Elevating the corporate social responsibility level: A media supervision mechanism based on the Stackelberg-Evolutionary game model

Environmental taxes alone may not solve the social dilemma posed by the conflict between the myopic pursuit of profit and the cost of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Designing a reasonable supervision mechanism is crucial to correcting market failures. We develop a media supervision mechanism through a Stackelberg-Evolutionary game model to study the impact of media supervision on the evolutionary behavior of the manufacturer population. Assuming the media is leader, manufacturers’ demands are heterogeneous under different strategy profiles after the media determines the effort level of supervision. The best response of the manufacturer population is the evolutionarily stable strategy under supervision, where the percentage of CSR strategies is defined as CSR level. It is proved that the CSR level elevates with the increase of effort level. We analyze the existence and uniqueness of Stackelberg-Evolutionary equilibrium and a numerical algorithm to compute it. The results show that CSR level under Stackelberg-Evolutionary equilibrium is higher than that without supervision. Our research not only illustrates the effectiveness of media supervision in reducing environmental pollution but also provides suggestions for governments to formulate environmental policies and improve regulatory mechanisms.