Transformations  in
Business & Economics

STUDY ON THE TRIPARTITE EVOLUTIONARY GAME OF ONLINE MEAL ORDERING DELIVERY SERVICE SUPERVISION⁵
Jinlong Chen, Qixia Huang, Jiayi Hu

ABSTRACT: With the rapid development of the online meal ordering industry in recent years, chaotic market phenomena, for example, food stealing and secrete female photo taking by deliverymen, occur frequently in the delivery service link, and seriously affect the healthy development of this industry. However, the existing research on how to supervise the online order delivery link effectively is scarce. To analyze the dynamic evolution and influence factors of strategies made by deliverymen, consumers, and online meal ordering platforms in different situations, the evolutionary game theory was introduced into this study. A tripartite evolutionary game model involving deliverymen, consumers, and online meal ordering platforms was constructed using Matlab for analysis and verification. Results demonstrate the following: 1) The rate of deliverymen’s inclination to compliance delivery accelerates with the increase in the reputation revenue from compliance delivery and the reputation losses induced by illegal delivery; this is also the case as online meal ordering platforms strengthen the fines on deliverymen for illegal delivery and increase the frequency of investigation and treatment with regard to illegal delivery under different supervision strategies. 2) The rate of consumers’ inclination to participation in co-governance accelerates with the increase in the positive psychological utility acquired by consumers’ participation in co-governance and the compensation given by online meal ordering platforms to consumers; as the cost of consumers’ participation in co-governance grows, the rate of consumers’ inclination to participation in co-governance decelerates. 3) With the increasing fine imposed by online meal ordering platforms on deliverymen for illegal delivery, the rate of online meal ordering platforms’ inclination to tightened supervision accelerates, whereas this rate decelerates with the increasing compensations provided by online meal ordering platforms to consumers. The conclusions of this study further enrich the theoretical results regarding the online order delivery link and provide remarkable management implications on standardizing the governance of this link.

KEYWORDS:  online meal ordering, delivery service, evolutionary game

JEL classification:  C62, C63, C71, C73, L81.

⁵Acknowledgments:  This study was supported by Social Science Foundation of Ningbo (Grant No. 2G2023-2-20).