Incentives to Enhance Production Reliability against Disruption: Cost-Sharing vs. Penalty

Two kinds of incentive strategies, cost-sharing and penalty, are examined in dealing with production disruption, with consideration of production process reliability as an endogenous factor for a two-echelon supply chain. Based on the Stackelberg game framework, we derive the optimal decisions of supply chain partners and compare their expected profits with different strategies. Considering the uncertain demand and the retailer’s preference against the risk, we further analyze how the partners’ decisions and the retailer’s expected profit are influenced by the feature of loss aversion. From theoretical analysis and numerical experiments, we find that: (1) overall, a penalty strategy dominates that of cost-sharing for the retailer, whereas the reverse applies with respect to the manufacturer;(2) a penalty strategy may outperform a cost-sharing strategy for the whole supply chain, depending on demand;and (3) a reasonable aversion against risk can help the retailer to achieve a more robust result when a penalty strategy is adopted under volatile and unpredictable demand.

Insights into chemical composition, abatement mechanisms and regional transport of atmospheric pollutants in the Yangtze River Delta region, China during the COVID-19 outbreak control period.

To investigate chemical characteristics, abatement mechanisms and regional transport of atmospheric pollutants during the COVID-19 outbreak control period in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region, China, the measurements of air pollutants including fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on non-control period (NCP, 24 December 2019-23 January 2020) and control period (CP, 24 January-23 February 2020) were analyzed at the urban Pudong Supersite (PD) and the regional Dianshan Lake Supersite (DSL). Due to the stricter outbreak control, the levels of PM2.5 and VOCs, and the occurrence frequencies of haze-fog episodes decreased substantially from NCP to CP, with average reduction rates of 31.6%, 38.9% and 35.1% at PD, and 34.5%, 50.7% and 37.9% at DSL, respectively. The major source for PM2.5 was secondary sulfate & nitrate in both periods, and the emission control of primary sources such as coal burning and vehicle exhaust decreased the levels of precursors gas sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which highly contributed to the abatement of PM2.5 from NCP to CP. The higher levels of ozone at both PD and DSL on CP might be due to the weak nitrogen monoxide titration, low relative humidity and high visibility compared with NCP. Vehicle exhaust and fugitive emission from petrochemical industry were the major contributors of ambient VOCs and their decreasing activities mainly accounted for VOCs abatement. Moreover, the high frequency of haze-fog events was closely impacted by medium-scale regional transport within Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. Therefore, the decreasing regional transported air pollutants coincided with the emission control of local sources to cause the abatement of haze-fog events in YRD region on CP. This study could improve the understanding of the change of atmospheric pollutants during the outbreak control period, and provide scientific base for haze-fog pollution control in YRD region, China.