The environmental, economic, and social influences of government subsidies on express delivery packaging supply chain

Abstract

The rapid development of e-commerce and the prosperity of express delivery has brought great convenience to people's life. However, the environmental and social problems caused by express delivery packaging (EDP) have not been well understood yet. It has become an important issue to coordinate the economic, environmental, and social development goals of the government for the sustainable development of the EDP. This paper adopted the system dynamics (SD) method to simulate three subsystems in the express delivery packaging supply chain (EDPSC), i.e., the manufacturer subsystem, the consumer subsystem, and the recycler subsystem. Particularly, the impact of government subsidies on the EDPSC from three dimensions of economy, environment, and society was discussed in this paper. The results showed that (1) CO₂ emissions in the end-of-life stage of EDPSC account for about 83.9-91.8%, and incineration as the main carbon emission source of end-of-life reduce by 10-19% compared with no government subsidy. (2) The profit of recyclers is most affected by government subsidies, and incineration power generation is one of the main economic sources for recyclers. As the recycling rate of EDP increased from 2 to 32%, the income from incineration power generation decreased from about 25-40% to 15-25% of the total income. (3) The implementation of government subsidies is beneficial to improve social welfare, which has the biggest impact on consumers' surplus. (4) The comprehensive scenario subsidy is better than the single scenario subsidy, but it will bring a serious cost burden to the government. In the single scenario, the target of government subsidy depends on the level of government subsidy, which is subsidized to consumers at low and medium levels and recyclers at high levels. Therefore, our results can be used to help governments make decisions and also serve as a methodological reference for supply chains in other industries.

Keywords: Express delivery packaging; Government subsidy; Supply chain; System dynamics; Urban governance.