Evolutionary Game Analysis of Governments’ and Enterprises’ Carbon-Emission Reduction

Abstract

With the increasingly serious problem of global climate change, many countries are positively promoting carbon-emission-reduction actions. In order to deeply explore the interaction between enterprises’ carbon-emission reduction and governments’ regulation, this paper builds evolutionary game models between governments and enterprises under the reward-and-punishment mechanism. The peer-incentive mechanism is introduced to incentivize enterprises to reduce carbon emissions and coordinate governments and enterprises. The evolutionary-stability strategies are obtained by solving the evolutionary game models. The stability of equilibrium points under different situations is theoretically and numerically studied. The results show that the existence of peer incentives makes enterprises more inclined to positively reduce carbon emissions and governments more inclined to positively regulate. A sufficiently large peer fund can always encourage enterprises to choose positive carbon-reduction emission strategies, while governments choose positive regulation strategies. Not only the increasing rewards and fines but also lowering regulatory costs will promote carbon-emission-reduction behaviors of enterprises. Peer incentives are more effective in promoting positive emission reduction of enterprises compared with rewards and punishments. This study can provide important guidance for governments to formulate regulatory strategies and for enterprises to formulate emission-reduction strategies.