Search Results (208)

Blockchain technology is increasingly adopted in supply chains to record product carbon footprints and environmental attributes on tamper-resistant ledgers. By improving the transparency and verifiability of emission-related information for governments, firms and consumers, blockchain reshapes the incentive effects of environmental taxes and subsidies that target emission abatement. This paper presents a government-manufacturer-consumer tripartite game model to analyze the abatement effects of tax and subsidy policies and their differences under heterogeneous consumer demand in a blockchain-driven framework. The results indicate that: (1) Both subsidy and tax policies can facilitate environmental improvement. When consumers’ green preference exceeds a specific threshold $X^{*}/\left(1+\gamma \right)$, the greenness of the tax policy is superior to that of the subsidy policy, and vice versa. (2) Under blockchain technology, tax and subsidy instruments differentially affect the profits of conventional and green manufacturers, shifting profits from high-emission sectors to green sectors. (3) The improvement of consumers’ environmental awareness can gradually reduce the implementation of the policy, urge enterprises to reduce emissions, and improve their profits. Nevertheless, the privacy concerns associated with blockchain technology present a significant obstacle to the effective implementation of carbon emission reduction strategies. Full article

Ensuring product quality and safety is fundamental to sustainable production and consumption. With the rapid advancement of digital technologies such as blockchain and big data, quality and safety traceability systems have become essential tools to enhance transparency, accountability, and governance efficiency across supply chains. The sustainable functioning of these systems, however, depends on the coordinated actions of multiple stakeholders—including governments, enterprises, consumers, and industry associations—making the study of technological and institutional interactions particularly significant. This paper extends evolutionary game theory to the context of technology-enabled sustainable governance by constructing a tripartite game model involving government regulators, traceability enterprises, and consumers from both technological and institutional perspectives. Unlike existing studies, which focused solely on government regulation, this research explicitly incorporates the role of industry associations in shaping stakeholder behavior and integrates consumer rights protection mechanisms as well as the adoption of emerging technologies such as blockchain into the model. Analytical derivations and MATLAB-based simulations reveal that strengthening reward–penalty mechanisms and improving digital maturity significantly enhance enterprises’ incentives for truthful information disclosure; consumers’ verification and reporting behaviors generate bottom-up pressure that encourages stricter governmental supervision; and active participation of industry associations helps share regulatory costs and stabilize cooperative equilibria. These findings suggest that combining technological innovation with institutional collaboration not only improves transparency and strengthens consumer trust but also reshapes the incentive structures underlying traceability governance. The study provides new insights into how multi-stakeholder coordination and technological adoption jointly foster transparent, credible, and resilient traceability systems, offering practical implications for advancing digital transformation and co-governance in sustainable supply chains. Full article

To promote the effective recycling of power batteries and solve the industry dilemma of “missing used batteries”, the deposit system and blockchain technology are regarded as important policy and technical tools. This paper constructs a power battery closed-loop supply chain composed of a battery manufacturer and an online platform, considering two power structures of platforms with and without pricing power, respectively. This study employs Stackelberg game theory, and through modeling and optimization analysis, the optimal pricing, blockchain investment level, and profit of the supply chain under different deposit collectors are explored. The results discuss the following: (1) whether the online platform maintaining the right to recover pricing fundamentally changes the incentive mechanism and efficiency level of the supply chain. When the platform holds the pricing power, its blockchain technology investment level and profit potential are significantly higher than that of its agent model. (2) Deposit as a different attribute of cost or income determines the different pricing logic of enterprises. (3) To maximize the application of innovative technologies such as blockchain in recycling systems, governments, manufacturers, and platforms should strive to promote the application of government–manufacturers deposits modes. Full article

The metaverse represents a transformative integration of virtual and physical worlds, offering unprecedented opportunities for social interaction, commerce, education, healthcare, and entertainment. Establishing trust in these expansive and decentralized environments remains a critical challenge. Blockchain technology, with its decentralized, secure, and immutable nature, is emerging as an essential pillar of trust and digital asset ownership within the metaverse. This paper provides an extensive review of blockchain-enabled trust and reputation frameworks specifically tailored to metaverse ecosystems. We present an in-depth analysis of existing blockchain solutions across diverse metaverse domains, including gaming, virtual real estate, healthcare, and education. Our core contributions include a comprehensive taxonomy that classifies current trust and reputation schemes by their underlying mechanisms, threat models addressed, and their architectural strategies. We provide a comparative benchmark analysis evaluating key performance metrics such as security robustness, scalability, user privacy, and cross-platform interoperability, revealing critical trade-offs inherent in current designs. Our analysis finds that score-based designs trade scalability for nuanced reputation representation, while SSI- and SBT-based approaches improve Sybil-resistance but introduce significant privacy governance challenges. Finally, we outline unresolved research challenges, including cross-platform reputation portability, privacy-preserving computation, real-time trust management, and standardized governance structures. Full article

