Pricing and green investment of technology-differentiated manufacturers under blockchain technology

Green products are gaining increasing interest from consumers, but they are often uncertain about the green attributes of products. Although blockchain technology has emerged as a transformative tool for enhancing product traceability and transparency, the adoption of blockchain technology exhibits pronounced heterogeneity among manufacturers with divergent technological capabilities. Additionally, consumers’ behavioral characteristics significantly influence whether manufacturers adopt blockchain technology. This paper segments consumers into blockchain-sensitive and blockchain-insensitive consumers, develops a duopoly game model of technology-differentiated manufacturers’ product pricing and green investment under blockchain technology, explores the conditions for different types of manufacturers to adopt blockchain, and examines how different adoption scenarios impact manufacturers’ decisions. Results show that: (i) Under different blockchain adoption modes, the proportion of blockchain-sensitive consumers or the reservation price discount rate has different impacts on manufacturers’ pricing and green investment decisions. (ii) The manufacturer adopting blockchain will increase the retail price, but whether increase green R&D levels depends on the unit information collection cost. (iii) The technologically advantaged manufacturer always adopts blockchain, while the technologically disadvantaged manufacturer tends to adopt blockchain only when the technological gap is small, and this tendency is inversely related to the unit information collection cost.