SIRS contagion model of food safety risk

Abstract

This paper introduces the SIRS contagion model of food safety risk considering the entry rate, the normal bankruptcy rate, the abnormal bankruptcy rate, and other correlated parameters of food enterprise. The influences of these correlated factors on the contagion of food safety risk is discussed and theoretically analyzed. Computer simulation was performed to measure the entry rate of food enterprises, the normal bankruptcy rate, the abnormal bankruptcy rate, the re‐violation rate, the recovery rate, and the connectivity of food enterprises. The study found that: (a) the inhibitory effect of the normal bankruptcy rate on food safety risk contagion is the most significant; (b) the abnormal bankruptcy rate and the recovery rate can also constrain food safety risk, but the re‐violation rate will scale up the food safety risk; (c) a negative correlation exists between the entry rate and the contagion threshold of food safety risk, and a positive correlation is observed between the entry rate and the contagion scale of food safety risk; (d) with the increasing number of food enterprises' business partners, the contagion scale of food safety risk will increase. Practical applications This study is significant in supervising and managing the food market because it analyzes the contagion mechanism and the influence factors of food safety risk in the food supply network. According to the research results, we could take corresponding effective actions which introduced in the research to control the contagion scale of food safety risk and to guard the safety of food market.

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

“…Therefore, food safety scare behavior is a typical diffusion problem, and similar mechanisms exist with the spread of infectious diseases. Moreover, the existing empirical study results confirm that improving food safety supervision information transparency can reduce the adverse effects caused by food safety incidents [20,21]. The present study, thus, uses the epidemic model for constructing the network diffusion model of food safety scare behavior under the effect of the information transparency, analyzes the diffusion mechanisms of different information transparency of food safety scare behavior, and provides a reference for the control of the adverse social impact of food safety scare behavior diffusion.…”

“…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 [20,21,40,41]. Then, this can make consumers confuse major food safety accidents with ordinary food events and make it easy to initiate consumers' general panic to food safety.…”

“…At present, the epidemic model was proposed based on the complex network theory, which has been widely used in various fields [12,[20][21][22][23]. Studies on the epidemic model have been extensively used in biological and ecological applications [24][25][26].…”

“…A diffusion medium is a carrier of the diffusion source, such as the Internet, mobile phones, TVs, and face-to-face communication between consumers. Food safety information spread by diffusion media is related to the health and life safety of consumers, and the transparency of food safety information affects consumers' confidence in food safety [20,21].…”

“…Relying only on the market economy mechanism hardly guarantees food safety owing to the public nature of food safety and food risk information asymmetry [19]. Therefore, in order to overcome the deficiency of adjusting food safety problem only depending on market economy mechanism, the government food safety supervision department, which is the main provider of food safety supervision information and the most important subject of food safety supervise, should unite media and other subjects of social supervision to achieve food safety supervision information transparency [20,21]. However, the research on the diffusion mechanisms and the evolution characteristics of food safety scare behavior are rare and not conducive to control and reduce the losses caused by food safety scare behavior diffusion.…”