Assessing the effectiveness of intervention policies for reclaimed water reuse in China considering multi-scenario simulations

Abstract

The reclaimed water is an effective tool for water environmental management. And in China, government intervention is regarded as a powerful instrument to realize its large-scale utilization due to the public welfare and social characteristics. Therefore, the tripartite evolutionary game and multi-agent simulation system were combined to explore how intervention policies, such as price subsidies and regulation of water information disclosure, can influence the behaviors of stakeholders involved in the reclaimed water market, so as to alleviate water environment crisis. The results showed that: (1) The incentive of price subsidy shows noticeable regional differences due to different initial reclaimed water utilization rates, and the policy effect on regions with medium level utilization (25%–40%) > regions with high utilization (higher than 40%) > regions with low utilization (lower than 25%); (2) enhancing water information supervision can positively regulate the stimulation of subsidy policy in regions with low wastewater reuse; (3) the intensity of price subsidies has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the market stability in regions with high wastewater reuse; (4) diverse regulatory models on water information disclosure show various chain effects on improving wastewater reuse.