Research on low-carbon diffusion considering the game among enterprises in the complex network context

Abstract

Considering the game among enterprises, this paper studies low-carbon diffusion problem from the perspective of network characteristics and consumers' environmental awareness. Under the scenario of heterogeneous environmental awareness, the low-carbon diffusion model based on evolutionary game theory and complex network theory is established to describe the game of enterprises' low-carbon strategy adoption in the network and the strategy learning among network neighbors. Simulation analysis in complex networks reveals the roles of network characteristics such as average degree, degree distribution and consumers' environmental awareness played in low-carbon diffusion. The results show that increasing the connections among enterprises in the industry can help the spread of low-carbon strategies. However, the diffusion potential of the network is largely exploited when the average degree exceeds 6, and the low-carbon strategies spread slowly afterwards. A certain percentage of green consumers drives this certain percentage of enterprises to implement low-carbon strategies approximately in equilibrium which indicates that the low-carbon diffusion rate can reach 100% when all consumers become green consumers who are willing and able to pay for low-carbon premium. White customers contribute to the spread of low-carbon strategies, but the promotion effect is not as good as green customers. The small-world (SW) network is more efficiently than the scale-free (SF) network in low-carbon diffusion when consumers' environmental awareness is low. However, when the consumers' environmental awareness is higher than a certain value, the SF network has a higher diffusion rate in equilibrium than the SW network.