In recent years there has been a growing trend of ecological collaboration between logistics platform operators and logistics service suppliers on platform empowerment. However, the information asymmetry and other related issues such as the low empowerment level and disorderly development of platforms are posing challenges to effective governance, resulting in an urgent need for the government to reform the governance of platforms. Industry associations, being more knowledgeable about platform operations, can play a vital role in providing the government with required information to improve governance. However, their roles are contingent upon the power space, the extent to which the government delegates public power to the industry association. In light of this, we study how to engage the industry association in platform governance by introducing a three-party evolutionary game model involving the government, platform operator, and industry association as three stakeholders. We identify two strategic profiles for the government and industry association to govern platforms at different levels of platform empowerment. When the level is high, the government does not conduct governance reform, and the industry association can achieve a steady state of "assisting in governance" under a large enough power space. When the level of platform empowerment is low, the government opts for governance reform, and the industry association should be given an appropriate power space and be subsidized to participate in platform governance. We provide analytical formulas to determine the optimal power space and the lower bound of subsidies for achieving ideal stable strategies.
Funding Agencies|Major Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China; [22ZD139]; [24VRC060]