Breaking the “exaggeration benefit” cycle: Evolutionary game and governance strategies for the live-streaming e-commerce ecosystem

In recent years, streamers’ exaggerated behavior in live-streaming e-commerce may not only cause losses to individual consumers’ rights and interests but also erode the foundation of market operation and development. It is urgent to break the “exaggeration benefit” cycle through collaborative governance. In this paper, we establish an evolutionary game model involving four parties, namely the government, platforms, streamers, and consumers, to investigate strategic decisions of each participant as the live-streaming ecosystem evolves. The results find that the strategies of the four parties are interdependent and jointly determine the direction of system evolution. When the cost of rule violation by streamers far exceeds their short-term benefits, the system will tend towards an ideal collaborative equilibrium. On the contrary, if the punishment is insufficient, even multi-party supervision will be difficult to curb violations. In addition, the governance system has the flexibility of responsibility substitution. When either the government or the platform neglects supervision owing to excessive regulatory costs, the other can form effective checks and balances by filling regulatory gaps, and the system can still sustain basic governance efficacy, but distinct patterns of responsibility allocation will emerge. Finally, the effectiveness of a single policy tool is limited, and a combination of dynamic economic penalties, reputation incentives, and supervision rewards is required. This combination is the most effective path to guide the system towards a collaborative evolutionary equilibrium and lower overall regulatory costs. This study yields meaningful implications for live-streaming ecosystem governance, helping stakeholders clarify their respective strategic choices and responsibilities.