Coordination mechanism of integrative humanitarian-business partnership for relief supplies with the consideration of public engagement amidst the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic

Humanitarian-business partnership is regarded as an effective way to fulfill the tremendous demand of relief after major public health emergencies. However, the proliferation of unqualified products has become rampant due to the pursuit of excessive profits, especially in the absence of regulatory oversight of humanitarian organizations. Hence, this paper sheds light on the management of integrative partnership encompassing immoral business corporates and their choice for producing qualified products or counterfeits, which differs from recent studies focusing on philanthropic partnership. Further, given the awakening of self-governance consciousness, public is considered as an additional stakeholder to influence the coordinated patterns between humanitarian organizations and business corporations. To investigate the contents mentioned onwards, this paper employs an evolutionary game model to analyze coordination mechanisms regarding the strategies adopted by humanitarian organizations and business corporations in different situations, as well as the impact of public engagement on their initial strategies. Subsequently, Chinese cases involving the implementation of measures to combat the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) are examined to validate the effectiveness of the proposed model. Results indicate that: (a) without considering public engagement, there is a preference for providing low-quality relief due to the significantly heightened demand, and (b) during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public lacks bargaining power over business corporations and can only rely on official regulations to acquire high-quality products. Fortunately, as the pandemic eases, public engagement plays a critical role in curbing immoral behavior by the purchase of high-quality products.