This study advances the hypothesis that supply chain power structure is a critical contingency factor for realizing investment value from integrating blockchain and big data. We develop a game-theoretic model of a two-tier supply chain to analyze investment decisions. The model examines cost–benefit dynamics under supplier-led, manufacturer-led, and balanced power structures and proposes a coordination mechanism to align incentives. Results demonstrate that power structure determines pricing and profit distribution, allowing the dominant party to capture a larger benefit share. Furthermore, power structure systematically interacts with technological performance: profitability increases with customer heterogeneity satisfaction and demand enhancement but can be eroded by a high technology cost coefficient that triggers disproportionate investment. We identify a critical investment cost threshold for achieving Pareto improvement. Finally, the demand premium from enhanced transparency ensures economic viability even when adoption increases prices. These insights offer strategic frameworks for blockchain investment tailored to specific power distributions. Full article

Environmental information fraud, such as greenwashing, severely impedes the achievement of global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Blockchain technology, as an innovation tool with a sustainability orientation, offers new possibilities for improving the reliability of supply chain information oversight. However, its practical application mechanisms and policy value in green supply chain governance remain unclear. This study focuses on the greenwashing behavior of core enterprises and constructs an incomplete information game model to compare and analyze the inherent mechanisms of traditional regulation (TR) and blockchain-based digital supply chain regulation (DSCR). By simulating the strategic choices of enterprises between “genuine production” and “greenwashing” within a supply chain network, this research finds that when the quality of on-chain information reaches a certain threshold, the blockchain consensus mechanism can more accurately reveal corporate moral hazards, such as information manipulation, significantly reducing the incidence of greenwashing. As the number of enterprises participating in the blockchain network increases, the reliance on high-quality information in the DSCR model decreases, and regulatory efficiency is further enhanced through network effects. The findings provide theoretical support for designing regulatory strategies against greenwashing: Blockchain technology can build a trustworthy supply chain ecosystem through cross-enterprise data verification, directly supporting the SDG 12 goal of “Responsible Production.” Its decentralized nature helps optimize industrial infrastructure (SDG 9) and indirectly promotes climate action (SDG 13). This study suggests that regulatory agencies use policy tools such as “establishing on-chain information quality standards” and “incentivizing enterprises to join the blockchain network” to strengthen the practical application of the model, while also addressing implementation challenges such as data authenticity and digital infrastructure compatibility. Full article

The crisis of research integrity triggered by academic misconduct, such as scientific fraud and paper retractions, has emerged as a critical issue demanding urgent resolution within the academic community. Blockchain (BC), with its core features of distributed ledger, peer-to-peer transmission, consensus mechanisms, timestamps, and smart contracts, offers novel technical solutions for research institutions seeking efficient models of research credit supervision. By incorporating the psychological factors of risk perception among decision-makers and the dynamic evolution of behavioral decision-making, and drawing on prospect theory, this study has constructed an evolutionary game model involving researchers, scientific research institutions, and governmental entities to examine BC-enabled research credit supervision. This model analyzes the key determinants influencing scientific research institutions’ adoption of blockchain regulation (BC regulation), elucidates the behavioral characteristics and boundary conditions of research integrity among researchers under this new regulatory paradigm, and reveals the dynamic evolutionary trajectory of collaborative supervision between governments and scientific research institutions. The findings indicate the following: (1) Compared to traditional regulation, the BC regulation demonstrates superior regulatory effectiveness at equivalent levels of researcher integrity and misconduct costs, as well as under identical settings for reputational loss and penalties. (2) In addition to cost considerations and government subsidies, factors such as loss aversion coefficient, risk preference coefficient, and privacy breach losses are critical in influencing research institutions’ decisions to implement BC regulation. (3) The evolution of blockchain-empowered regulatory models encompasses three distinct evolutionary patterns. This study provides a theoretical foundation and a simulation case to optimize regulatory strategy formulation and resource allocation, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of research credit supervision. Full article

This study analyzes how blockchain technology can be interpreted through an economic perspective, viewing network nodes as rational agents whose strategic behavior affects the efficiency and sustainability of decentralized systems. Using a multi-player non-cooperative game with complete but imperfect information, we model validators’ decisions in voting-based consensus mechanisms and compare alternative incentive configurations through simulation results. The analysis shows how variations in reward schemes influence validators’ behavior and consensus reliability. Extending the framework to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), the study explores how blockchain-based incentives can enhance participation, accountability, and decentralized governance. The findings highlight that incentive design plays a decisive role in aligning individual motivations with collective goals, ensuring both network integrity and long-term sustainability. Overall, this study connects economic theory with blockchain governance, extending its relevance to business and organizational contexts beyond cryptocurrencies. Full article

