Strategic resilience investment for a metaverse supply chain

Technological advances enable firms to operate virtually through the metaverse, yet data security risks threaten platform resilience. This study examines the resilience-cost trade-off in meta-verse supply chains using a risk-attitude-based decision model. Combining mean-variance theory and Stackelberg game analysis, we derive optimal pricing and resilience strategies, validated with Meta case data. We find that: (i) Consumer data security concerns and hacking probabilities suppress product demand through risk disutility, prompting supply chain adjustments in resilience investments and pricing strategies. (ii) Platform risk aversion simultaneously reduces both resilience investments and pricing levels, whereas firm risk aversion operates solely through price channels, with Pareto optimal equilibrium achievable under risk-neutral conditions. (iii) Incorporating digital asset losses enhances platform resilience investments and firm profit. Interestingly, platforms derive greater benefits from higher resilience cost coefficients and digital asset losses. Further analysis reveals that a threshold effect of consumer data security risk may impose an upper bound on platform resilience investments, while firm risk attitude and consumer trust jointly shape resilience strategies for incumbent platforms in dual-platform competitive environments. Our findings provide new insights on how to strategically enhance platform resilience, as well as guidance on how governments can better encourage the security of the metaverse.