Study on Evolutionary Game of Rural E-Commerce Entrepreneurship Ecosystem with Governmental Participation

Abstract

Rural e-commerce has become an effective measure for rural economic development under the background of digital transformation. Governmental participation is an important driving force to encourage the formation of rural e-commerce entrepreneurial ecosystems. From the perspective of bounded rationality, this paper establishes a tripartite evolutionary game model of a rural e-commerce entrepreneurial ecosystem among e-commerce platform, entrepreneurs and government, and systematically analyzes the evolutionary stability of each participant’s strategic choice. The initial intention of the three parties and the coefficient of governmental reward and punishment are introduced into the model design. Through numerical simulation, the influence of different parameters on the strategic selection of the three parties and the evolution path are analyzed, further implying the complexity of the strategic selection process in the reality. The results show that subsidies for e-commerce platforms are more conducive to the evolution of entrepreneurs and e-commerce platforms in a positive direction than direct subsidies for entrepreneurs by the government. In the early stage of development of the rural e-commerce entrepreneurial ecosystem, the government behavior strategy evolved to be one of active participation. After the system matured, the government behavior turned toward the negative direction. Compared with governmental reward and punishment, the initial willingness of each subject has more significant influence on the evolution of the tripartite behavior strategy. Finally, this paper proposes some countermeasures and suggestions to optimize the game relationship among the main bodies in the rural e-commerce entrepreneurial ecosystem from the perspective of a government subsidy mode, effective government intervention and the promotion of the initial willingness of the three parties. The research ideas and conclusions of this paper are enlightening to the academic research and corporate practice related to rural e-commerce.