In the context of the increasingly prominent trust crisis in the agricultural product supply chain, this paper constructs a two-level supply chain system consisting of agricultural cooperatives and live-streaming e-commerce platforms. By considering two scenarios of including or not including blockchain technology and combining three power structures of manufacturer-led, retailer-led, and centralized decision-making, this paper establishes six game models to systematically examine the equilibrium characteristics of traceability level, blockchain investment level, retail price, and the profits of supply chain members. The research results show that the degree of consumers' distrust will significantly weaken the overall profitability of the supply chain; the introduction of blockchain technology can not only effectively avoid trust losses but also serve as a strategic incentive measure to encourage supply chain members to jointly improve the product traceability level; the trust gain coefficient has a positive marginal promoting effect on all decision variables; and regardless of whether blockchain is introduced or not, the centralized decision-making model always performs better than the decentralized decision-making model in terms of performance. The findings provide theoretical support for digital supply chain management and contribute to the understanding of how blockchain-enabled traceability promotes information transparency, consumer trust, and long-term supply chain development.
Citation: Yueyang Gan, Xianrong Hu, Tonghua Yang, Fangbing Liu, Junke Qiu, Xiaoqing Huang. Evaluating the impact of blockchain adoption on equilibrium pricing in agri-product supply chain with heterogeneous power structures[J]. Journal of Industrial and Management Optimization, 2026, 22(10): 5417-5465. doi: 10.3934/jimo.2026186
In the context of the increasingly prominent trust crisis in the agricultural product supply chain, this paper constructs a two-level supply chain system consisting of agricultural cooperatives and live-streaming e-commerce platforms. By considering two scenarios of including or not including blockchain technology and combining three power structures of manufacturer-led, retailer-led, and centralized decision-making, this paper establishes six game models to systematically examine the equilibrium characteristics of traceability level, blockchain investment level, retail price, and the profits of supply chain members. The research results show that the degree of consumers' distrust will significantly weaken the overall profitability of the supply chain; the introduction of blockchain technology can not only effectively avoid trust losses but also serve as a strategic incentive measure to encourage supply chain members to jointly improve the product traceability level; the trust gain coefficient has a positive marginal promoting effect on all decision variables; and regardless of whether blockchain is introduced or not, the centralized decision-making model always performs better than the decentralized decision-making model in terms of performance. The findings provide theoretical support for digital supply chain management and contribute to the understanding of how blockchain-enabled traceability promotes information transparency, consumer trust, and long-term supply chain development.
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