Agency selling or reselling? Impact of live streaming suppliers’ fairness concerns on supply chain decision-making

The rise of live streaming in agriculture has transformed sales models, but research on the corresponding strategies is still lacking. This paper constructs a dual-mode Stackelberg game model encompassing agency selling and reselling. Through equilibrium comparative analysis and numerical simulations, it explores the impact of the agricultural supplier's fairness concerns on sales model decisions within the supply chain. Our findings indicate that when the supplier maintains a moderate degree of fairness concerns and collaborates with the streamer of moderate influence, both supply chain members can achieve a win-win outcome under the agency model. Furthermore, excessively high fairness concerns can suppress the supplier's quality investment and the streamer's sales efforts, thereby impairing overall supply chain performance. Accordingly, this paper recommends that the agricultural supplier maintains a moderate level of fairness concerns, avoids blindly pursuing top-tier streamers, prioritizes collaboration with mid-tier streamers whose reach aligns with their product characteristics and cost structure, and adopts the agency model through contractual agreements to balance incentives and risks.