Investment and subsidy strategy for low-carbon port operation with blockchain adoption

As governments attach importance to carbon neutrality, achieving carbon emission reductions in port operations through the use of subsidies and emerging technology has become a research hotspot. In this paper, we establish a three-stage Stackelberg game model to discuss stakeholders' strategies in a shipping supply chain consisting of the government, the port authority, and the shipping company. Low-carbon transportation preferences and the low-carbon trust of cargo owners in the port authority are included in our model. Four policy scenarios are created depending on whether the government adopts blockchain technology and two subsidy schemes, namely, a low-carbon technology subsidy scheme and a low-carbon quantity subsidy scheme, for ports. We find that i) the applicability of the two subsidy schemes varies with the low-carbon transportation preferences of cargo owners. ii) The low-carbon quantity scheme provides greater benefits to stakeholders compared to the low-carbon technology subsidy scheme. iii) A decrease in unit investment cost for port equipment upgrades leads to an increase in the total amount of subsidy. iv) The introduction of blockchain technology results in an increase in transportation demand, social welfare, and all stakeholders' profits. These findings enrich the theory of low-carbon port construction in the context of blockchain technology applications. They may also provide managerial insights into the government's low-carbon governance strategy and inform port authorities' low-carbon investment and pricing decisions.