The role of consumer reviews in e-commerce platform credit supervision: A signaling game model based on complex network

Although fraudulent operations on e-commerce platforms have been repeatedly mentioned, neither its causes nor the complexity among merchants has been systematically established in the literature. Combined with a merchant complex network and game theory, we propose a signaling game model. The model highlights that the pooling equilibrium is why merchants transmit false signals. Imposing the penalty on dishonest merchants can shift to the separation equilibrium, an effective way to resolve the credit crisis. Meanwhile, we utilize consumer reviews to adjust the stability of the separation equilibrium and demonstrate the validity by numerical simulations. The results show that the enthusiasm and authenticity of reviews were complementary to penalty strategies. The moderate enthusiasm and influence of reviews, and high authenticity, are more conducive to the long-term development of the e-commerce platform. The findings of this study provide insight into platform credit supervision from the perspective of consumer reviews.