The Impacts of Regulatory Approaches to Carbon Quotas on Third-Party Logistics Low-Carbon Financing Strategies and Emission Reduction Effects

Carbon emission reduction is an important issue for sustainable development. The logistics industry is a key area for carbon emission reduction. The modern logistics supply chain includes logistics parks (fourth-party logistics, 4PL) and small, medium and micro logistics enterprises settled in the parks (third-party logistics, 3PL). Facing the pressure of the need for sustainable development, 3PL enterprises need to invest a lot of money in green transformation. However, 3PL enterprises are subject to serious financial constraints. In order to break the capital constraints, 3PL enterprises can raise funds from banks or from 4PL financing. Under the carbon quota policy, the government can regulate the 4PL or the 3PL. Therefore, this paper uses the Stackelberg game model to build a green financing strategy model of small and medium-sized logistics enterprises considering different supervision methods under carbon quotas, explores the optimal emission reduction decision-making process of small and medium-sized logistics enterprises, and provides solutions to the financing problems of small and medium-sized logistics enterprises in realizing sustainable development. The study found that the decisions of enterprises under different governmental supervision methods are affected by carbon quotas, and the government’s supervision of 3PL is more conducive to carbon emission reduction; in this scenario, the 4PL financing strategy is more likely to be adopted compared with bank financing, because 4PL charge lower service fees, thus encouraging 3PL to increase their low-carbon investment. Finally, this paper puts forward two different carbon emission supervision methods and considers the green financing services of 4PL; this provides references for government supervision and the sustainable development strategies of logistics enterprises.