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.
Food safety problem is given attention by governments and academics worldwide [
Food safety scare behavior refers to the anxiety of consumers in a situation of information asymmetry. The combining research on food safety and consumer behavior mainly focuses on consumer concerns about food safety [
At present, the epidemic model was proposed based on the complex network theory, which has been widely used in various fields [
The structure of this study is organized as follows. Section
Epidemic model is a classic virus propagation model and has been widely used in the study of social behavior diffusion [
Diffusion medium and diffusion path of food safety scare behavior.
The spread of food safety scare behavior diffusion has a similar epidemic mechanism under the effect of information transparency. However, the subjects of food safety supervision information are complex and diverse, and many interests in the process of transparency are driven. Accordingly, food safety scare behavior in the diffusion process is more complex compared with the spread of the virus. Therefore, using the epidemic model to analyze the diffusion mechanisms and the evolution characteristics of different information transparency of food safety scare behavior is scientific and feasible. Using this model can provide a reference for the control of food safety scare behavior diffusion. Table
Corresponding concept of food safety scare behavior diffusion.
Food safety scare behavior diffusion | Meaning |
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Diffusion source | Consumers’ food safety scare behavior |
Healthy consumers | Consumers are not affected by food safety scare behavior |
Infected consumers | Consumers influenced by diffusion source are affected by food safety scare behavior |
Immune consumers | Consumers who are not affected or have been affected by food safety scare behavior get rid of this behavior through adjustment |
Diffusion rate | Consumers affected food safety scare behavior in the proportion of healthy consumers |
Immunization rate | Consumers who are not affected by food safety scare behavior or those who have been affected and then got rid of this behavior through adjustment in the proportion of healthy consumers |
Market information is distorted after the outbreak of food safety incidents. When information transparency is low, consumers who have a low cognitive level, weak psychological quality, and poor information search ability cannot fully perceive and discriminate the real effect of food safety incidents and have an objective understanding of the food safety incidents, which lead to cognitive psychology and behavioral deviations [
The transition of consumers in the health state
Diffusion model of food safety scare behavior under the effect of information transparency.
To construct the network diffusion model of food safety scare behavior, we assume
Market information has a certain impact on individual behavior; thus, Gilpin and Ayala [
The Gilpin–Ayala information diffusion model states that if factors that affect the information transparency of food safety scare behavior diffusion, which includes government food safety supervision information transparency [
The Gilpin–Ayala information diffusion model is used with the effect of food safety scare behavior information transparency factors, which include media food safety supervision information transparency [
Based on mean field theory [
According to (
The average infected consumer density becomes
Given that
Given that
Therefore,
Thus, the basic reproduction number of food safety scare behavior diffusion under different information transparency is
Equation (
The node in the food safety scare behavior diffusion network represents the consumer in the food safety scare behavior diffusion. Two consumers are connected to the side. The algorithm is described as follows.
The above algorithm shows that the change rate of degree
Given that
When consumers enter the network at every similar period, the probability density of the selected time node
When
Equations (
Based on (
Equation (
Equation (
Numerical simulation analysis is the most effective way for testing without a large number of empirical validations of real-time dynamic data [
To describe the network topology characteristics of food safety scare behavior under the effect of information transparency with the different rates of information dissemination
Effect of information transparency on the network topology characteristics of food safety scare behavior diffusion: (a) the network topology characteristics of food safety scare behavior diffusion when the rates of information dissemination are
Figure
In order to better describe the influence of the speed of information dissemination, consumers’ attention to food safety accidents, the government food safety supervision information transparency, and media food safety supervision information transparency on network topology characteristics of food safety panic behavior diffusion, under the circumstance of
The sensitivity analysis about the influence of the speed of information dissemination, consumers’ attention to food safety accidents, and media food safety supervision information transparency on network topology characteristics of food safety panic behavior diffusion.
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The sensitivity analysis about the influence of the speed of information dissemination, consumers’ attention to food safety accidents, and the government food safety supervision information transparency on network topology characteristics of food safety panic behavior diffusion.
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Through the sensitivity analysis of Tables
The impact of evolution characteristics on food safety scare behavior diffusion is simulated (Figures
Effect of information transparency on the evolution characteristics of food safety scare behavior diffusion: (a) the effect of the rate of information dissemination
Effect of the interaction of information transparency factors on the evolution characteristics of food safety scare behavior: (a) the effect of the interaction between consumer concerns about food safety incidents
The diffusion probability of food safety scare behavior is shown in Figures
Figure
In order to better describe the influence of the speed of information dissemination, consumers’ attention to food safety accidents, the government food safety supervision information transparency, and media food safety supervision information transparency on evolution characteristics of food safety panic behavior diffusion, under the circumstance of
The sensitivity analysis about the influence of the speed of information dissemination, consumers’ attention to food safety accidents, and media food safety supervision information transparency on evolution characteristics of food safety panic behavior diffusion.
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Expectation | Variance | ||||||||
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0.1 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 0.7 | 0.8 | 0.09 | |||
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The sensitivity analysis about the influence of the speed of information dissemination, consumers’ attention to food safety accidents, and the government food safety supervision information transparency on evolution characteristics of food safety panic behavior diffusion.
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The sensitivity analysis of Tables
We construct the network diffusion model of food safety scare behavior, analyze the network topology characteristics of food safety scare behavior diffusion under the effect of information transparency in theory, and analyze the network topology characteristics and evolution characteristics of food safety scare behavior in numerical simulation under different information transparency by introducing information transparency. The theoretical deduction and numerical simulation reveal the following.
The present study analyzes the diffusion mechanisms, the network topology characteristics, and the evolution characteristics of the food safety scare behavior from the perspective of information transparency and enriches the research on food safety scare behavior diffusion. Furthermore, the conclusions of this study can provide a powerful theoretical reference for the government to control food safety scare behavior and maintain social stability. However, this study on consumers’ food safety scare behavior is from the individual perspectives, rather than from the community, which will be the focus of a follow-up study.
Tingqiang Chen and Lei Wang are co-first authors.
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 71501094 and 71173103), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China (no. BK20150961), the Key Project of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities of Jiangsu Province (2017ZDIXM074), the Outstanding Innovation Team of Philosophy and Social Science Research in Colleges and Universities of Jiangsu Province (2017ZSTD005), and the Qing Lan Project of Jiangsu.