Collaborative Green Innovation of Livestock Product Three-Level Supply Chain Traceability System: A Value Co-Creation Perspective

To enhance the health and stability of livestock product supply chains, it is imperative to augment product sustainability and satisfy food safety requirements through collaborative green innovation. Digital traceability technology amalgamates information and resources from stakeholders in the supply chain, facilitating knowledge sharing and product tracking throughout the entire process to purify the supply chain environment. Augmenting communication and trust among supply chains paves the way for green innovation, thereby yielding value-added benefits. Consequently, this paper formulates a simulation model for manufacturers, retailers, and consumers—three pivotal stakeholders in the traceability process of livestock products—from a value co-creation standpoint. It also incorporates a contract penalty mechanism to probe the collaborative green innovation process among various entities involved in the livestock product supply chain. System simulation is employed to emulate the evolution path of collaborative green innovation in the livestock product supply chain under the value co-creation perspective. Subsequently, a stepwise penalty mechanism, green incentive mechanism, and fair distribution mechanism are proposed for stakeholders to actualize collaborative green innovation and value creation. The findings reveal that: (1) the collaborative green behavior between suppliers, retailers, and consumers is influenced by factors such as value co-creation excess returns, innovative technology costs like traceability, cost sharing among stakeholders, and a certain threshold of government penalties. (2) A balanced distribution of excess returns and cost-sharing among stakeholders fosters the evolution of a green collaborative state in the supply chain, thereby achieving sustainable development with value chain enhancement and ecological optimization.