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The secondary packaging and secondary transportation caused by products’ online return lead to a large amount of resource waste and environmental damage, which are not conducive to the green and sustainable development of enterprises. As consumers become more aware of environmental protection, their purchase and return behaviors will also change, prompting e-commerce platforms to adjust their return strategies. In this context, this paper aims to study the optimal return strategy that balances enterprises’ social benefits and environmental impact. The Stackelberg game models are constructed based on two behaviors: environmental protection publicity of e-commerce platforms and consumer return. The impacts of return strategies on the environment and the benefits of supply chain members are investigated. Results show that environmental protection publicity and return compensation can stimulate the expected sales volume. The optimal environmental protection publicity depends on the return rate. When the return rate is high, and the repurchase price is low, the optimal decision of the e-commerce platform is not to introduce return freight insurance so as to maintain its own benefits and reduce the environmental impact.
Zhang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.