Impacts of Emergency Trust on Branders’ Corporate Social Responsibility Information Disclosure Decisions Under Emergency Context

Abstract

In emergency procurement, information asymmetry over suppliers’ CSR levels intertwines with governmental emergency-trust behavior, profoundly shaping branders’ CSR investment and signaling decisions. We construct a signaling game between government and brander: the brander privately observes the supplier’s true CSR type, while the government updates beliefs from CSR investment and wholesale price to set procurement price, exhibiting emergency trust toward high-CSR chains. Characterizing pooling, downward-distorted separating, and undistorted separating equilibria, and refining overlapping multiple equilibria via the LMSE criterion, we find that equilibrium strategies are driven by CSR supply uncertainty. Under low uncertainty, branders pool to conceal true types; at moderate levels, low-type branders distort CSR downward to deter imitation and separate; under high uncertainty, both types reach undistorted separating equilibria, where CSR investment becomes an effective signal for accurate identification. The emergency-trust coefficient positively incentivizes CSR investment, wholesale price, and governmental utility price, fostering a virtuous cycle enhancing emergency capacity. Information sharing significantly raises CSR investment and bilateral payoffs. Decisions under undistorted separating equilibria coincide exactly with those under information sharing, indicating that voluntary truthful disclosure eliminates signal costs and achieves win-win outcomes. This research offers theoretical foundations and managerial implications for CSR disclosure design and governmental procurement policy.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Systems, 2026 · DOI ↗