Abstract:

In recent years, the traffic accident rate of deliverymen on new retail platforms has been rising, which has aroused widespread concern in the society. Due to concerns about delivery delays and customer complaints, deliverymen often choose dangerous driving behaviors such as violating regulations and speeding during delivery. To avoid customers complaining about delivery delays, more and more platforms are actively establishing delay compensation mechanisms, which provides compensation to customers whenever delivery delay occurs. However, whether such compensation mechanism can effectively reduce consumer complaints, and, in turn, affect the delivery behavior of deliverymen and reduce traffic risks in their delivery is an important issue worth studying. This paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model consisting of platforms, deliverymen, and consumers. The platform determines whether to establish a delivery delay compensation mechanism for customers, the deliverymen determine the delivery behavior, and the customers determine whether to complain in the case of delay. It is found that the direct delay penalty on deliverymen is the most critical influencing factor in deliverymen’s strategies. When this penalty is sufficiently large, any strategic choice made by the platform or consumers cannot change the “deliverymen’s dilemma” where deliverymen generally evolve towards high risk delivery strategies. However, when the platform can have sufficient direct benefit from building compensation mechanism, and the platform and consumers generally have more empathy for deliverymen, the three-way evolution strategy equilibrium can achieve an ideal state: the platform builds an active compensation mechanism, deliverymen choose low-risk delivery mode, and consumers do not complain about delivery delay.

Key words: new retail platform, deliverymen’s dilemma, delivery traffic risk, overtime compensation, evolutionary game

摘要：

新零售行业中配送骑手的交通事故比率不断攀升引起了社会的广泛关注。骑手出于对配送超时和消费者投诉的担心，在配送途中选择超速违章，从而增加交通风险。为避免消费者对配送超时进行投诉，越来越多的平台企业主动建立超时补偿机制，即对配送超时为消费者提供补偿。该补偿机制能否有效减少消费者投诉，进而影响骑手的配送行为，降低其配送中的交通风险，是值得研究的重要问题。构建由新零售平台、骑手及消费者组成的三方演化博弈模型，其中，平台决定是否建立针对消费者的超时补偿机制，骑手在不同风险程度的配送行为之间进行选择，而消费者则决定在超时情况下是否进行投诉。研究发现：平台对于骑手超时的直接惩罚额度是影响骑手的策略中最关键的影响因素。当直接惩罚额度较大时，平台、消费者的任何策略选择都无法改变骑手普遍向高风险配送策略演化的“骑手困境”情况；当直接惩罚额度适中，建立超时补偿机制给平台企业带来的直接效用较大，且平台与消费者普遍对骑手更具有同理心时，三方演化策略均衡可以达到理想状态：平台建立主动补偿机制、骑手低风险配送、消费者对于订单超时选择不投诉。

关键词: 新零售平台, 骑手困境, 配送交通风险, 超时补偿, 演化博弈