Green Innovation Contracts for Carbon-Sensitive E-Commerce Supply Chains with Strategic Waiting Consumers
Main article
Abstract
Carbon-sensitive demand, delivery-time promises, and strategic waiting have become tightly connected in contemporary e-commerce supply chains. This paper develops a green innovation contract framework for a two-echelon e-commerce supply chain composed of a manufacturer and an online retailer serving consumers who value low-carbon fulfillment but may postpone purchases when they expect later price reductions or more reliable delivery windows. Unlike studies that treat green investment, retail pricing, and delivery-time control as separate operational choices, the proposed framework connects them through a contract portfolio that combines wholesale pricing, green innovation cost sharing, carbon-delivery performance incentives, and data-enabled monitoring. A stylized analytical model and a parameterized simulation study are used to compare four contract structures under heterogeneous consumer waiting behavior, carbon sensitivity, and delivery-time sensitivity. The results show that a simple wholesale contract systematically underinvests in carbon reduction when the retailer bears delivery-system costs but the manufacturer benefits from green demand expansion. A green innovation cost-sharing contract improves both parties' expected profit when carbon sensitivity is moderate to high and consumer patience is not excessive. A composite contract that links cost sharing to carbon labels and delivery reliability expands the mutual-gain region by reducing the retailer's exposure to early delivery investment risk. Sensitivity analysis further indicates that the contract works best when platform data can separate strategic waiting from true demand loss. The study contributes to green business innovation by translating carbon-aware fulfillment from a pricing problem into a coordination problem and by showing how digital monitoring, contract governance, and sustainability performance can be jointly designed.
