低碳经济下地方政府和旅游企业的演化博弈

Evolutionary Game Theory between Local Government and Tourism Enterprises in the Context of a Low-carbon Economy

全球气候变化及其对旅游业的潜在重大影响已成为世界范围的迫切问题,低碳旅游近年来受到国内外学者的广泛关注。政府部门和旅游企业被公认为是低碳旅游发展的重要责任主体,文章选取这两个利益相关者,研究双方在低碳发展决策中的演化博弈,以期通过较为精确的数学模型验证政企互动下低碳旅游激励政策的有效性,并从动态的角度探讨这两个群体的演化稳定策略,剖析其发展路径与影响因素,为低碳监督策略提供一定的参考。研究结果显示:两个博弈主体的策略选择依赖于初始状态及其演化路径,地方政府和旅游企业只有基于长远利益进行决策才能获得更高的收益;可通过动态调节碳排放奖惩力度,降低旅游企业低碳转型成本,调整碳排放行业标准等措施引导地方政府与旅游企业共同促进低碳旅游发展的和谐均衡状况。

Climate change is an important environmental and economic challenge facing human beings. Its potentially significant effect on tourism, which is one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors worldwide, has become a pressing issue. There has been a vigorous academic debate on the relationship between tourism and climate change in the last few years. The concept of Low-Carbon Tourism was put forward in the report ＂Towards a Low Carbon Travel and Tourism Sector＂ presented to the World Economic Forum at the Copenhagen Conference in May 2009. Consequently, international and domestic researchers started to carry out extensive investigations in this field. As a result of these studies, they acknowledged that government agencies and tourism enterprises are key agents in the development of low-carbon tourism. A review of literature shows, however, that the application of game theory to low-carbon decision analyses of tourism stakeholders is very limited. Evolutionary game theory provides a powerful framework for studying complex decision-making relationship between two groups. Hence, an evolutionary game model of these two stakeholders is established to dynamically study their strategies relating to low-carbon emissions. The incentive system promoted by the interaction between local government and tourism enterprises can be described by a precise mathematical model relating carbon dioxide emission standards to their corresponding rewards and penalties, and validating its effectiveness and analyzing the development path it suggests. Specifically, local government is assumed to implement carbon emission appraisal systems and set strict limits on emissions. A low-carbon tourism enterprise whose emission load is below-the standard should be able to gain rewards from government, such as information, supply of technology, tax deductions, and financial support. Conversely, those enterprises exceeding the emission standards should pay a fine. We can see that there are two stable strategy （ESS） needed in this dynamic system to solve the evolutionary ESSs for each game-agent and then integrate the results. One strategy is that tourism enterprises continue to use the traditional development mode when local government agencies do not carry out adequate supervision of low-carbon tourism. The other can be expressed as non-supervision, low-carbon development. The results indicate that there are a range of barriers in relation to government supervision and business transformation in the early stage of low-carbon tourism. Once these are solved with the perfection of market conditions, government departments and tourism enterprises do in fact implement emission reduction measures, and eventually a virtuous cycle of voluntary reduction by tourism enterprises and administrative support in local government can be created. However, to bring about this harmonious equilibrium of joint promotion of low-carbon development, it is necessary to increase rewards and punishments relating to carbon emissions. These can be used to cut the costs of transition to low-carbon emissions and dynamically adjust carbonemission standards. However, the evolutionary process between local government and tourism enterprises needs long, gradual, advancement before it can lead to the situation of coexistence of government supervision with self-development in either the traditional or low-carbon business modes. The strategy selected by a game player relies heavily on the initial state and evolution path, so local government and tourism enterprises can obtain higher rates of return only if they make decisions based on a long-term interest. Furthermore, although incentives for reducing carbon emission are confirmed as contributing to low-carbon tourism, there exist shortcomings that the hypotheses of evolutionary game theory do not reflect tourism industry characteristics well, and specific stimulation measures may be lost when simplifying the model. The next step of this research project is to select certain types of tourism enterprise and build a model embodying their industrial features in order to explore more targeted ways towards low-carbon tourism development.