Joint prevention and control, cross-regional governance: An evolutionary game analysis of fiscal environmental protection expenditure strategies

The ability to form a collaborative governance alliance is crucial to the in-depth promotion of pollution prevention and control. Starting from the perspective of regional development imbalance, this paper uses an evolutionary game model to explore how initial strategy choice, game order, financial and environmental protection expenditure efficiency, and total factor productivity affect the formation and stabilization of the cooperative alliance of “joint prevention and control, cross-regional governance”. The study shows that strategic interactions between governments can lead to “cooperative” or “collusive” outcomes and that game order and initial strategy play a key role in the formation of these outcomes. In addition, changes in parameters such as fiscal and environmental expenditure efficiency and total factor productivity can greatly affect the evolutionary path and the speed of convergence. Particularly in less developed regions, fiscal and environmental spending efficiency plays a crucial role in promoting government “cooperation”, which tends to be weakened by increases in total factor productivity. In contrast, economically developed regions tend to favor “cooperation” and “investment” strategies. This study provides valuable policy recommendations for enhancing interregional cooperation in environmental governance.