Optimizing Timber Supply Chains: Exploring the Potential of Digital Collaboration

Digital intelligent supply chains strengthen industrial resilience and optimize economic efficiency in the timber industry. Information asymmetry and low collaboration efficiency remain key challenges across the timber supply chain. This study develops a three-party evolutionary game model examining digital collaboration between timber production and processing enterprises, finished product distribution and retail enterprises, and third-party service providers, introducing third-party service providers alongside traditional production and distribution enterprises. The model incorporates novel parameters including information sharing degree, value-added reliability gains, and free-riding coefficients to reflect real-world circumstances. Through equilibrium simulation and analysis, we identify four possible evolutionary states. The results demonstrate that successful digital collaboration in timber supply chains relies on three conditions: a high level of initial stakeholder involvement accelerates the formation of supply chain digital intelligent collaborative mechanisms, equitable benefit distribution maintains long-term cooperation, and integrated third-party services reduce implementation costs while improving information reliability. These findings provide a new perspective and reference for timber enterprises to implement digital transformation strategies.