Evolutionary Game Analysis of Behavior Strategies of Multiple Stakeholders in an Elderly Care Service System

Abstract

As the aging of Chinese society continues to deepen, it is particularly important for the development of the national elderly care service industry to further strengthen the government’s supervision of private pension institutions and improve their management awareness of standardized operations. The strategic behaviors among the participants of senior care service regulation have not been well studied yet. In the process of senior care service regulation, there is a certain game association among three stakeholders, namely, government departments, private pension institutions, and the elderly. This paper firstly constructs an evolutionary game model including the above three subjects and analyzes the evolutionary path of strategic behaviors of each subject and the evolutionary stabilization strategy of the system. On this basis, the feasibility of the evolutionary stabilization strategy of the system is further verified through simulation experiments, and the effects of different initial conditions and key parameters on the evolutionary process and results are discussed. The research results show that (1) There are four ESSs in the pension service supervision system, and revenue is the decisive factor that affects the evolution of the stakeholders’ strategy. (2) The final evolution result of the system is not necessarily related to the initial strategy value of each agent, but the size of the initial strategy value will affect the rate of each agent’s evolution to a stable state. (3) The increase in the success rate of government regulation, subsidy coefficient and punishment coefficient, or the reduction in the cost of regulation and the fixed subsidy for the elderly can effectively promote the standardized operation of private pension institutions, but the large additional benefits will lead to their tendency to operate in violation of regulations. The research results can provide reference and a basis for government departments to formulate the regulation policy for elderly care institutions.