Research on Ecological Protection Mechanisms in Watersheds Based on Evolutionary Games-Inter-provincial and Intra-provincial Perspectives

The wholeness of ecological resources in watersheds and the divisiveness of administrative regions make the protection of watersheds exceptional, and their environmental development has always been a hot issue of social concern. To realize the high-quality development of the watershed, this paper studies the ecological protection mechanism at the inter-provincial and intra-provincial levels. At the inter-provincial level, we constructed a game model for the evolution of ecological compensation between upstream and downstream governments in the watershed. We explored the changes in the strategy choices of both sides of the game under the condition of an unconstrained mechanism and the constraints of the reward and punishment mechanism of the central government. At the intra-provincial level, the local government, enterprise, and public ecological protection evolution game models are constructed to analyze the strategic choices of the three-party game subjects. The study results show that firstly, the combination of strategies (governance, compensation) cannot be realized by upstream and downstream governments alone, and the central government can intervene by introducing specific incentives and penalties. Secondly, constructing upstream and downstream government ecological compensation mechanisms under the central government constraint has prompted the local government, enterprises, and the public to achieve the ideal stable state of the tripartite game subjects (strict regulation, treatment, supervision). Thirdly, factors such as local government strategy choices and regulatory efforts can impact the rate of evolution of enterprises and the public.