Safety accidents are a major hazard to the community and impact sustainable development. Production safety, as the basic corporate social responsibility (CSR), is mostly overlooked by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China. The traditional safety management model of SMEs has some loopholes. Therefore, it is critical to explore other non-traditional and effective approaches. With the rapid development of the internet and the wide use of social media, the influence of public opinion on the production safety of SMEs has now become more and more powerful. However, the influence mechanism hasn’t been fully studied and understood. Based on grounded theory, this paper conducted an in-depth study on how SME behavior in production safety is influenced by public opinion. The study found that public opinion influences SME production safety through three channels: public awareness, media response, and government guidance. Public opinion influences the production safety of SMEs through intermediaries such as government supervision, the willingness of SMEs to produce safely, the behavior of employees to participate in safety management, and the self-disciplinary behavior of the industry. The impact of the willingness of SMEs to produce safely is affected by the resource guarantee ability of SMEs, therefore, the limited public opinion resources should be combined with the reality of SMEs through information exchange to promote the optimum game relationship between bodies, in order to make up for the lack of production safety resources capacity of SMEs. The conclusion of this study is crucial in understanding how to improve the production safety of SMEs by the means of public opinion to promote SMEs to engage in sustainability practices and reduce the occurrence of safety problems.

Although many studies have recently investigated how the product quality impacts on economic and environment performance under remanufacturing, all of them assume that remanufacturing operations are undertaken by the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or independent remanufacturers (IRs). However, many OEMs such as Lexmark, Canon, and Epson filed lawsuits with those IRs without licensing, but outsourced the remanufacturing operations to several contracted remanufacturers (CRs). We therefore extend the prior research to investigate the economic and environmental implications of OEMs’ strategic desired quality level choices under remanufacturing outsourcing. That is, we develop two models corresponding to two scenarios where OEMs (1) undertake remanufacturing in-house or (2) outsource it to a CR. Our results show that, to create a less intense cannibalization problem for new products sales, OEMs would be likely to choose a lower product quality when outsourcing remanufacturing to a CR. More importantly, from the economic perspective, we find that outsourcing remanufacturing to a CR hurts the OEM and the industry. However, from the environmental angle, our results reveal that there is a ratio threshold for environmental impact for different life cycle phases, above which remanufacturing in-house is definitely beneficial for OEM in economics and environment, but for the rest, outsourcing is equally or more environmental-friendly, despite cutting down the profit.

Production waste recovery has economic and environmental benefits but carbon quotas limit it. To avoid future high-cost recovery technologies, we present an example of Starkelberg model between a recycler and a manufacturer, focusing on recycling exhaust gases containing metal elements from production waste. From the perspective of a recycler, this paper outlines the process of waste recycling, processing, and sales, highlighting how the proportion of recovered waste gas directly or indirectly affects sales volume. The study shows that the impact of different factors on sales volume is bifurcated, with transaction factors affecting both ordinary and new products negatively, while technical aspects positively impact new products. Surprisingly, manufacturers and recyclers benefit, even if the reasons for selling ordinary and new products are different. In the end, the products of ordinary and new in the market are mutual constraints and mutual influence.

Although the current sampling inspection and quarantine efficiency, there are still prevention and control of security risks. Therefore, the existing process is reorganized and optimized, and a comprehensive quarantine strategy is proposed from a theoretical point of view. The results show safety and efficiency problems in the sampling inspection process. The full inspection before reorganization and optimization is also safer than the sampling inspection, but the time consumption will increase correspondingly. Besides, the process is difficult to judge the epidemic products accurately. Compared with the full inspection and sampling inspection after reorganization and optimization, the full inspection takes more time. However, compared with the full inspection and sampling inspection before optimization, it takes less time. It can be seen that the reorganized and optimized process can be safe and efficient in the quarantine part.

The market for remanufactured products made from marine plastic waste is expanding rapidly, but the recycling rate of this waste remains strikingly low. This disconnect forces conventional plastic recycling firms to make a consequential strategic choice: enter the marine plastic recycling supply segment by expanding to build market power or enter by competing as a specialized supplier. To examine this trade-off, this paper develops a two-period game-theoretic model that contrasts entry strategies and performance under monopolistic and competitive market structures. We derive and compare equilibrium pricing, quantities, and profits for the relevant supply chain participants in both settings and then characterize the conditions under which one entry mode dominates the other. The results indicate that neither the preferred entry strategy nor the profitability that follows is driven by a single parameter. Instead, outcomes are shaped by the joint effects of consumer tastes, remanufacturing costs, and the scale of capacity investment cost required for entry. When consumers show a stronger preference for conventional remanufactured products, a supplier pursuing monopolistic expansion can earn higher profits by offering a more flexible product portfolio. By contrast, when the cost of remanufacturing marine plastics and the associated capacity investment cost are relatively low, the environment favors a specialized, competitively oriented entry strategy. Profit allocation within the supply chain is also closely tied to remanufacturer costs: as these costs fall, suppliers are able to appropriate a larger share of total profits. Overall, the analysis provides a theoretical basis for entry decisions in the emerging marine plastic recycling industry and offers actionable guidance for firms facing different demand and cost conditions across market structures.