Ballast water management to resist biological invasion risks: An evolutionary game analysis

Effective ballast water management is critical to reducing the risk of biological invasions induced by the maritime industry, but conflicting interests among governments, ports, and ships complicate coordinated management. To balance the interests of multiple parties, we created an evolutionary game model that considers three-party utility functions. The model analyzes all possible hybrid evolutionary strategies, solves them to obtain Nash equilibrium, and tests the robustness of the strategies. Through numerical simulation, we experiment with the impact of various strategies on the prevention and control of biological invasion risks. The results show that under general scenarios, ships will actively avoid risks, and government incentives can increase this initiative. Active governance behavior by the government will significantly promote active cooperation between ships and improve the efficiency of managing risk of ballast water discharge. These findings guide ballast water management strategies to prevent the risk of biological invasion in ocean-going vessels.