An Analysis of Heuristic Behavior in NIMBY Conflicts Based on Evolutionary Game Theory

Abstract

The accelerating process of urbanization has expanded the citizens’ demands of integral NIMBY(Not-In-My-Back-Yard) facilities in their daily life, which in turn leads to a series of NIMBY conflicts, thus affected social stability as well as the effective construction of public facilities severely. The resistance feeling in the surrounding general public, who are the primary stakeholders of NIMBY facilities, is likely to make them misjudge the project, thus oppose the construction and operation of the project. To better depict the public’s heuristic behavior in the decision-making process, this paper considering heuristic bias, presents an evolutionary game model between the public and the government. Then it analyzes the stable strategy according to replicator dynamics equation. Further, it aims to discuss the effect of heuristic bias coefficient, environmental loss compensation and financial compensation difference on the Evolutionary Stable Strategy(ESS) through MATLAB simulations. The results show that the existence of heuristic bias may turn the public’s behavior from cooperation to resistance, while in the meantime, increasing the financial compensation difference can offset the impact of heuristic bias to a certain degree. Finally, this paper offers policy recommendations from the perspective of reducing heuristic bias and providing financial support, in order to ensure the construction and operation of NIMBY facilities smoothly while maximizing their social benefits.