Blockchain adoption in a green supply chain: Considering information asymmetry of consumers’ privacy concern

Abstract

In this study, we consider a green supply chain (GSC) with one manufacturer producing green products and one retailer implementing the sales effort, and assume that blockchain adoption increases market demand while causing the consumers' privacy concern (CPC) and that the retailer privately knows the CPC level information. Subsequently, we conduct games in three scenarios: (i) no blockchain adoption (N), (ii) blockchain adoption and information symmetry (BS), and (iii) blockchain adoption and information asymmetry (BA). Then, we obtain the manufacturer's optimal contract schemes and the retailer's optimal sales-effort levels in the three scenarios. Further, we analyze the optimal preferences of GSC members for these three scenarios. The results show that: (i) supply disruption occurs in Scenario BA if the probability of the high CPC level is too low, otherwise, the retailer prefers Scenario BA the most; (ii) the manufacturer's optimal ex-ante expected profit in Scenario BA is always lower than that in Scenario BS; (iii) the manufacturer prefers Scenario BS or Scenario BA over Scenario N under specific conditions; and (vi) blockchain adoption can achieve the Pareto improvement of the GSC under specific conditions.