Evolutionary game analysis of stakeholder behavior strategies in ‘Not in My Backyard’ conflicts: Effect of the intervention by environmental Non-Governmental Organizations

Abstract

Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) involved in ‘Not in My Backyard’ (NIMBY) incidents can effectively restrain the protest behavior of stakeholders. With or without the involvement of environmental NGOs, a tripartite game model among the government, operating enterprises and surrounding residents is built by complying with the evolutionary game theory. Subsequently, the tripartite evolutionary game is simulated by exploiting the system dynamics to investigate the stability of stakeholder interactions, and the effect of different reward and punishment strategies on game processes and equilibrium states with the involvement of environmental NGOs. The simulation results are presented below. First, without the involvement of environmental NGOs, the equilibrium point of the tripartite evolutionary game system is expressed as (0, 0, 0), and it will not be altered for changes in external variables. NIMBY conflicts are inevitable. Second, with the involvement of environmental NGOs, their behavioral decision-making strengthens rewards and punishments more rigorously, which can efficiently decrease the proportion of their protest behaviors, while causing the fluctuation of the evolution curve. Last, to ensure the high stability of the game process, a dynamic reward and punishment mechanism should be introduced to act on the evolutionary game system of the stakeholders. As stressed in the mentioned findings, (1) the evolutionary game modelling and system dynamics simulations show that the intervention of environmental NGOs can effectively avoid NIMBY conflicts. (2) The involvement of environmental NGOs can reduce NIMBY conflict behavior of stakeholders, whereas static rewards and sanctions can cause the stakeholder evolutionary curve to fluctuate. (3) To alleviate the fluctuation, environmental NGOs are required to introduce the dynamic reward and punishment mechanism. To be specific, changes in penalty coefficients can improve the achievement of the desired state. The present study puts foreword specific and illuminating recommendations which can mediate NIMBY conflicts in various nations.