Tripartite Evolutionary Game Analysis of Product Quality Supervision in Live-Streaming E-Commerce

Abstract

With the rapid development of information technology, live-streaming e-commerce has risen rapidly as a new business model. However, product quality problems that exist in the development of live-streaming e-commerce continue to emerge. The influence of strategic interactions between social media influencers, live-streaming e-commerce platforms, and consumers on product quality deserves to be studied. Therefore, this paper constructs a tripartite game model of “social media influencers–the live-streaming e-commerce platform–consumers” and analyzes the dynamic evolution process of the strategy selection among subjects and influencing factors by using evolutionary game theory. This study shows that products with high functional value are more likely to stimulate consumer rights protection behavior, prompting social media influencers to shift from lax to strict quality control. But when the emotional value is high, consumers are more inclined to give up on defending their rights, which leads to the maintenance of lax quality control, and the platform supervision will be weakened accordingly. Moreover, less quality differences motivate social media influencers to choose lax quality control. An increase in quality differences will promote a shift from an equilibrium strategy to strict quality control. However, if the penalty of the platforms is not strong enough, this strategic shift will not happen. In addition, a high percentage of platform commissions can encourage influencers to implement strict quality control, while platforms can maintain weak supervision. This study’s findings provide valuable guidance for understanding and managing product quality issues in live-streaming e-commerce. In the future, the government will be considered a new player in the game in studying the impact of its policies on product quality in live-streaming e-commerce.