Manufacturer’s cooperation strategy of closed-loop supply chain considering corporate social responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a popular and important strategy for corporate operation and sustainable development. Meanwhile, many social or environmental incidents that occur in one enterprise could bring huge risk or disruption for the entire supply chain. This study discusses the manufacturer’s cooperation strategy of closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) composed of a dominant manufacturer with CSR behavior consciousness, a retailer with CSR investment, and a third-party recycler. In the CSR-CLSC, the manufacturer exhibits CSR behavior consciousness through considering stakeholders welfare, the retailer makes CSR investment through profit donation and the third-party recycler exhibits CSR activity through product recycling. And under the Stackelberg Game setting, we formulate four different decision-making models to investigate the interaction between manufacturer’s CSR behavior consciousness and retailer’s CSR investment, as well as their impact on the manufacturer’s cooperative strategy selection and CLSC operation. The results show that both the CSR behavior consciousness of manufacturer and CSR investment of retailer are conducive to reducing the wholesale price of new products, enhancing the recycling rate of waste products and improving the performance of CSR-CLSC members, and both of them have the function of mutual incentives. The vertical cooperation strategy of manufacturer is conducive to increasing the overall performance of CSR-CLSC, and compared with the cooperation with the third-party recycler, the manufacturer has stronger motivation to cooperate with the retailer, and it is also more beneficial to improving the CSR investment level, the waste product recycling rate, and the performance of CSR-CLSC members.