SEIR Evolutionary Game Model Applied to the Evolution and Control of the Medical Waste Disposal Crisis in China during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

The behavioral choices and speculative psychology of the participants in medical waste disposal can lead to the evolution of the medical waste disposal crisis, which has a great impact on and represents a potential threat to environmental safety as well as public health. This study constructs the SEIR evolutionary game model based on the theory of propagation dynamics and evolutionary game and explores the game relationship between local governments and medical waste disposal enterprises. Then it analyzes the propagation threshold and evolutionary path of medical institutions’ speculative psychology under different behavioral decisions of both subjects and explores the process and law of system evolution to a benign stable state and conducts a multi-situated simulation analysis. The results showed that the number of infected states in medical institutions varies in a positive direction with the propagation threshold of their speculative psychology, and when the propagation threshold is greater than 1, the speculative psychology of medical institutions will spread widely in the system. The “strict regulation and high-quality disposal” behavior of local governments and disposal enterprises could effectively eliminate the speculative psychology of medical institutions, the number of infected medical institutions could gradually evolve to 0, then the further evolution of the medical waste disposal crisis could be prevented. The formation of an integrated, coordinated, and mutually constraining crisis governance mechanism should improve the government’s regulatory capacity and efficiency, develop attractive and deterrent reward and punishment policies to guide disposal enterprises to high-quality disposal, and contribute to the compliant disposal of medical waste in medical institutions.