Multilevel Governments’ Decision-Making Process and Its Influencing Factors in Watershed Ecological Compensation

Abstract

Transboundary water pollution is a long-standing problem in China, although the Chinese government has been committed to the protection of water resources. Due to the different interests of multilevel governments and the regionalization of management, there is still no unified plan to solve the transboundary water pollution in China. Watershed ecological compensation as a holistic plan to deal with transboundary water pollution is being promoted currently. Taking the South-to-North Water Transfer Project' eastern route as an example, this paper firstly analyses stakeholders' strategies and establishes a tripartite game model based on evolutionary game theory. Secondly, by introducing Cobb Douglas production function creatively, the supervision level of the central government is refined into supervisory attitude and supervisory skills. Thirdly, the numerical simulation is used to analyze the sensitivity of influencing factors. The results show that: (1) whether the central government supervises the local governments mainly depends on the benefits of water environment improvement and supervision costs; (2) the initial negotiation plan of the stakeholders has a significant impact on their optimum strategies; (3) the fines imposed by the central government on the local governments have a small impact on the stable state of the system; (4) the higher the eco-compensation fee, the lower their likelihood of cooperation; (5) the central government's supervisory attitude and supervisory skills have significant effect on the sustainability of the optimum arrangement, even when willingness of upstream and downstream governments to cooperate is low; (6) the initial ecological benefits of downstream governments have no effect on the optimum strategy. Therefore, considering these insights is helpful to improve the watershed ecological compensation mechanism in order to solve transboundary water pollution and achieve the sustainability of water resources.

Simulating the Principal‐Agent Relationship between Enterprise Owners and Professional Managers Using Evolutionary Game Theory and System Dynamics

“…irdly, reduce the cost of cooperation. e probability of both sides choosing cooperation is inversely proportional to the costs of monitoring or making an effort [50]. erefore, enterprises should ensure the legitimate and transparency operation to reduce the costs of professional managers.…”

Strategies of Haze Risk Reduction Using the Tripartite Game Model

“…Yu and Chen [10] constructed a tripartite model of logistics of the enterprises, the government, and the consumers and analyzed the gradual stability of green innovation diffusion. In addition, the tripartite game has been studied in terms of energy conservation and environmental protection [11,12], carbon pollution reduction [13,14], ecological compensation [15,16], land expropriation [17], take-away waste recovery [18], and commodity quality [19] in combination with stakeholders, environmental supervision evolution strategy, and system dynamics [20,21].…”

Changes in Ecosystem Services Value and Establishment of Watershed Ecological Compensation Standards

“…As a system, watershed ecological compensation has been widely used in mainland China, such as the Xin’an River [29], SNWTP [30], the Chishui River [31], etc. Its purpose is to adjust the contradiction between water protection and economic development, to promote cooperation between upstream and downstream areas in order to protect the watershed environment, and to achieve sustainable development [32].…”

“…At present, watershed ecological compensation funds in mainland China come primarily from state revenue [36], and make it under great pressure. Now the Chinese government encourages the spontaneous implementation of watershed ecological compensation between upstream and downstream areas [30,37]. So, in order to promote the implementation of it, compensation standards and the allocation of funds have become core issues.…”