Research On Multi-agent Co-governance Mechanism Of Food Safety Based On Evolutionary Game

Food is the first thing in life.Due to information asymmetry,enterprises have opportunistic behaviors,and Chinese food enterprises have a small scale,large number,high concentration,and low supervision difficulty,etc.,which make food safety incidents happen frequently.These food safety problems not only affect the health and life safety of consumers but also cause adverse social impact.How to ensure food safety has become an urgent issue that restricts the sound development of China's food industry,social harmony,and stability of the government's international image.Given this,this study firstly investigates the realistic dilemma of food safety governance in China through typical food safety incidents and analyzes the causes of food safety incidents in China.Secondly,through literature research,the stakeholders involved in food safety governance are systematically sorted out,and are defined according to the existing research results,and divided into three types of stakeholders.Then,an evolutionary game model is constructed from the three levels of “enterprise and enterprise”,“government and enterprise”,“government,enterprise,and social force” respectively,to analyze the evolutionary game equilibrium strategies of different stakeholders,Matlab software was used for numerical simulation.Finally,based on the above studies,the main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The decision of vertical cooperation of the enterprise supply chain is not only related to the input income of quality and safety but also related to the income obtained from free-riding.If the free-rider obtains a large profit,the node enterprises on the supply chain will reduce the probability of quality and safety investment.If a contract is signed between the supplier and the manufacturer to punish the enterprises with free-rider behavior,when the punishment intensity is greater than a certain threshold,both the supplier and the producer will invest in quality safety.When the punishment is relatively small,supply chain enterprises have opportunistic behaviors.(2)The horizontal cooperation behavior of the enterprise supply chain may eventually evolve into a stable strategy in which both parties choose cooperation,or into a stable strategy in which neither party cooperates.The final evolution path of the cooperative behavior of food enterprises is closely related to the change of payment matrix and some parameters of the game.The increase of enterprise supply chain horizontal cooperation income is beneficial to the improvement of enterprise cooperation willingness.The increase of cooperation cost,absorption and transformation ability,and knowledge level of each other will increase the difficulty of cooperation and reduce the willingness of both sides to cooperate.(3)Under the static subsidy and static punishment mechanism,safety products behaviors of producers and local governments' regulatory strategies fluctuate around a central point without a point of equilibrium and stability.Under the dynamic subsidy and static punishment mechanism,the system evolution process is a closed-loop with periodic motion.Under the static subsidy and dynamic punishment mechanism and dynamic subsidy and dynamic punishment,behaviors of producers and local governments' regulatory strategies tend to be a stable equilibrium point.The evolution equilibrium of both parties in the system is affected by the parameters such as the size of subsidy and punishment of government and so on.The results have certain enlightenment for local governments to formulate reasonable incentive strategies for subsidies and punishments.(4)In the case of collusion between government and enterprise,the intervention of the central government supervision department is needed.Only when the probability of the central government's participation in supervision is higher than a certain threshold,can it form a deterrent to food enterprises and promote food enterprises to improve food safety.Through the introduction of information mechanism,the game is optimized and the disclosure of food quality and safety information by third-party certification organizations.By introducing food safety certification,the information asymmetry between the two sides can be alleviated,which is conducive to giving full play to the role of market mechanism and making the whole system evolve into an ideal state.(5)Under certain conditions,the three-party game can evolve to an ideal state,that is to say,the government chooses supervision,enterprises provide safe food and consumers actively participate in supervision.Under different initial will combinations,the game results of the three parties are significantly different,and the initial intention of each subject will also affect the evolution path of the system and the final stable state.Factors such as the supervision cost of local government,penalty intensity,the quality input cost of food enterprises,and the hush money will affect the tripartite game equilibrium and the evolution path of the system.The results of this study have some implications for local governments to improve China's food safety governance policies.Based on the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions to ensure the food quality and safety in China from the aspects of transforming government functions,establishing scientific reward and punishment mechanism,promoting food safety certification mechanism,strengthening the construction of food safety traceability system,improving the food safety information disclosure system,guiding and encouraging social forces to participate in supervision.