A regional cooperative reduction game model for air pollution control in North China

Due to variations in economic scale, economic structure, and technological advancement across different Chinese provinces and cities, the cost of air pollution reduction differs significantly. Therefore, the total reduction cost can be decreased by capitalizing on these regional discrepancies in reduction cost to carry out cooperative emission reduction. In this paper, taking NO_x reduction in North China as an example, a regional cooperative reduction game (CRG) model was constructed to minimize the total cost of emission reduction while achieving future emission reduction targets. The fair allocation of benefits from cooperation plays a crucial role in motivating regions to participate into the cooperation. A comprehensive mechanism of benefits allocation was proposed to achieve fair transferred compensation. The mechanism combines the consumption responsibility principle based on input-output theory and the Shapley value method based on game theory. Compared to the cost before the optimized collaboration, the CRG model will save 20.36% and 13.71% of the total reduction cost in North China, respectively, under the target of 17.68% NO_x reduction by 2025 and 66.44% NO_x reduction by 2035 relative to 2020. This method can be employed in other regions to achieve targets for air pollution reduction at minimum cost, and to motivate inter-regional cooperation with this practical and fair way of transferred compensation.