Multi-agent evolutionary game in the recycling utilization of construction waste

Abstract

The recycling utilization of construction waste (CW) is of great importance to reduce waste discharge and protect natural resources. This study investigated the evolutionary decision making process and stable strategies among three stakeholders, including the government agency (GA), waste recycler (WR) and waste producer (WP), involved in CW recycling industry based on the game theory. The main factors that affected the strategies of the stakeholders were analyzed and the tripartite evolutionary game model is provided. The evolutionary stability strategy and stability conditions were analyzed subsequently. A numerical simulation illustrated the effectiveness of the proposed method, with which the evolutionary decision making process and stable strategies among the three stakeholders are simulated. It is shown that the GA plays different roles in different stages of the development of CW recycling industry. In the early stage, the supervision and policies of the GA are critical to improve the proportion of enterprises that implement the recycling strategy. With the mature of the CW recycling industry, it is profitable for enterprises to implement waste recycling, and a high proportion of enterprises choose to implement recycling strategy. Under this circumstance, the GA will gradually decrease their interventions to enterprises, and finally evolve into no supervision. Besides, it also concludes that low penalties and subsidies are not conducive to the evolution of the optimal strategy among the three participants, and excessive supervision costs will reduce the regulatory willingness of the GA, hindering the enthusiasm of WRs and WPs to implement the recycling strategy.