A Tripartite Evolutionary Game and Simulation Analysis of Transportation Carbon Emission Reduction across Regions under Government Reward and Punishment Mechanism

Pollution and carbon reduction is a key strategic direction for ecological civilization in China, and a hot issue of concern for the government and the whole society. The main goal of this paper was to consider the regional externalities of traffic emissions and clarify the relationship between provincial and central government strategies under the government reward and punishment mechanism. This paper considers the unevenness of regional transportation emissions, constructs a three-party evolutionary game model among transportation carbon deficit provinces, transportation carbon surplus provinces, and the central government, discusses the evolutionary stability of the game under different strategies of the three parties, and analyzes the influence of each element on the game structure. The study shows that: Environmental losses can increase the evolutionary speed of active emission reduction in transportation carbon deficit provinces, and the probability of supporting cross-regional carbon emission reduction in transportation carbon surplus provinces decreases slightly with the increase and the probability of central government regulation increases. The central government has a certain binding effect on transportation carbon deficit provinces and carbon surplus provinces through fines, and cross-zone cooperation subsidies are conducive to promoting carbon deficit provinces to actively reduce emissions. The cross-region compensation of carbon deficit provinces can promote the governments of carbon surplus provinces to support cross-region carbon emission abatement, and the cost of regulation will reduce the probability of central government regulation. Finally, Matlab simulation is used to verify the conclusions and provide countermeasures and suggestions for cross-regional abatement of regional transportation emissions by the central government.