Subsidy or punishment: An analysis of evolutionary game on implementing shore-side electricity

Abstract

Shore-side electricity has been put forward to ease the pollution problem of ports. This paper considers a tripartite evolutionary game model among the government, one port company, and the other port company, and establishes the payoff matrix of the three parties. Through analyzing the replicated dynamic equations, we find that only when the government selects the passive supervision and both port companies implement SSE can make the environmental benefit reach the maximum. Meanwhile, the larger port company is more forward-looking, which speeds up the evolution to be equilibrium.

Introduction

As the primary way and means of international exchange and trade of goods, ports have become an essential transportation channel in the transportation and exchange between countries, among which the port economy has flourished under the background of the global economy (Xu et al., 2021b). However, the high energy consumption and high pollution from the increasing port production and trade volumes have made their environmental effects on the ocean and land increasingly prominent. The pollution from port operations will not only damage the natural and urban ecological balance but also adversely drive climate change. The emissions of SO₂, NO${}_{\mathrm{x}}$, PM 10, and PM 2.5 will also threaten human health (Hua et al., 2020, Chen et al., 2020a). Especially, as reducing greenhouse gas emissions becomes a top priority in the world with the emergence of global warming and environmental problems (Chen et al., 2018, Chen et al., 2020d). In China, severe pollution remains a significant concern because of its high frequency of occurrence, especially in megacities, where ships can contribute 20%–30% of the total PM 2.5 during ship-plume-influenced periods. Therefore, it is necessary to quantify the effects of shipping emissions on the air quality at local and regional scales (Lv et al., 2018).

At present, some effective measures have been put forward to ease the problem of ports and pollution. Smart ports strengthen technological innovation and application to apply new technologies in port production organizations, reduce environmental pollution, and achieve the goals of sustainable development of green ports (Chen et al., 2020b). Using low sulphury fuel can reduce carbon emissions from ships (Yang et al., 2017, Chen et al., 2020c). While at berth, the use of shore-side electricity as an alternative technique to generate electricity for ships reduces the emissions and improves the air quality (Radwan et al., 2019, Xie et al., 2021). Shore-side electricity (SSE) is an effective measure to reduce port emissions. Today, many countries and regions in the world have realized the deployment of shore power, and more and more countries and regions have been aware of the urgency of implementing shore power.

However, the high cost makes it difficult to implement SSE. Therefore, port enterprises do not actively implement SSE. The government should take measures to urge enterprises to achieve shore power coverage. In the future, SSE may play a role in reducing port vessel emissions, but there are some obstacles to introducing SSE in ports. We believe that a green maritime fund is needed to support decarbonization in the ports and shipping sectors. Thus, the primary purpose is to establish a single-population evolutionary game model of government, the port company ‘A’ and port company ‘B’, and to study the influences of the participants’ behavior on implementing SSE. In this case, the government, as a regulator, chooses either a non-incentive or incentive strategy. Port companies ‘A’ and ‘B’ have two choices: to implement SSE or not. In order to carry out the research objectives, we aim to answer the following questions:

(1) How to construct the payoff matrix of multiple stakeholders in the tripartite evolutionary game model? What is the determinant?

(2) How to calculate the equilibrium in the model? What is the corresponding evolutionary stabilization strategy? When can these strategies be implemented?

(3) What impact will the changing of parameters have on the evolution of the behavioral strategies of stakeholders?

In order to solve the aforementioned problems, we set up a tripartite evolutionary game model among government and port companies, establish the payoff matrix. This paper calculates the tripartite replicated dynamics equations and analyzes the stability evolution process. Finally, the influence of each parameter on the equilibrium is analyzed by numerical simulation.

The rest part of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews and sorts out the relevant literature. Section 3 establishes a tripartite evolutionary game model and analyzes the model. Section 4 carries out simulation analysis and sensitivity analysis of parameters. Finally, Section 5 concludes and provides future research.