Abstract: With the pandemic of COVID-19, a safe, effective, and economical vaccine is seen as the ultimate solution, which calls for the application of responsible innovation. Responsible innovation requires the joint participation of multiple stakeholders, and it is of great importance to promoting responsible innovation represented by the R&D of COVID-19 vaccine, through exploring the evolutionary game law of multiple stakeholders such as enterprises, consumers, and governments. By taking the R&D of COVID-19 vaccine as an example, an evolutionary game model of enterprises, consumers and the government in implementing responsible innovation behaviors is constructed through Jacobian Matrix and Replicated Dynamic Equation, and six numerical simulations as the cost analysis for enterprises implementing responsible innovation, the benefit analysis for enterprises implementing responsible innovation or not, the subsidy analysis for the government supporting enterprises’ responsible innovation, the subsidy analysis for the government supporting consumers’ responsible innovation, and the initial state analysis of different stakeholders are conducted by using MATLAB. The research finding are as follows, (1) in the process of responsible innovation, the final stable strategy of three stakeholders is that, enterprises implement responsible innovation, the public participate in responsible innovation, but the government weakly interferes (passively promotes) responsible innovation; (2) both the benefits and costs of enterprises and government subsidies affect the evolution results of enterprises and consumers, but has little effect on the decision-making of governments; and (3) the initial state of stakeholders has a significant impact on the convergence speed of the tripartite evolution. This study, by anchoring itself as exploring the dynamic mechanism of how multiple stakeholders interact with each other to jointly push the implementation of responsible innovation, has a good contribution to deepen the theory of responsible innovation through a quantitative analysis methodology, and can be referred by the policy makers, entrepreneurs and consumers in practice.

Key words: responsible innovation; evolutionary game; the R&D of COVID-19 vaccine