How Can China Resolve the NIMBY Dilemma in a Network Society? Government and Society-Negotiated Decisions Based on Evolutionary Game Analysis

Abstract

Infrastructure, such as waste incineration infrastructure, is entangled in the “not in my back yard” (NIMBY) dilemma. Consequently, the closed public decision-making model has difficulty adapting to the increasingly strong public-participation needs. Thus, a new mode of negotiated decision making is urgently required. This paper focuses on the negotiation problem, considers the government and society as game players, builds an evolutionary game model of negotiated decisions based on the bounded rationality hypothesis, and simulates the process and results of the evolution of the players’ strategy. The study concludes that the stable state of system evolution depends on the initial state of the dual populations and the comparative relationship between changes in revenue and cost, and the sufficient and unnecessary condition for the government and society to both agree on the given strategy. Taking the waste incineration projects in Yuhang and Chaonan as examples, the negotiated decision-making practice of NIMBY facilities is analysed, and it is found that it takes less time for the system to reach equilibrium in the latter. Finally, optimisation strategies for decision making regarding NIMBY facilities are systematically proposed.