A Network Diffusion Model of Food Safety Scare Behavior considering Information Transparency

Abstract

This study constructs the network diffusion model of food safety scare behavior under the effect of information transparency and examines the network topology and evolution characteristics of food safety scare behavior in a numerical simulation. The main conclusions of this study are as follows. (1) Under the effect of information transparency, the network degree distribution of food safety scare behavior diffusion demonstrates the decreasing characteristics of diminishing margins. (2) Food safety scare behavior diffusion increases with the information dissemination rate and consumer concern about food safety incidents and shows the characteristics of monotone increasing. And with the increasing of the government food safety supervision information transparency and media food safety supervision information transparency, the whole is declining characteristic of diminishing marginal. In addition, the extinction of food safety scare behavior cannot be achieved gradually given a single regulation of government food safety supervision information transparency and media food safety supervision information transparency. (3) The interaction effects between improving government food safety supervision information transparency or media food safety supervision information transparency and declining consumer concerns about food safety incidents or information transmission rate can engender the suppression of food safety scare behavior diffusion.