Research on the game of fishermen's cooperative behavior in developing marine carbon sink fisheries from a complex network perspective

The development of marine carbon sink fisheries is both an important support to achieve the goal of net zero emissions as well as a hot topic concerning the livelihood of fishermen. Although it has been shown that there is great potential for carbon sinks in terms of environmental benefits, the lack of economic benefits in the short term is a hindrance that prevents marine carbon sink fisheries from being accepted by practitioners, especially fishermen groups. There is need to stimulate fishermen's enthusiasm for cooperative development of marine carbon sink fisheries and to promote marine carbon sink fisheries in order to achieve high efficiency and effectiveness. This paper adopts a complex network evolutionary game, based on the assumptions of WS smallworld model on social network relationships, focuses on fishermen groups, and explores the dynamic evolutionary law of cooperative behavior diffusion in development of marine carbon sink fisheries. The results of the study show that (1) the government can accelerate the diffusion of cooperative behavior in the pre-development stage of marine carbon sink fisheries through subsidies, supplemented by certain punishments to curb the betrayal behavior, with the strength of the rewards and punishments dynamically adjusted according to the changes in the risks of implementation of marine carbon sink fisheries. (2) In the long term, higher value of marine carbon sink fisheries and their derived products is the essential demand of fishermen, which can effectively improve the depth of diffusion of fishermen's cooperation in developing marine carbon sink fisheries. (3) To avoid the spread of betrayal in the later stages of marine carbon sink fisheries development, the government can gradually reduce production subsidies and convert them into environmental subsidies in the sale process.