商的可持续性很敏感时，制造商可能更喜欢间接支持（即向其供应商支付更高的组件价格）而不是直接支持（即增加对供应商可持续性支出的补贴）。我们进一步发现，随着消费者对供应商可持续性的敏感性增加，不协调的供应链将逐渐接近协调的供应链。发生这种情况是因为敏感性的提高鼓励了标准委成员之间更大的合作。我们的发现将有助于更好地理解 SC 中的联合可持续发展问题。