Promotion Strategy of Policy against Food Waste (PAFW): The Perspective on Evolutionary Game between Local Government and Large Supermarkets

The implementation of PAFW is an important way to reduce food waste. Discussing how to more successfully implement PAFW to reduce food waste is of great significance in achieving sustainable development. Different from the previous literature, this paper uses evolutionary game theory to establish a strategic interaction income matrix between local governments and large supermarkets and analyzes the strategic interaction between local governments and large supermarkets by copying dynamic equations, revealing the strategic choice between the two parties evolution process. A simulation-based approach is used to validate the theoretical results and analyze the influence of key parameters on the evolutionary trajectory. The study found the following: (1) to promote the system to an optimal evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), it is necessary to strengthen policy publicity, increase the willingness of large supermarkets to implement the PAFW, and increase the enthusiasm of the public or third-party organizations to monitor system; (2) stakeholders’ initial willingness will influence the evolutionary trajectory; and (3) it is important to strengthen the institutional development of local government regulators, improve the local government’s achievements, reduce the local government’s regulatory costs, improve policies to support large supermarkets’ implementation of the PAFW, and reduce the cost of implementing the PAFW for large supermarkets.