Information Disclosure Strategies of Live-Streaming E-Commerce Supply Chains in the AI Era: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

With the rapid development of live-streaming e-commerce and artificial intelligence, human and AI live-streaming have become two product information disclosure formats in online retail. From the perspective of product information disclosure, we develop a game-theoretic model of a live-streaming e-commerce supply chain comprising a brand owner and an e-commerce platform. We derive Stackelberg equilibria under the resale mode through backward induction, obtain the optimal retail price and information disclosure level under the agency mode through joint optimization, and then compare disclosure-format and sales-mode preferences. The results show that (1) AI live-streaming does not always achieve a higher information disclosure level. It leads to a higher disclosure level only when consumer trust in AI live-streaming disclosure is high, or when trust is moderate and sensitivity to the information disclosure level is low; otherwise, human live-streaming disclosure achieves a higher disclosure level. (2) Under the resale mode, the brand owner and the e-commerce platform have consistent preferences regarding disclosure formats. Both prefer AI live-streaming when consumer trust in AI disclosure is high, or when trust is low but sensitivity is also low, whereas both prefer human live-streaming when trust is low and sensitivity is high. Under the agency mode, their preferences diverge when consumer trust is low and sensitivity is moderate. (3) Regarding sales modes, the brand owner prefers the agency mode only when the commission rate and consumer sensitivity to information disclosure are both low; otherwise, it prefers the resale mode. These findings provide theoretical and managerial implications for disclosure-format selection and sales-mode decisions in live-streaming e-commerce.