Abstract: The supply and quality of fresh agricultural products are related to the national economy and people’s livelihood. Different from other products, the perishable nature of fresh products inevitably leads to the loss of quantity and quality in the circulation process, which has caused a lot of losses to enterprises for a long time. As an important means to maintain freshness and reduce loss, the cold chain has become an obstacle in the development process due to its high construction cost, which makes it difficult for many fresh produce supply enterprises to afford this expense. In order to solve the problem of capital constraints, in reality, companies can get out of the dilemma by means of financing, and different financing methods will produce different results. In order to determine the optimal financing method and profit of suppliers, this paper constructs a two-level fresh agricultural product supply chain model composed of suppliers and retailers to solve the problem of insufficient funds for the construction of suppliers’ cold chain. The two sides make decisions according to the Stackelberg game, and introduce the factors of suppliers’ fresh preservation level and freshness loss. Meanwhile, three financing modes such as retailer’s advance payment, bank loan financing and mixed financing of bank loan & equity are considered for suppliers, and the optimal decision and profit of supply chain members are obtained by using the optimization theory and method, and the best financing mode and applicable conditions for the cold chain construction of suppliers are also analyzed. Combined with official data from the People’s Bank of China and publicly available research data from scholars in the field, an arithmetic analysis is used to verify the effects of the retailer’s advance payment ratio, equity dividend ratio, relative benefit ratio, and product perishability on suppliers’ cold chain preservation decisions and profits, and the validity and accuracy of the research findings are confirmed. The study finds that in the case without financing, the initial capital will have an impact on the decision-making and profits of supply chain enterprises, and the higher the initial capital level, the better the cold chain preservation level and the improvement of supply chain enterprises’ profits, and the more attractive the cooperation of downstream retailers. Under the retailer’s advance payment mode, when the initial capital level is higher than a certain threshold, the supplier’s operation decision and the profit of supply chain members can reach the optimal level, which can effectively solve the dilemma of supplier’s capital constraint. Otherwise, the supplier cannot reach the optimal decision and profit, and still has not got rid of the dilemma of capital constraint. Suppliers’ investment in cold chain preservation will gradually increase with an increase in product perishability. When the advance payment ratio is low, the cold chain preservation level will be the best under the retailer’s advance payment, but when the advance payment ratio is high, the adoption of the mixed financing mode will be more conducive to the improvement of cold chain preservation level. The supplier’s financing strategy is affected by the retailer’s advance payment ratio, equity dividend ratio, relative profit ratio and product perishability. When the proportion of prepayment is low, the profit of retailers under advance payment will be always higher than that of other financing situations. Conversely, bank loans and mixed financing are more favorable; the bank loan approach will be more favorable when the relative benefit ratio is larger and the equity dividend ratio is higher. The research conclusions of this paper also give many inspirations to supply chain related enterprises. In order to improve the quality of fresh products and increase revenue, capital-constrained suppliers should first consider the retailer’s advance payment ratio, equity dividend ratio, relative profit ratio and product perishability, in combination with the amount of their initial capital when raising funds for cold chain preservation construction, so as to develop the optimal financing method. At the same time, the findings of the study can also provide theoretical basis for the cold chain construction of fresh produce enterprises, which can help promote the high-quality development of the supply side of fresh produce and further strengthen the construction of the “Vegetable Basket Project”. In the future, we can also consider the uncertainty of demand, so the research on this issue will be more meaningful, and we can further take into account the information asymmetry and enterprise risk preference to broaden the research on the intersection of supply chain finance and fresh agricultural products supply chain.

Key words: fresh agricultural products, financial constraints, cold chain preservation, supply chain financing

摘要： 在生鲜品流通过程中,冷链在保持产品新鲜度、降低损坏上发挥重要作用,但因其建设成本高昂,许多生鲜农产品供应企业难以承担。针对此情形,本文考虑资金约束供应商和零售商组成的生鲜农产品供应链,引入生鲜农产品保鲜水平和损耗等因素,分别在零售商提前支付、银行贷款、银行贷款与股权的混合融资等3种融资模式下,研究生鲜供应商冷链保鲜建设的最优融资策略问题,并用数值算例验证了模型的有效性和准确性。研究表明:在零售商提前支付模式下,只有初始资金高于某一阀值才能有效解决资金约束问题,产品易腐性越强,保鲜力度越大;当提前支付比例较低时,零售商提前支付下保鲜水平和获利始终高于其他融资情形,反之,银行贷款和混合融资更有利;当相对获益比例较大且股权分红比例较高时,银行贷款方式更有利。

关键词: 生鲜农产品, 资金约束, 冷链保鲜, 供应链融资