Quantitative Analysis of Diffusion of Public Opinion by the Modified Bass Model for the Dyeing Steamed Bread Incident in China

Abstract

The information diffusion of food safety incident is sometimes more serious than food safety incident itself, because this may lead to severe public opinion and affect purchase intention of individual consumer. Thus, it is very important to study the rule of information diffusion of food safety incident. In this work, a modified Bass diffusion (MBD) model including the role of government is proposed based on the characteristics of food safety information diffusion in China and its analytical solution is derived correspondingly. Such model is tested and validated by a specific case of food safety incident, that is, dyeing steamed bread incident happened in China. The results show that the present MBD model can effectively predict the diffusion of public opinion for food safety information and simultaneously the parameter analysis reveals that the government management to the quality and credibility of information is critical in improving the communication of food safety information.