Plastic-Pollution Reduction and Bio-Resources Preservation Using Green-Packaging Game Coopetition

Abstract

In this paper, we deal with the renowned problem of plastic pollution caused by food consumption and its conservation. Specifically, we consider the producer/reseller decision problem of industrial organizations in conditions of perfect competition within small oligopoly clusters. Indeed, very often, one major sustainability problem is that the presence of direct competitors in the same market determines entrepreneurship choices which lower production costs and packaging costs at the expense of the environment and public health. For this purpose, in order to show economic scenarios in which the respect and preservation of the environment and natural resources are quantitatively compatible with profits and economic growth, we present a provisional coopetitive model of the strategic interaction of two food enterprises, in direct duopoly competition, through investments in sustainable-packaging technologies. The macroeconomic goal is to propose possible actions to reduce carbon footprints and the inflow of plastics to the marine environment, following the environmental targets established by the United Nations, also in the presence of direct perfect oligopolistic competition in the same market. From a microeconomic point of view, we assume the existence of two competitors selling a very similar type of food in the same market; therefore, within a competitive interaction, we adopt a classic “Cournot duopoly” core upon which we define a parametric game, namely, a coopetitive game, together with its possible dynamical scenarios and solutions. We should notice that beyond the parameter arising from the cooperation construct, we introduce a matrix of stochastic variables, which we can also consider as the state of the world. Moreover, we numerically examine one possible state of the world to exemplify our model proposal. We determine, analytically and graphically, the optimal investment in the cooperative strategy, the purely coopetitive solution and some super-cooperative solutions. The cooperative strategy represents the common investment chosen to acquire advanced green technologies for innovative packaging, while the fourth component of any solution in the strategy space represents the state of the world at the end of the coopetitive process in which, finally, we can see the profits and costs deriving from the adoption of the green technologies.