Digital marketing has become a game-changer by combining cutting-edge technologies, insights into how customers behave, and applicability across industries to change how businesses plan and how they interact with customers. Digital marketing is a key part of being competitive, sustainable, and innovative in a world where more and more people are using the internet and social media. Even though this subject is important, the study of it is still scattered, which shows that there is a need to systematically map out its intellectual structure. This research utilizes a bibliometric and topic modeling methodology, analyzing 4722 publications sourced from the Scopus database, including the string “Digital Marketing”. The authors employed Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a method from Natural Language Processing, to discern latent study themes and Vosviewer 1.6.20 for bibliometric analysis. The results explore ten main thematic clusters, such as digital marketing and blockchain, applications in the health and food industries, higher education and skill enhancement, machine learning and analytics, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and sustainability, emerging trends and ethics, sales transformation, tourism and hospitality, digital media and audience perception, and consumer satisfaction through service quality. These clusters show that digital marketing is becoming more interdisciplinary and is becoming more connected to ethical and technological issues. The report finds that digital marketing research is changing quickly because of artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, immersive technology, and reflect it with a digital business environment. Future directions encompass the expansion of analyses to new economies, the implementation of advanced semantic models, and the navigation of ethical difficulties, thereby guaranteeing that digital marketing fosters both business progress and public welfare. Full article

Secure authentication in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) remains a fundamental challenge due to their dynamic topology, susceptibility to attacks, and scalability constraints in multi-hop communication. Existing approaches based on elliptic curve cryptography (ECC), blockchain, and fog computing have achieved partial success but suffer from latency, resource overhead, and limited adaptability, leaving a gap for lightweight and hardware-rooted trust models. To address this, we propose a multi-hop mutual authentication protocol leveraging Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs), which provide tamper-evident, device-specific responses for cryptographic key generation. Our design introduces a structured sequence of phases, including pre-deployment, registration, login, authentication, key establishment, and session maintenance, with optional multi-hop extension through relay vehicles. Unlike prior schemes, our protocol integrates fuzzy extractors for error tolerance, employs both inductive and game-based proofs for security guarantees, and maps BAN-logic reasoning to specific attack resistances, ensuring robustness against replay, impersonation, and man-in-the-middle attacks. The protocol achieves mutual trust between vehicles and RSUs while preserving anonymity via temporary identifiers and achieving forward secrecy through non-reused CRPs. Conceptual comparison with state-of-the-art PUF-based and non-PUF schemes highlights the potential for reduced latency, lower communication overhead, and improved scalability via cloud-assisted CRP lifecycle management, while pointing to the need for future empirical validation through simulation and prototyping. This work not only provides a secure and efficient solution for VANET authentication but also advances the field by offering the first integrated taxonomy-driven evaluation of PUF-enabled V2X protocols in multi-hop Wi-Fi environments. Full article

The proliferation of counterfeit products poses a substantial threat to numerous industries. Blockchain technology (BCT) offers an effective solution for product traceability, providing a means to combat counterfeiting. However, BCT can verify the authenticity of the information but cannot confirm the veracity of the product itself, a problem known as counterfeiting at the source. To our knowledge, this issue has yet to be studied. The security level of BCT traceability is used to indicate its ability to combat counterfeiting. We establish game-theoretical models to investigate BCT adoption strategies for a typically authentic firm and a premium firm to fight counterfeiting in a vertically differentiated competition. This study demonstrates that BCT reduces deceptive counterfeiters’ incentive to pool with the branded firm and mitigates the negative impact of asymmetric information on the prices, market share, and profits of authentic products in a monopoly. In instances where the proportion of counterfeits is substantial, premium products will lose market share, a phenomenon often referred to as “bad money driving out good money.” In a vertically differentiated competition, if the quality of the premium product is below a certain threshold, it is recommended that the premium firm be the first to adopt BCT, while the typically authentic firm should not follow (Scenario NB). That is, Scenario NB is a win-win situation for both firms in the competition. The premium firm that has adopted BCT can offer a “free ride” to the typically authentic firm. Full article

