Mitigating Supply Uncertainty in Agricultural Supply Chains: A Trust-Based Punishment Mechanism to Reduce the Bullwhip Effect

This study addresses supply uncertainty in the transportation and production of agricultural products within e-commerce-driven supply chains by developing a stochastic supply chain framework. By embedding an endogenous trust-based punishment mechanism, we characterize the strategic interplay between relational governance and operational decisions. In the single-period setting, higher retailer trust leads to larger order quantities while reducing the supplier’s optimal supply effort. This occurs because increased trust lowers the minimum delivery commitment ratio, allowing the retailer to voluntarily share more supply risk in exchange for lower-cost products. This creates a mutually beneficial risk-sharing arrangement between the retailer and supplier. When extending the framework to a dual-channel setting with a reliable backup option, the retailer consistently leverages trust and risk-sharing to lower sourcing costs. Concurrently, fluctuations in trust prompt the retailer to strategically shift order allocations between channels based on the primary supplier’s maximum effort capacity. Multi-period analysis shows a positive relationship between trust and the supplier’s expected profit, with optimal maximum supply effort stabilizing under repeated cooperation. Numerical experiments demonstrate that dual-channel decentralized decision-making achieves bullwhip effect mitigation quantitatively comparable to the centralized benchmark, while also alleviating moral hazard issues and benefiting retailers. These results indicate that the proposed mechanism effectively curbs opportunistic behavior and promotes sustainable, mutually advantageous supply chain collaboration.