Environmental collaboration and blockchain technology adoption in green medical supply chain management during the COVID-19 pandemic

In recent years, the resource shortage and environmental degradation have made enterprises and governments increasingly aware of the importance of sustainable development. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has also increased the shortage of medical materials. Based on this, we investigate the tradeoff of the critical medical devices refurbishing strategies when blockchain is used in three different structures: manufacturer refurbishing, retailer refurbishing, and third-party refurbishing in the two-period refurbishing strategies. We find that the manufacturer always benefits from the adoption of blockchain technology strategy in the manufacturer refurbishing scenario. However, for the retailer in the second period, the retailer references the adoption of blockchain only if the willingness to pay is extremely high. Additionally, when the medical supply chain channel member chooses retailer refurbishing or third-party strategy, the manufacturer always likes to use blockchain technology. That's because it will help the information value spillover from the retailer to the manufacturer, which leads the manufacturer to get more profits and a lower profit for the retailer. However, in the retailer refurbishing or third-part strategy, the whole channel profits are higher than not adopting blockchain technology. Therefore, business managers can be based on our research to achieve profits Pareto-improving.