Evolutionary game analysis of decision-making dynamics of local governments and residents during wildfires

Abstract

The existing literature is short of exploring the interactions of stakeholders' decisions during wildfires from a dynamic perspective. Evolutionary game theory proposed based on Darwin's theory of evolution can capture the dynamic process and provide a method to analyze the complexity. This study utilizes a tripartite evolutionary game model to analyze the dynamic evolutionary process of evacuation decision-making for different decision makers in a wildfire event. The decision makers include (1) local governments who are responsible for warning, communicating with, and/or placing evacuation order, (2) residents who decide to evacuate, and (3) residents who chose to stay. Through this dynamic analysis, this study identifies evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) of different stakeholders and the whole system. A numerical example based on system dynamics (SD) is given to validate the stability of equilibrium points and analyze the influence of relative factors. The results show that (1) there are four ESS in the system among all the equilibrium points; (2) the local government would be quicker in reaching the ESS points in all scenarios; (3) local government's decision is influenced by reward and support from the higher level of government, regulation cost, and residents' behavior; whereas (4) the residents' behavior can be affected by the expected evacuation cost, loss of health and property, expected loss from looting, etc. The insights of this study could deepen understandings of the relationship between decision makers in emergency and provide guidance for effective wildfire disaster management strategies.