Uncovering the optimal corporate social responsibility bearer in express packaging waste management system considering consumer surplus and echelon utilization.

The continued increase in e-commerce and online retailing made express packaging waste a major component of municipal waste, and its huge resource reuse potential makes it imperative to build closed-loop supply chains. Given the alternative options of remanufacturing and reuse in recycling operations, this research examines the closed-loop supply chain's dominant model and coordination contract with Corporate Social Responsibility policy (CSR) by integrating echelon utilization into the model. Then, a revenue-sharing coordination contract is developed. The results indicate that CSR contributes to lower prices, higher recycling rates, consumer surplus, and enterprise revenue. The appealing finding is that, in the decentralized model of CSR beard by logistics enterprises, the revenue of logistics enterprises and the extent of CSR have an inverted-U relationship with a threshold value of h = 0.0466. In addition, the logistics enterprises' revenue in this recycling model is lower than that without CSR input as h > 0.0901. The revenue-sharing contract dramatically increases operational efficiency to the point of a centralized model. Logistics enterprises' CSR is more compelling given retail, demand, consumer surplus, recycling rate, and revenue. This research provides guidance for logistics enterprises and manufacturers considering CSR and seeking profitable results.