Water Resources Allocation in Transboundary River Based on Asymmetric Nash–Harsanyi Leader–Follower Game Model

Transboundary river water resources allocation is important in water resources management. Conflicts often arise when different water users compete for a limited water supply. This study proposes a two-level asymmetric Nash–Harsanyi Leader–Follower game model to resolve conflicts of interest in transboundary river water resources allocation problems. In the proposed model, we use bankruptcy theory to derive disagreement points and determine the bargaining weights considering the principles of equity and efficiency. For comparison, a model that does not consider disagreement points and bargaining weights are also used to demonstrate the importance of disagreement points and bargaining weights. The proposed model is applied to a real case of the Huaihe River basin in China, which is facing water shortages. In the case study, the watershed management agency serves as the leader, three provinces (Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu) serve as followers, and successive linear programming is used to solve the model for followers. The results show that the proposed disagreement points can guarantee basic water demand, and the bargaining weights can better balance the economic development levels among followers.