An evolutionary game analysis of vehicle recall supervision considering the impact of public opinion

Abstract

Government supervision on vehicle recall has become a social focus in recent years with the rapid development of the automobile industry and the growing impact of public opinion in the recall process. Motivated by this, we apply the evolutionary game approach to study the interaction between the automakers and the governments in their vehicle recall and supervision behaviors under the impact of public opinion. The equilibrium outcomes when public opinion exists or not are analyzed. We find that the governments may choose weak or strong supervision under no supervision of public opinion, but the automakers always choose hiding vehicle defects in stable states; and the players’ optimal strategies may exhibit periodic fluctuations over time. Under public opinion supervision, the automakers may choose voluntary recall regardless of whether the governments choose strong or weak supervision. With a high public opinion supervision and low penalty for hiding defects, the governments may choose strong supervision even with sufficiently high supervision cost. Furthermore, although the players’ behaviors may also exhibit periodic fluctuations given a certain level of public opinion, the system will converge to the desired stable states under which voluntary recall is optimal for the automakers as public opinion increases. Our study highlights the role of public opinion in the players’ product recall and supervision behaviors.