Evolutionary Game Analysis of Chinese Food Quality considering Effort Levels

Abstract

Food safety accidents occur frequently, which has caused great harm to people's health. With the consideration that food quality requires the joint efforts of all members of the food supply chain and that quality-improving efforts for food have a positive external effect, we focus on the quality-improving effort level, which is very important for food quality and safety. This paper builds an evolutionary game model and employs the replicated dynamic equation to study evolutionarily stable strategies of suppliers and producers. Furthermore, simulation experiments are conducted to verify the modeling analyses and demonstrate the influences of game parameters. The research results show that the behavioral strategies are closely related to the factors such as the ratios of the input to the output, the cost of quality-improving efforts, the hitchhiking benefits, and the initial strategy. Only when the punishing dynamics of the government exceeds a certain value, both participants can choose the quality-improving effort strategy. Based on the results, this paper has provided some inspiration for policy-making of government institutions.