Evolution Model of Health Food Safety Risk Based on Prospect Theory

The Early Warning Mechanism of Public Health Emergencies Through Whistleblowing: A Perspective Based on Considering the Uncertainty of Risk Perception

Purpose

During the early warning period of public health emergencies, the information released by whistleblowers on the risk posed by the given event can reduce uncertainty in the public's risk perception and help governments take timely actions to contain the large-scale dissemination of risk. The purpose of this study is to give full play to whistleblowers and draw attention to the risk events, forming a pluralistic model of the risk governance during the early warning period of public health emergencies.

Methods

We construct an evolutionary game model of the early warning of public health emergencies through whistleblowing that involves the government, whistleblowers, and the public, discussing the mechanism of interaction between these subjects under the uncertainty of risk perception. Furthermore, we use numerical simulations to analyze the influence of changes in the relevant parameters on the evolutionary trajectory of the subjects' behaviors.

Results

The results of the research are obtained by numerical simulation of the evolutionary game model. The results show that the public's cooperation with the government encourages the latter to take a positive guidance strategy. Increasing the reward for whistleblowers within an acceptable cost, strengthening the propaganda of the mechanism and the higher level of risk perception of the government and whistleblowers will promote whistleblowers' vocalization actively. When the government's reward for whistleblowers is lower, the whistleblowers choose negative vocalization with the improvement of the public's risk perception. If there is no mandatory guidance from the government at this point, the public is prone to passively cooperating with the government owing to a lack of risk-related information.

Conclusion

Establishing an early warning mechanism through whistleblowing is important for containing risk in the early warning period of public health emergencies. Building the whistleblowing mechanism in daily work can improve the effectiveness of the mechanism and enhance the public's risk perception better when the public health emergencies arise.

An evolutionary game analysis of supervision behavior in public-private partnership projects: Insights from prospect theory and mental accounting

Effective supervision is one of the important ways to ensure the smooth implementation of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects. To understand the characteristics of the decision-making behavior of the public and private sectors in the supervision of PPP projects and the influencing mechanisms of some factors, we combine prospect theory and mental accounting theory into the evolutionary game analysis. First, we use prospect theory to reflect the behavioral characteristics of game players when making decisions and classify the value function into a valence account and a cost account according to the mental accounting theory. Accordingly, we construct a payoff matrix based on prospect theory and mental accounting theory, and the system's equilibrium state is analyzed. Then, based on numerical simulations, the influence of different parameters on the behavior of the public and private sectors is analyzed, and management suggestions for practical reference are put forward based on the simulation results. The results show that the greater the perceived cost of active behavior for the public and private sectors, the less likely they will take active behavior. Secondly, there is insufficient incentive for the private sector to fulfill contracts when the penalties for its opportunistic behavior are minor. Thirdly, increasing the cost reference points and decreasing the valence reference points will promote the public and private sectors to adopt active behavior. Fourth, the public sector and the private sector are more inclined to take active behavior when they need to bear more significant risk losses. This study provides new ideas for the analysis of the game players' decision-making behaviors in the supervision of PPP projects and delivers a decision-making reference for reasonable supervision.

Research on the effectiveness of online food safety supervision under the existence of settled enterprises' myopic cognitive bias

Although the scale of China's online food industry grew rapidly in recent years, the risky operational practices of business were not adequately prohibited. Based on the repeated illegal behaviors of online food enterprises, this study constructs the intertemporal utility model of online food enterprises from the perspective of behavioral economics. It was discovered that the presence of cognitive biases with a short-term focus in online food businesses would result in dangerous food sales behavior. The myopic unsafe online food quantity deviation of businesses would decrease as the cognitive deviation coefficient and penalty factor of online food businesses increase. Due to the existence of myopic cognitive bias, it is difficult for online food businesses to perceive the difference between the discount factor in the short term and the long term during the decision-making process. Therefore, they will not choose to sell a significant quantity of dangerous food. However, during the sales behavior phase, food-settled enterprises would opt to offer more dangerous food due to myopic cognitive bias. According to the different behaviors of online food enterprises in different periods, this study provides some corresponding supervision strategies for government regulators in the near and far future. Even though government departments could act quickly to investigate and deal with food safety incidents that are less harmful, the long-term solutions to ensure continued online food safety and optimize the online business environment are to build comprehensive system of online food safety regulation, improve information disclosure of online food enterprises, and enhance the government online governance structures.

Dynamic reward and penalty strategies of green building construction incentive: an evolutionary game theory-based analysis

Green building incentives are widely adopted in the world to promote green building construction. However, the incentives from the government are usually predetermined, which cannot obtain a stable effect in green construction practice. To better promote green building construction, this paper studies dynamic government's reward and penalty evolution during the construction process. Based on the prospect theory, the decision of government reward and penalty is formulated as evolutionary game model under four different scenarios: static reward and static penalty, dynamic reward and static penalty, static reward and dynamic penalty, and dynamic reward and dynamic penalty. Through theoretical analysis, our results revealed that the dynamic reward and static penalty is the best strategy to promote green building construction. More specifically, if the intensity of subsidy and penalty increases, contractors tend to green construction; while the probability of active supervision by government is inversely proportional to subsidy and positively proportional to penalty. This study can provide a useful insight for the policy makers to formulate effective reward and penalty policy, thereby standardizing the behavior of contractors, and reducing the negative impact of the construction industry on the environment.

The Novel Use of PVP K30 as Templating Agent in Production of Porous Lactose

It is necessary to prepare porous lactose in order to improve the dissolution behavior of insoluble active ingredient. In this study, polyvinylpyrrolidone K30 (PVP K30) was firstly utilized as a templating agent with different use levels in preparing porous lactose. Then, the physical properties were profoundly characterized. Finally, the porous lactose was also employed as a health functional food/drug carrier to explore the effect on the dissolution behavior of curcumin. The results confirmed that (i) porous lactose was successfully prepared using PVP K30 as templating agent; (ii) PVP K30 significantly improved the yield of lactose in the spray drying; (iii) the improved powder properties of porous lactose were more conducive to the downstream operating process for the preparation of health functional food or drug; and (iv) the porous lactose significantly improved the dissolution behavior of curcumin. Therefore, the results obtained are beneficial to boosting the development of porous materials.

How Do Spillover Effects Influence the Food Safety Strategies of Companies? New Orientation of Regulations for Food Safety

The food safety strategies of companies are a key point in the reduction of food safety risks. In order to encourage the evolution of food safety strategies of companies from food fraud to safety investment, this study builds an evolutionary game model, taking large and small companies as participants, to reveal the dynamic process of spillover effects influencing the choice of food safety strategies of companies. The study shows that (1) the food safety strategies of companies change from safety investment to food fraud, along with the increasing opportunity costs of safety investment. (2) The costs structure of small companies mainly determines whether the industry reaches the equilibrium of safety investment, while the costs structure of large companies mainly determines whether the industry reaches the equilibrium of food fraud. (3) Both competition effects and contagion effects encourage companies to choose safety investment. The more obvious spillover effects of incidents on food safety are, the more likely it is that companies will choose safety investments. (4) Increasing the costs to companies for incidents on food safety and reducing the opportunity cost of safety investment motivates companies to choose safety investment. Consequently, a new orientation of regulations for food safety is formed: the government should allocate different regulatory resources to counteract food fraud behaviors or technologies with a different benefit, should increase the technical costs and costs incurred from committing acts of food fraud, and should expand spillover effects of incidents on food safety.