Evolutionary Game Analysis of Cross-Regional Coordinated Governance of Major Public Health Emergencies: The Example of the Spread of the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

Cross-regional governance of government often faces various problems, which often brings great loss to the society. The global outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) in early 2020 has not only caused serious economic and social losses to various countries but also put the current public health event governance system to a severe test. The cross-regional character and spillover effects of public health outbreak governance often make it difficult to coordinate cross-regional governance. In this context, this paper adopts a regional evolutionary game analysis framework and studies the cross-regional governance of public health emergencies by constructing a symmetric game of peripheral regions and an asymmetric game of core-peripheral regions. The marginal contribution of this paper is to attempt to construct a symmetric game model for peripheral regions and an asymmetric game model for core and peripheral regions using an evolutionary game approach to study the behavioral strategies of multiple regions in the governance of public health emergencies, and it is found that when the regional spillover effects and governance costs are small or the economic and social damages caused by public health emergencies are large, all regions will choose to conduct coordinated governance. Otherwise, there will be regions that choose to “free-ride.” This “free-rider” mentality has led to the failure in achieving good cross-regional collaborative governance of public health emergencies, resulting in a lack of efficiency in the overall governance of public health in society. However, when the spillover effect of regional governance exceeds a certain critical value, the result of the regional governance game is also the socially optimal result, when public health emergencies are effectively governed. At the same time, the relevant findings and analytical framework of this paper will provide a policy reference for the cross-regional governance of the current new crown epidemic.