A mathematical model for optimizing the location of dry ports is developed. The objective is to minimize the sum of the transportation costs and the fixed facility opening/closing costs. Unlike previous research on this subject, the possibility of closing existing dry ports is investigated. The dry port location problem is formulated as an integer programming and it is shown that the CFLP is a special case of our problem. The proposed model is then applied to the port of Tianjin in China and the sensitivity analysis is performed to demonstrate the robustness of the model. Our model suggests that while Tianjin Port should open some new dry ports, it might be better off closing those existing dry ports without enough throughputs. Although all parameters estimated should be uncertain in reality, sensitivity analysis shows that the results returned by the model are quite stable.

With the rapid development of new energy vehicles (NEVs), the recycling and reuse of retired power batteries has attracted extensive attention from the society and scholars. In this paper, we establish a closed-loop supply chain model composed of the government, one power battery supplier and one NEV manufacturer. Based on game theory, considering whether the battery supplier encroaches on the power battery recycling channel, we study the optimal decisions of the government and supply chain members under different government subsidy policies (no subsidy, subsidy for the NEV manufacturer and subsidy for consumers) and their impact on profits and social welfare. The results show that, whether the battery supplier encroaches on the recycling channel or not, compared with the no subsidy policy, subsidy for the NEV manufacturer is more conducive to the improvement of enterprise profits and social welfare. In addition, whether the battery collection quantity is constrained by the NEV sales quantity, when the recycling channel cost is lower than a certain threshold, the encroachment is always beneficial to the battery supplier. When the recycling channel cost is within a certain threshold range, the encroachment will achieve a win–win situation; otherwise, win–lose. When the recycling channel cost is higher than a certain threshold, the encroachment behavior has no impact on the NEV manufacturer and the battery supplier. Finally, we investigate the impact of key parameters on the enterprise profits and social welfare through numerical experiments. We also find that the environmental awareness of consumers have significant impacts on social welfare.

Port operations in an uncertain environment and compete with nearby ports in a same region to incentive carriers. In this paper, we consider a game-theoretical model to analyze the co-opetition between two ports with capacity sharing. Three competitive game interactions are discussed, namely, benchmark model, passive sharing, and proactive sharing to maximize the payoff by determining optimal berth quantity and service price. The observations show that when faced with a strengthened rival with sufficient capacity, the optimal ports’ decision for the capacity sharing mode is determined by the tradeoff between the benefit that is gained from the sharing capacity and the losses that are caused by port competition. Moreover, our research comprehensively examines how the port operation cost and the difference between the potential capacity demand of two terminals affect ports’ optimal strategy selection and presents a broad set of decision outcomes, which provides new insights for port coopetition.

Due to the restriction of sulfur content in fuel oil in the Emission Control Areas (ECAs), ships passing through ECAs have to adopt low-sulfur fuel oil (LSFO), and government will provide appropriate subsidies to shipping companies using LSFO. However, due to the different bargaining power between ports and shipping companies, it is necessary to study how the governmental subsidies affect the carriers’ choices of using LSFO under different power structures. In this paper, a game model considering one terminal and two carriers is developed to study the equilibrium solutions of two carriers under different power structures (terminal-dominated game, carriers-dominated game, Nash game), and then we analyze the impacts of government subsidies on maritime supply chain. The results show that whether for terminal or carriers, being leader in the game can always bring them higher profits. With the increase of the government subsidy, the demand of the carrier using LSFO will increase while the demand of the carrier who doesn’t use LSFO will decrease. High government subsidy not only reduces the profits of carriers not using LSFO but also puts the carriers more likely into the prisoner’s dilemma. The total demands and social welfare are maximized under Nash game.

Purpose: The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of the information sharing of the dynamic demand on green technology innovation and profits in supply chain from a long-term perspective.Design/methodology/approach: The authors consider a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. The retailer has access to the information of dynamic demand of the green product, whereas the manufacturer invests in green technology innovation. Differential game theory is adopted to establish three models under three different scenarios, namely (1) decentralized decision without information sharing of dynamic demand (Model N-D), (2) decentralized decision with information sharing of dynamic demand (Model S-D) and (3) centralized decision with information sharing of dynamic demand (Model S-C).Findings: The optimal equilibrium results show that information sharing of dynamic demand can improve the green technology innovation level and increase the green technology stocks only in centralized supply chain. In the long term, the information sharing of dynamic demand can make the retailer more profitable. If the influence of green technology innovation on green technology stocks is great enough or the cost coefficient of green technology innovation is small enough, the manufacturer and decentralized supply chain can benefit from information sharing. In centralized supply chain, the value of demand information sharing is greater than that of decentralized supply chain.Originality/value: The authors used game theory to investigate demand information sharing and the green technology innovation in a supply chain. Specially, the demand information is dynamic, which is a variable that changes over time. Moreover, our research is based on a long-term perspective. Thus, differential game is adopted in this paper.