Scare Behavior Diffusion Model of Health Food Safety Based on Complex Network

Abstract

This study constructs a heterogeneous model of health food safety scare behavior diffusion through a complex network model by considering health food safety information transparency and health food consumers’ ability to process information. This study first analyzes the effects of network structure and heterogeneity of health food consumers on the health food safety scare behavior diffusion using network stochastic dominance theory. Subsequently, a computer mathematical simulation is performed to explore the characteristics and laws of the evolution of health food safety scare behavior diffusion. The following three major conclusions can be drawn from the results. First, increases in the health food safety information transparency, the health food consumers’ ability to process information, and the recovery rate of health food consumers can increase the threshold of the rate of health food safety scare behavior diffusion. The health food safety information transparency and the recovery rate of health food consumers show marginal incremental rising characteristics in relation to the rate of health food safety scare behavior diffusion, whereas the health food consumers’ ability to process information shows a marginal diminishing rising characteristic in relation to the rate of health food safety scare behavior diffusion. Second, increases in the health food safety information transparency, the health food consumers’ ability to process information, and the recovery rate of health food consumers can decrease the scale of the health food safety scare behavior diffusion. The health food safety information transparency shows a marginal diminishing decreasing characteristic in relation to the scale of the health food safety scare behavior diffusion, whereas the health food consumers’ ability to process information and the recovery rate of the health food consumers show marginal incremental decreasing characteristics in relation to the scale of the health food safety scare behavior diffusion. Finally, the network structure of health food consumers significantly affects the health food safety scare behavior diffusion. A high heterogeneity of the health food consumer network indicates a high threshold of the rate of health food safety scare behavior diffusion and low diffusion scale.