An evolutionary dynamical analysis of low-carbon technology diffusion among enterprises in the complex network

Abstract

The diffusion of low-carbon technologies (LCTs) is a critical channel to mitigate carbon emissions. The government plays an important role in guiding the proliferation of LCTs among enterprises, but due to issues such as regulatory costs, unequal resource distribution, and inefficient regulation it is inevitable that there will be inadequate supervision. Therefore, this study incorporates the government’s probabilistic regulation into the research framework and constructs a networked evolutionary game model in which the government, enterprises, and consumers play a role together. Based on the constructed game model, we explore the impact of carbon taxes, subsidies, probabilistic government supervision, market demand, initial fixed investment cost, network size, and firm heterogeneity on the diffusion of LCTs. In addition, we extend the model to consider scenarios involving dynamic market demands and government policies The results demonstrate that factors such as subsidies, probabilistic government supervision, market demand, network size, and firm heterogeneity promote the diffusion of LCTs, while carbon taxes and initial fixed investment cost under a small total demand inhibit the spread of LCTs. Our exploration sheds some light on the diffusion of LCTs from the perspective of demand and supply sides, which provides an effective reference for the formulation of relevant policies.