A tripartite evolutionary game for the regional green logistics: the roles of government subsidy and platform's cost-sharing

Purpose Although green logistics has become a new focus of cooperation between government and enterprises under environmental constraints, how local governments formulate subsidy policies to effectively guide the green transformation of regional logistics and how to facilitate the reasonable cost-sharing are rather critical. This paper will deeply explore the dynamic process of the tripartite participation (government, platform, and logistics enterprises) in the selection of regional green logistics strategy, and reveal the evolutionary game relationship of the three parties. Design/methodology/approach To explore the dynamics involving the government, platform and logistics enterprises for the green logistic transformation, and reveal the evolutionary gaming among the three parties, based on the bounded rationality premise, this study constructs the tripartite asymmetric evolutionary game models, uses the stability theorem of differential equation to explore the evolution and stability strategy of the system in different cases and explicates the paths of influence on the tripartite behaviors via simulations. Findings Results of this study indicate that there exist stable equilibrium strategies among the three parties regarding the regional green logistics, and they are affected by different factors. The government's subsidy, subsidy intensity and the platform's cost-sharing proportion can generate positive effects, but the latter two can also impact negatively beyond the effective ranges. The findings provide a theoretical basis for local governments, platforms and logistics enterprises to formulate justifiable subsidy intensity and determine reasonable sharing proportion. Originality/value Firstly, considering the significant relevance of local government, it is included in the evolution model, and the tripartite game (among government, platform and enterprises) is explored; Secondly, by comparing the equilibrium results under different game conditions, this paper analyzes the evolution of each party's game strategy to achieve the optimal return under bounded rationality and the important factors determining the strategic selection; Finally, the key factor of platform cost sharing is involved, and to what extent the change of platform cost sharing ratio will influence the systematic stability is explored.