This study explores the impact of government subsidy on blockchain traceability leadership (manufacturer vs. retailer) in a technology-supported supply chain including a manufacturer, a retailer, and a technical service firm. Methodology: We built Stackelberg game models for different scenarios (non-blockchain, manufacturer/retailer-led blockchain, and subsidized blockchain) to derive equilibria. Results: First, blockchain adoption is not always optimal unless consumers exhibit low acceptance of non-blockchain products and construction costs are low. Second, a party (manufacturer/retailer) tends to lead blockchain construction if the technical service firm shares more of its costs than the other party. Finally, government subsidies benefit the manufacturer and the retailer, but the technical service firm does not always benefit from subsidies. With suitable rates and lower costs, the manufacturer or the retailer prefers to lead the construction, potentially creating a win–win scenario in the supply chain. Novelty: We quantified leadership-switching conditions via the technical service firm’s cost sharing and took its decision-making licensing fees into account, addressing gaps in multi-stakeholder blockchain adoption research. Full article

Blockchain technology has become a game changer in sectors like accounting and auditing. Its usage is still restricted due to a lack of insight into what drives people to adopt it for financial services like accounting and auditing. This research delves into the factors that influence the adoption of blockchain systems in accounting and auditing services by utilizing an enhanced edition of the Theory of Planned Behavior. In this study, alongside the previously established elements like Attitude, subjective norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control, self-perception and personal moral values are included to reflect how identity and ethics impact decision-making processes. Data were gathered via an online survey (N = 751) conducted on the Prolific platform, and the hypotheses were tested using Structural Equation Modeling. The hypotheses were examined through the Structural Equation Modeling method. The findings indicate that each of the five predictors plays a significant role in influencing Behavioral Intention, with personal moral values being the influential factor followed by subjective norm and Perceived Behavioral Control. Attitude plays an important role in shaping adoption choices and showcases the complexity involved in such decisions. As such, it is crucial to take into account ethical factors when encouraging the use of blockchain technology. This study adds to the existing knowledge of the Theory of Planned Behavior framework, offering insights for companies aiming to boost the implementation of blockchain systems in professional settings. Future research avenues and real-world implications are explored with an emphasis placed on developing targeted strategies that align technological adoption with personal values and organizational objectives. Full article

Environmental monitoring is the basis of environmental protection. China’s existing environmental monitoring system has been relatively perfect, but there are still data fraud and other illegal issues. Blockchain technology can well meet the requirements of environmental monitoring, but there are many obstacles in its adoption process, so this paper combines the characteristics of blockchain technology to integrate the two stakeholders of government and polluting enterprises into a unified model and introduces parameters related to smart contracts and corruption. The dynamic evolutionary game theory, combined with numerical simulation, is used to explore the behavioral decision-making characteristics and change rules of relevant stakeholders. The results show that there are stable conditions for the three strategies. Compared with the development cost of blockchain, the management cost of blockchain has a greater impact on the strategy choice of polluting enterprises because the income of polluting enterprises adopting blockchain technology can greatly affect the strategy choice of polluting enterprises, and there is a positive correlation between the income and the willingness of polluting enterprises to choose blockchain technology; only the construction cost of blockchain will cause fluctuations in the government’s strategy choice, and other factors will not have a greater impact on the government’s choice. This study provides a useful reference for promoting the adoption of blockchain technology in the field of environmental protection. Full article

The smart grid (SG) plays a seminal role in the modern energy landscape by integrating digital technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT), and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) to enable bidirectional energy flow, real-time monitoring, and enhanced operational efficiency. However, these advancements also introduce critical challenges related to data privacy, cybersecurity, and operational balance. This review critically evaluates SG systems, beginning with an analysis of data privacy vulnerabilities, including Man-in-the-Middle (MITM), Denial-of-Service (DoS), and replay attacks, as well as insider threats, exemplified by incidents such as the 2023 Hydro-Québec cyberattack and the 2024 blackout in Spain. The review further details the SG architecture and its key components, including smart meters (SMs), control centers (CCs), aggregators, smart appliances, and renewable energy sources (RESs), while emphasizing essential security requirements such as confidentiality, integrity, availability, secure storage, and scalability. Various privacy preservation techniques are discussed, including cryptographic tools like Homomorphic Encryption, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, and Secure Multiparty Computation, anonymization and aggregation methods such as differential privacy and k-Anonymity, as well as blockchain-based approaches and machine learning solutions. Additionally, the review examines pricing models and their resolution strategies, Demand–Supply Balance Programs (DSBPs) utilizing optimization, game-theoretic, and AI-based approaches, and energy storage systems (ESSs) encompassing lead–acid, lithium-ion, sodium-sulfur, and sodium-ion batteries, highlighting their respective advantages and limitations. By synthesizing these findings, the review identifies existing research gaps and provides guidance for future studies aimed at advancing secure, efficient, and sustainable smart grid implementations. Full article