This paper focuses on measures towards sustainable development of coal ports based on the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of the triple bottom line, and examines the integration and optimization roles of smart technologies on coal port sustainability in the era of the Internet of Things. By investigating the representative case of Huanghua Port, one of the largest coal transportation ports in China, this paper enables a better understanding of the coal port’s sustainable practices driven by smart technologies. This study provides measures on the intelligent renovation, coal dust pollution treatment, air pollution treatment and sewage treatment, the customer and employee satisfaction improvement, and community involvement as well as social reputation enhancement. The research investigates the effectiveness of measures on the coal port’s sustainability by examining changes in key performance indicators and further examines the integration and optimization roles of smart technologies. The findings show that the approach taken by the port can effectively promote the coal port’s sustainability. The intelligent operation control system linking the separate nodes in operation, the ecological intelligent control system integrating environmental protection functions, and the intelligent service platform linking supply chain members are interrelated and interact to achieve the continuous optimization of decisions towards coal port sustainability. This study offers managerial insights for the port operators and policymakers towards the sustainable and smart development of ports.

We study an emission-dependent dyadic fashion supply chain made up of a supplier and a manufacturer, both of which can reduce their own component/product emissions to serve the carbon-footprint sensitive consumers. With Carbon Tax regulation, we consider four scenarios resulting from two ways in form of adopting transfer price contract and/or introducing third-party emission-reduction service (TPERS) to enhance the efficiency of systematic emission reductions. We refine four models from these corresponding scenarios, which in turn constitute a decision-making framework composed of determining vertical incentives and choosing supply chain structures. By exploiting Stackelberg games in all models, we compare their emission reduction efficiencies and profitability for each pair of settings. Theoretic analysis and numerical studies show that adopting vertical transfer payment schemes can definitely benefit channel carbon footprint reduction and Pareto improvement of supply chain profitability, regardless of whether the emission-reduction service exists or not. However, whether introducing TPERS or not is heavily depending on systematic parameters when the transfer payment incentive is adopted there. We also provide insights on the sensitivity of carbon tax parameters with respect to the supply chain performance, overall carbon emission reduction, vertical incentive and TPERS adopting decision-makings.

With the maturity of mobile payments and internet technology, a new type of travel mode, shared bicycles, was brought out by China’s urban transport under the impetus of “the last mile” travel demand. Although convenient travel has been achieved by using shared bicycles, the resulting problems such as disorderly parking and the deposition of bicycles could severely influence urban traffic order and impede the sustainable development of shared bicycles. Based on the quasi-public goods property of shared bicycles, this article established a management system for the tripartite collaborative governance of disorderly bicycle parking by virtue of regulating the bicycle parking behavior of users, the promoting of multiple propaganda and macro-institutional controls of the government, and acquiring technique support of enterprise “entry settlement”. Furthermore, considering the influence on the governance effect of user conduct, a structural model for guiding users to regulate bicycle parking to guarantee the governance effect by adopting material incentive and spiritual motivation was established via the utilization of the theory of planned behavior and motivation theories, and multiple hypotheses were also proposed. In this article, users of shared bikes in Beijing, China were selected as the research objects, and a questionnaire survey was adopted as the empirical research method. In addition, the governance validity on disorderly parking of the collaborative governance model was tested via hierarchical regression analysis after the collection and analysis of the factors influencing bicycle parking behavior of users. The obtained results show that the tripartite collaborative governance model could enhance the regular parking consciousness of users and improve the governance effect of disorderly parking. The research conclusion of this article could provide feasible suggestions for the governance of bicycle disorderly parking and propel the sustainable development of shared bicycles.

With the development of ecological economics, energy-saving green energy chain management has been a wide concern of academia and industries. However, the relatively high cost of green investment makes manufacturers face the problem of financial constraints. On this basis, because the green level information of products is proprietary to manufacturers, manufacturers will lie about the green level of products in order to improve their profits out of the principle of profit maximization. As a result, banks cannot obtain the true green level of products, reducing the benefits of the green energy-efficient supply chain system and making the market of green products volatile. In view of this, blockchain technology is introduced in this paper to improve customer’s product green level sensitivity and obtain lower green credit interest rates from banks. In this paper, a green supply chain financing model based on blockchain technology was constructed under the condition of green information misreporting, and it is compared with the benchmark without blockchain technology. Research shows that the adoption of blockchain can achieve Pareto improvement of green supply chain members. In addition, manufacturers have an incentive to adopt blockchain if the cost of blockchain investment falls below a certain threshold, and consumer green sensitivity increases below that threshold. We compared the profits of green manufacturers with those of retailers and the total emissions of manufacturers. The results show that: (1) When the financing intensity exceeds a certain value, there is an optimal coverage of green financing to ensure that the profit target of manufacturers, the profit target of retailers and the emission reduction target are achieved simultaneously. (2) The adoption of blockchain can achieve Pareto improvement of green energy supply chain members. The actual data of green transformation of Jinyuan New Technology Company were cited. Through calculation, it was found that green transformation can reduce the emissions of enterprises. When the financing intensity is in a certain range, the profits of manufacturers and retailers can be maximized, and the emission reduction degree is the highest. Thus, the practicability and reliability of this model were proved. (3) Manufacturers have an incentive to adopt blockchain if the cost of blockchain investment falls below a certain threshold, and consumer green sensitivity increases below that threshold. The research results of this paper provide solutions for enterprises with limited funds for green transformation and provide a theoretical basis for the government to formulate emission reduction incentive mechanism.

In the era of the sharing economy, the rise of production capacity sharing has changed traditional manufacturing modes and broken the balance of original production systems. In addition to that environmental-friendly manufacturing enterprises are of great significance with regard to production capacity sharing and sustainable development of the ecology environment. To investigate the decision-making behaviors of the participants involved in low-carbon production capacity sharing, an evolutionary game model taking into account the platforms, manufacturing enterprises with idle production capacity, and those with demanding production capacity is constructed. Then, both evolutionary game theory and Lyapunov stability theorem are used to analyze the asymptotic stability of the equilibrium and evolutionary stability strategies of the system. Besides, the economic and managerial significance of the evolutionary stability strategy is given. Finally, the influence of low-carbon production capacity of enterprises on the stability of the dynamic system is discussed, such as the cost effect of low-carbon production capacity, the effect of transaction cost, and so on. Results indicate that they can provide theoretical reference for decision-making with respect to the platforms, manufacturing enterprises, and sustainable development of the dynamic system.