Pricing strategy for O2O delivery supply chain with anti-food waste regulation

The rapid growth of Online-to-Offline (O2O) food delivery has exacerbated food waste, creating a challenge at the intersection of economic and environmental concerns. This paper examines how pricing strategies can balance merchant profit, consumer demand, and waste reduction under anti-food waste regulations. Using a game-theoretic model with a restaurant and a platform, we compare uniform and differentiated pricing under consumer appetite and value heterogeneity. Results show that regulations raise prices, especially online, and that their effect depends critically on regulatory stringency and consumer structure: a higher share of small appetite consumers lowers prices under lenient regulation but raises them under strict rules. Furthermore, while differentiated pricing often aligns supply chain interests under moderate regulation or high degree of differentiation in perceived value between the two types of consumers, platforms may prefer uniform pricing under high penalties. This paper provides a quantitative framework for O2O food waste analysis and suggests that effective mitigation requires context-aware regulation and adaptive pricing strategies.