ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Improvement of the Ecological Protection
Compensation Policy for Adjustment of Planting
Structure in an Area of Groundwater
Overexploitation: A Tripartite Evolutionary
Game Study
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State Key Laboratory of Eco-hydraulics in Northwest Arid Region, Xi’an University of Technology,
Xi’an 710048, China
Submission date: 2021-04-09
Final revision date: 2021-08-21
Acceptance date: 2021-09-10
Online publication date: 2022-01-04
Publication date: 2022-02-16
Corresponding author
Ni Wang
State Key Laboratory of Eco-hydraulics in Northwest Arid Region, Xi’an University of Technology, China
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2022;31(2):1399-1414
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ABSTRACT
The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China experiences overexploitation of groundwater (GW),
mainly through agricultural water use. Planting structure adjustment (PSA) has proved to be effective
in controlling GW use, although this inevitably affects the stakeholders. An ecological protection
compensation (EPC) policy has been implemented simultaneously with PSA to meet the compensation
needs of those who have lost profits. However, problems in policy design and implementation resulted
in insufficient sustainability of the EPC. This study aimed to resolve these problems fundamentally by
improving the current policy, based on the analysis of the interactions among the central government,
the local government, and the farmers. Firstly, a mechanism for implemented economic penalties for
violations was introduced. Secondly, the long-term interests and respective characteristics of all parties
were taken into consideration. Finally, a tripartite evolutionary game model was established. Analysis
based on evolutionary game theory allowed calculation of the constraints of the parameters in the model,
which can drive the model to evolve in the expected direction. Under these constraints, the numerical
simulations showed that: 1) information asymmetry should be minimized as much as possible during
policy implementation; 2) reducing costs can accelerate self-convergence, but will not affect other
participants; 3) the implementation of economic penalties can promote the evolution of the supervised
party to evolutionary stability strategy; 4) improving the level of effort by farmers in implementing the
policy is key to accelerating the evolution of the entire system.