Promoting the resource utilization of agricultural wastes in China with public-private-partnership mode: An evolutionary game perspective

Abstract

The agricultural waste is large in number and the utilization rate is extremely low in China, requiring remediated. Formatting the project system and introducing the Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) mode are inevitable to realize the specialization and socialization in resource utilization of agricultural wastes. However, the confusion of financing, management, responsibilities of participants and difficulties in coordinating interests limit the expected effect of the resource utilization of agricultural wastes (RUAW). To this end, combined with the examination of actual cases, this paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of RUAW PPP projects among local government, social capital and farmers, then conducts simulation and case study. We find that the local government does not supervise, social capital acts opportunistically, and farmers choose to cooperate is the evolutionary stable situation, and the cost of supervision for local government and the reward and punishment mechanism of local government to social capital will largely influence the strategy choice of the stakeholders. Strengthening the local government's sense of responsibility and regulatory capacity, optimizing the reward and punishment system, vigorously making technological innovations, and improving the operational capacity of the special purpose vehicle can effectively improve the efficiency of cooperation. The results of the study have some guiding significance for further improving the level of circular agriculture in China even in developing countries and forming a more complete system of resource utilization of agricultural wastes.