Evolutionary Game of Multi-Subjects in Live Streaming and Governance Strategies Based on Social Preference Theory during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Tinggui Chen,Guodong Cong,Guoping Li,Lijuan Peng,Jianjun Yang

doi:10.3390/math9212743

Tinggui Chen, Guodong Cong + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/math9212743

Copy DOI

Abstract

After the outbreak of the COVID-19, offline consumption has been significantly impacted. For the sake of safety, online consumption has become the most common manner, and this has generated e-commerce, which not only breaks the spatio-temporal or regional restrictions, but also conforms to the normal economic development needs for epidemic prevention and control. However, this new business model causes problems such as the shortage of post-sales service, false publicity, and uneven quality of live streaming anchors, seriously affecting the interests of consumers. Therefore, it is urgent to strengthen the management of the chaos of live streaming. This study focuses on exploring the problems and the behavioral strategies of stakeholders in the governance process. The paper obtained online user comments by python, and used topic clustering and subject extraction methods to dig out the problems and related multiple subjects in live streaming at first. Secondly, the theory of social preference was introduced to construct an evolutionary game model among multiple subjects, and how to guide the behavioral decision-making of multiple subjects to standardize and rationalize was studied, so as to control the problem of live streaming. Finally, simulation experiments were conducted and the results demonstrated that: (1) Compared with strengthening the reciprocal preference of the government, live streaming platforms, and consumers, changing the individual’s altruistic preference is more effective in controlling the chaos of live streaming; (2) weakening the platform’s altruistic preference for anchors is conducive to creating a good live streaming environment; and (3) changing consumers’ altruistic preference or reciprocal preference is less effective in promoting the governance of the live streaming environment.

Highlights

The above simulations respectively simulate the evolution strategies of the evolutionary equilibrium points (1,0), (1,1), (1,0,0) when the subject with social preferences and without social preferences, and the results show that: (1) When the evolutionary equilibrium strategy of government and the live streaming platform is, i.e., the evolutionary equilibrium point is (1,0), there are two situations that are conducive to the governance of the live streaming environment: 1) Strengthening government’s reciprocal preference when platform holds egoism preference
(1,1), strengthening government’s altruistic preference and weakening platform’s altruistic preference can be used to improve live streaming governance; (3) When the evolutionary equilibrium strategy of live streaming platform, anchor and consumer is, i.e., the evolutionary equilibrium point is (1,0,0), there are 4 situations that are conducive to governance of the live streaming environment: (1) Weakening platform’s altruistic preference and strengthening consumer’s altruistic preference can be used when anchor holds egoism preference
Improving the live streaming environment is mainly based on the participation of consumers in governance; consumers should participate in the guidance in a timely and effective manner, improve the undesirable phenomena of live streaming from the demand side, optimize the quality of products and content, and promote its standardized development; (2) strengthening anchor’s altruistic preference may be applied when consumer holds egoism preference

Summary

Introduction

At the end of 2019, sweeping most countries in the world, COVID-19 seriously affected people’s daily production and life. Targeted at epidemic prevention and control, it is necessary to reduce the original offline trading activities. A new format of the e-commerce live streaming was born. Live streaming can lower offline contact, avoid the spread of the virus, help resume work and production under the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, and meet the consumption and emotional needs of the public as well. The home-based live streaming meets people’s consumption needs under COVID-19, and becomes a new intermediary [1]. According to statistics from the Ministry of Commerce of China, there was more than 4 million times of live streaming nationwide in the first quarter of 2020

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion