Implementation of industrial symbiosis under environmental tax policy

Abstract

Industrial symbiosis is an important practice to achieve economic and environmental advantage. This paper explores the implementation of industrial symbiosis under environmental tax policy. Specifically, we use a game-theoretic approach to analyze the interaction between the government and the manufacturers involved in industrial symbiosis in two supply chain structures: integrated structure and decentralized structure. We find that environmental tax is an effective tool to reduce the mismatch between waste supply and demand in the symbiotic supply chain. The government is inclined to set a more stringent environmental tax in the integrated supply chain, while the tax rate that triggers the full conversion of waste in decentralized scenario is larger than that in integrated scenario. The integration of the symbiotic supply chain may promote the utilization of waste and bring a higher social welfare and better environmental performance. The profit of supply chain in the integrated structure is not always higher than that in the decentralized structure. When the market potential of by-product is not large enough and the damage of waste is moderate, it is more profitable to implement industrial symbiosis in a decentralized supply chain.