To address collaborative decision-making challenges in the pharmaceutical logistics supply chain amid public health emergencies, this study integrates disappointment aversion, delay effects, and pharmaceutical value attenuation, constructing a three-echelon system. It adopts a “differential game-system dynamics (SD)” two-layer dynamic research method for in-depth synergy. The differential game model focuses on multi-agent dynamic strategic interactions, deriving time-series equilibrium solutions for the optimal effort levels, transportation efficiency, and profits under four decision modes (decentralized, government subsidy, cost-sharing, centralized) to clarify the dynamic impact laws of the core parameters. Compensating for its limitations in complex environmental coupling and practical variable integration, the SD model incorporates the patient consumption rate, inventory fluctuations, weather disturbances and other real factors to build a dynamic feedback system. It not only verifies the practical adaptability of the differential game equilibrium solutions but also reveals the evolutionary laws of supply chain performance and the amplified inter-mode performance differences under multi-factor superposition. This study finds that centralized decision-making performs the best in terms of transportation efficiency peaking, profit stability, and attenuation control. Pharmaceutical stability and enterprise effort levels positively drive benefits, while disappointment aversion and excessive delays exert inhibitory effects. Government subsidies need to be paired with collaborative mechanisms to avoid policy dependence. Management implications suggest that enterprises should prioritize the collaborative centralized-decision-making mode, establish risk-sharing and benefit-sharing mechanisms, precisely regulate key variables, and implement gradient subsidies with exit mechanisms to enhance the supply chain’s dynamic adaptability and achieve the triple optimization of “efficiency–profit–stability”.
Zhang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.