Evolutionary game analysis of ecological rehabilitation between central and local governments: From the perspective of fiscal decentralization

Ecological environment is important, but degrades seriously, and the extensive mode of economic development can affect human well-being and sustainable development. It is highly significant to study the interaction mechanisms between the central and local governments because they are the main governing bodies of the ecological environment rehabilitation. Based on the background of fiscal decentralization, we constructed an evolutionary game model between the central and local governments, using the profit function to explore their behavioral characteristics as well as influencing factors. According to the replicator of dynamic equation, this study analyzes the behavior evolution laws of participants and uses the MATLAB simulation tools to analyze the evolutionarily stable strategies of the two groups and their convergence trend under different situations. Our results show that the central and local governments represent "economic men" to a certain extent. The stable equilibrium point depends on the net income of local government when they choice the strategy of "strictly implement", and the net income of central government when they choice the strategy of "strictly regulation". The key indicators include the implementation degree, costs, ecological and economic indicators′ weight coefficient of the local government′s ecological rehabilitation, as well as the central government′s regulatory supervision, costs, punishment, and other factors. The above analysis puts forward the countermeasures, such as fiscal decentralization during the innovation of the local performance evaluation mechanism, following comparative development advantages, and widening of the regulatory channels of the central and local governments to guide the improvement of the efficiency of ecological rehabilitation.