RENT-SEEKING DECISIONS OF THE MAIN PARTICIPANTS IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS BASED ON EVOLUTIONARY-GAME AND SYSTEM DYNAMICS

The performance of a construction project can be severely harmed by its participants’ rent-seeking. In order to prevent such attempt, this research integrates the evolutionary game theory with system dynamics method to simulate the impact of the change of some factors that may cause/reduce rent-seeking. Based on the analysis of the behavioral characteristics and interactive relationships of the main participants (the owner, supervisor, and contractor), an evolutionary game model is constructed and simulated with the method of system dynamics based on the replication dynamic equation of the mixed strategy solution of the three-party static game model. By assigning the parameters of project scale, supervision likelihood, supervision success rate, supervision cost, and penalty intensity, the interaction mechanism of the participants on each factor is revealed through a case-based simulation. The results show that the impacts of these factors on participants’ rent-seeking decisions are significantly different. Furthermore, some management suggestions are provided to prevent rent-seeking for project owner according to the research conclusions. This research can help the project owners take proper measures to prevent rent-seeking of the supervisors and the contractors to improve the performances of the projects.

Could China Declare a “Coal Phase-Out”? An Evolutionary Game and Empirical Analysis Involving the Government, Enterprises, and the Public

There is a global move toward being “carbon neutral”. Reducing the use of coal to generate power has become an inevitable choice for many countries when transforming their energy structures. Many countries have proposed phasing out coal. China is a major energy producing and consuming country and intends to reach a carbon peak by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. China has repeatedly emphasized coal reduction, but has not explicitly proposed phasing out coal, due to the influence of local governments, coal-related enterprises, and the public. This paper explores whether China could declare a “coal phase-out”, and the possible reasons for doing so, by constructing an evolutionary game model with two correlations. MATLAB was used to simulate the model results to determine the effectiveness of the fractal results of the model, and the entropy method was used to calculate the development level of “coal phase-out” related indicators in China and Germany. The results show that: (1) The government can phase out coal only when coal-related enterprises and the public can benefit from reducing coal production and consumption. In addition, these benefits are needed to ensure stable economic and social development without affecting people’s daily lives; (2) The development level of relevant indicators of “coal retreat” in China is lower than that in Germany. Based on these results, it is concluded that it is difficult for China to announce a “coal phase-out” at present. Faced with this reality, China should improve the efficiency of coal use, install carbon capture and storage facilities, vigorously develop renewable energy and reduce the share of coal in the energy system.

Non-Hermitian topology in rock–paper–scissors games

Non-Hermitian topology is a recent hot topic in condensed matters. In this paper, we propose a novel platform drawing interdisciplinary attention: rock–paper–scissors (RPS) cycles described by the evolutionary game theory. Specifically, we demonstrate the emergence of an exceptional point and a skin effect by analyzing topological properties of their payoff matrix. Furthermore, we discover striking dynamical properties in an RPS chain: the directive propagation of the population density in the bulk and the enhancement of the population density only around the right edge. Our results open new avenues of the non-Hermitian topology and the evolutionary game theory.

Public Health Events Emergency Management Supervision Strategy Considering New Media and Citizen Participation

Public health events endanger the citizen health, economic development, social stability and national security seriously. Emergency management requires the joint participation of multiple parties. Therefore, we construct an evolutionary game model involving government department, pharmaceutical enterprises, citizens and new media, analyze the evolutionary stability, solve the stable equilibrium points using the Lyapunov first method and conduct the simulation analysis with Matlab 2020b. The results show that, firstly, the greater the probability of citizens making true evaluation, the more inclined the government department is to strictly implement the emergency management system, and when true evaluation causes the government department to bear more punishment, the probability that the government department doesn't strictly implement is smaller; secondly, when the probability of citizens making true evaluation decreases, new media are more inclined to report after verification, and when new media lose more pageview value or should be punished more for reporting without verification, the probability that they report without verification is smaller; thirdly, the greater the probability of citizens making false evaluation, the less enthusiasm of pharmaceutical enterprises to participate in emergency management, which indicates that false evaluation is detrimental to prompt pharmaceutical enterprises to participate; what's more, the greater the probability of new media reporting after verification, the greater the probability of pharmaceutical enterprises actively participating, which shows that new media's verification to citizens' evaluation is beneficial to emergency management. So, this paper provides suggestions for the emergency management and supervision.

Can Status Inequality Organize Cooperation in Multi-leader Systems? An Evolutionary Theory

Status hierarchies often emerge in small collective task groups. In these groups, clearly defined hierarchies facilitate and stabilize structured cooperative interactions among group members, supporting their evolutionary function in the real world. What the existing research in this field has failed to consider, however, is that cooperation matters in these hierarchies with clear status inequality, as well as in other more realistic, multiple-leader groups with less clear hierarchies. Multi-leadership is ubiquitous but, by definition, flattens status inequality and may, in turn, jeopardize its capacity to sustain cooperation. Leveraging the relationship between multi-leadership and cooperation, our evolutionary game model reveals that hierarchies, in general, promote cooperation in groups with multiple leaders, but these hierarchies only do that up to a point, after which multi-leadership backfires. Accordingly, the model provides not only a theoretical account for how multi-leadership coexists with cooperation but also the conditions under which the coexistence would break.

Evolutionary game analysis of environmental pollution control under the government regulation

This paper studied a tripartite evolutionary game of stakeholders in environmental pollution control. Most previous studies on this issue are limited to a focus on system dynamics with two-party game problems and lack a spatial analysis of strategy evolution. The parameters adopted are too few, and the influencing factors considered are too simple. The purpose of the paper is to introduce more parameters to study, which will have an important impact on the strategy choices of participants and the evolution path of the strategy over time. We construct a tripartite evolutionary game model of sewage enterprises, governments and the public. We establish a payment matrix and replicator equations as our method, and we also implement parameter simulations in MATLAB. In summary, we found that the reward and punishment mechanism plays an important role in environmental pollution control. Specifically: intensifying rewards and penalties will help encourage sewage enterprises to meet the discharge standard and the public to participate in pollution control action. However, increased rewards will reduce government's willingness to adopt incentive strategies; Government's reward for public's participation in the action must be greater than the increased cost of participation; Reducing the cost of sewage enterprise can also encourage them to implement standard emissions. The research presented in this paper further improves standard emissions and designs reasonable reward and punishment mechanism.