Investigating cooperative strategies in low-carbon public–private partnership projects through evolutionary game
Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management
ISSN: 0969-9988
Article publication date: 17 October 2022
Issue publication date: 1 February 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Promoting low-carbon in the construction industry is important for achieving the overall low-carbon goals. Public–private partnership is very popular in public infrastructure projects. However, different perceptions of low-carbon and behaviors of public and private sectors can hinder the realization of low-carbon in these projects. In order to analyze the willingness of each stakeholder to cooperate towards low-carbon goals, an evolutionary game model is constructed.
Design/methodology/approach
An evolutionary game model that considers the opportunistic behavior of the participants is developed. The evolutionary stable strategies (ESSs) under different scenarios are examined, and the factors that influence the willingness to cooperate between the government and private investors are investigated.
Findings
The results illustrate that a well-designed system of profit distribution and subsidies can enhance collaboration. Excessive subsidies have negative impact on cooperation between the two sides, because these two sides can weaken income distribution and lead to the free-riding behavior of the government. Under the situation of two ESSs, there is also an optimal revenue distribution coefficient that maximizes the probability of cooperation. With the introduction of supervision and punishment mechanism, the opportunistic behavior of private investors is effectively constrained.
Originality/value
An evolutionary game model is developed to explore the cooperation between the public sector and the private sector in the field of low-carbon construction. Based on the analysis of the model, this paper summarizes the conditions and strategies that can enable the two sectors to cooperate.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the editors and referees very much for their valuable comments and suggestions. This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos: 72101055, 51978164, 72071096 and 71871113), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2021M690607), Social Science Fund of Jiangsu Province (No: 20GLC019) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No: 2242021R20026).
Citation
Zhu, J., Shi, Q., Zhang, C., Yuan, J., Li, Q. and Wang, X. (2024), "Investigating cooperative strategies in low-carbon public–private partnership projects through evolutionary game", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 31 No. 2, pp. 789-811. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-04-2022-0324
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2022, Emerald Publishing Limited