In addition to pursuing profits, more and more international enterprises are beginning to pay attention to environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR). How to effectively encourage enterprises to undertake more CSR and maintain the sustainable development of society has become an urgent task for managers and researchers. Under this background, this paper considers the recycling of used products for environmental sustainability and takes into account profit donation as a CSR investment. Aiming at the decision-making of single-cycle closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) with a dominant retailer when considering government subsidies and CSR investment, and based on the Stackelberg Game analysis technology, we formulate three distinct donation (CSR investment) models; the centralized system’s donation model, the manufacturer’s donation model, and the retailer’s donation model, and by doing system comparisons and numerical examples to analyze the impact of government subsidy and CSR investment on new product pricing and waste product recovery from the perspectives of government, environment and CLSC system. The results show that government subsidy is not only conducive to expanding market demand and increasing waste recycling rates, but also to improving CSR investment levels. Under the two decentralized decision-making models, regardless of whether the dominant retailer makes CSR investment, she can always get more channel profits than the manufacturer. From the view of environmental, economic, and social perspectives, the manufacturer makes CSR investment a better choice, and at this time the government has the best effect of implementing subsidy. Finally, based on the principle of cost sharing, a CSR cost sharing contract which can realize the coordination of CLSC is designed to solve the channel conflict and optimize the decision-making. Counterintuitively, the dominant retailer can gain more profits when it bears more cost in the CSR cost sharing contract.

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.

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The remanufacturing industry plays a significant role to improve the utilization of resources and contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development. E-commerce channel (e-channel) has become an important retail channel. The multi-period closed-loop supply chain network of electronic channels (E-CLSCN) is studied. Moreover, this study considers the influence of consumers’ preference for products and artificial intelligence push (AI-push) on network balance under the conditions of dynamic and static. The network consists of manufacturers, remanufacturers, and demand markets. Remanufacturers are responsible for collecting and remanufacturing. The multi-period E-CLSCN model is established through variational inequalities. The study finds that whether dynamic or static, consumers’ preference for new products (NP) has positively correlated with the profits of manufacturers and the whole E-CLSCN. Consumers’ preference for remanufacturer products (RP) has only positively correlated with the profits of remanufactures. In the aspect of AI-push, the manufacturers’ AI-push has positively correlated with the profits of the entire players of E-CLSCN, while the remanufacturers’ AI-push has only positively correlated with the profits of the remanufacturers. Also, considering the multi-period, the sensitivity of the demand markets for the investment of manufacturers’ and remanufacturers’ AI-push gradually reduces, and the marginal benefit of AI-push gradually decreases. Finally, this paper addresses interesting managerial insights from the perspective of government and enterprises. Under the dual objectives of environmental protection and economic interests of enterprises, this study provides a reference for governments and enterprises to develop relevant dynamic policies. Namely, the government formulates dynamic environmental protection measures, and enterprises formulate dynamic strategic plans and implement government policies. While promoting the management level of E-CLSCN, it effectively boosts the development of the remanufacturing industry and recycling sustainable economy.

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