A social system to disperse the irrigation start date based on the spatial public goods game

In paddy rice cultivation, the amount of water used during the beginning of the irrigation season is the highest. However, there is a possibility of a water shortage at this season as climate change decreases snowfall. In this study, we propose new schemes based on the public goods game to reduce peak water volume during this season by dispersing the irrigation start dates. In our agent-based model, agents determine the irrigation start date based on the evolutionary game theory. This model considers the economic variables of individual farmers (e.g., gross cultivation profit and cultivation cost), the cost and subsidy for cooperation for the dispersion of the irrigation start dates, and the information-sharing network between farmers. Individual farmers update the cooperation/defection strategy at each time step based on their payoffs. Using this agent-based model simulation, we investigate a scheme that maximizes the dispersion of irrigation start dates among multiple scheme candidates. The results of the simulation show that, under the schemes in which one farmer belongs to a group and the groups do not overlap, the number of cooperating farmers did not increase, and the dispersion of irrigation start dates barely increased. By adopting a scheme in which one farmer belongs to multiple groups and the groups overlap, the number of cooperating farmers increased, while the dispersion of irrigation start dates maximized. Furthermore, the proposed schemes require the government to obtain information about the number of cooperators in each group to determine the subsidy amount. Therefore, we also proposed the method which allows estimating the number of cooperators in each group through the dispersion of irrigation start dates. This significantly reduces the cost of running the schemes and provides subsidization and policy evaluations unaffected by false declarations of farmers.