Multi-agent Evolutionary Game Of Rumor-affected Supply Chain Under Demand Disruption

Rumors regarding public emergencies greatly impact consumers’ purchase intention,disrupt market demand,affect enterprises’ operating strategies,and eventually increase the risk of market chaos.Enterprises often make hoarding,malicious collusion and price gouging decisions under the demand disruption caused by rumour,which seriously disturbing the balance between supply and demand in the market,exacerbating market disruptions and undermining consumer rights.Thus,the government,as the regulator of the market,must play an effective role in this situation to restrain the enterprises pricing behavior and ensure the dynamic stability and sustainable operation of the market.However,the government often supervises the enterprises by the means of “sample survey”and “post-event accountability” with the limited resources,which greatly reduces its regulatory deterrent effect.Therefore,how to determine the pricing decision of enterprises under demand disruption and rumour,and formulate the targeted government supervision through the rational allocation of limited resources is a crucial issue to ensure stable and orderly prices.Based on evolutionary game theory,this thesis develops there evolutionary game models,i.e.between wholesalers and retailers,within wholesale enterprises and within retailers,to analyse the factors and the evolutionary path of price strategy under different government supervisions.Through mathematical and logical analysis,combined with numerical simulation experiments,this thesis gives the theoretical support for the pricing decision of enterprises and provides the reference basis for the supervision of government.The result shows that rumour is the main external factor to lead the enterprises to make reasonable pricing decision.However,the demand disruption encourages the enterprises to implement rational pricing.The profit and loss ratio of unreasonable pricing is a key internal factor to measures the rumour sensitivity of enterprise.In addition,the initial proportion of reasonable pricing determines the trend of future market evolution.Retailers and large enterprises,as the dominant players in the commodity distribution market,greatly impact commodity distribution prices.Therefore,the government should develop the regulatory warning strategy before rumour spreading,hierarchical supervision strategy during rumour spreading,and summary public announcement strategy after rumour spreading and demand disruption respectively,which could effectively restrain the enterprises pricing behaviour and regulate market supply and demand to ensure stable market development with the limited resources.