Systematic Evolutionary Game Analysis And Control Scenarios Of Coal Mine Safety Inspection And Regulation In China

In the current process of coal mine safety inspection and regulation, namely “State inspection, Local regulation, and Enterprise responsibility”, the different interests and influences of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, the Local Regulation Departments of Coal Mine Safety and the coal enterprises and their complicated dynamic games make coal mine safety laws and regulations less effective and give rise to major accidents to some extent in coal mines. In another words, although China has established a set of strict laws, regulations and rules on coal mine safety, these laws and regulations are rarely implemented, which makes it difficult for central government to develop and implement the effective inspection strategies which contributes to China’s bad coal mine safety situation to some extent. Therefore, the evolutionary game analysis and control scenarios of coal mine safety inspection and regulation in China was studied in this research using the combination of theoretical analysis and scenario simulation, the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods based on risk theory, asymmetric information theory, externality and internality theory, game theory, principal-agent theory, stakeholder theory, and government regulation theory. The following main contributions drawn from this study are listed below.Firstly, the formation and development of China’s coal mine safety inspection and regulation was analyzed and divided into six historical stages including the initial stage of coal mine safety production, the "Great leap forward" and the adjustment stage, the "Cultural Revolution" stage, the reform and opening up stage, the start building a socialist market economy stage, and the new system formation stage. Further, the status quo and laws and regulations of China’s current coal mine safety inspection and regulation were analyzed and then induced its regime and model. And then, the effectiveness of China’s current coal mine safety inspection and regulation was analyzed by using the time series analysis method based on the above analysis of the formation and development of China’s coal mine safety inspection and regulation. The results demonstrated that the current coal mine safety inspection and regulation is not conductive to the improvement of coal mine safety situation in the short term, but, in the long term, it is conductive to the improvement of coal mine safety situation. Specifically, the effects in township coal mines are more significant than stateowned key coal mines in the long run, but negative effects also exist in the short term. The negative effects in the state-owned key coal mines are non-significant compared with the township coal mines. Moreover, the results are analyzed from the aspects of closure policy of illegal small township coal mines at the end of 1998 and shortage of the new inspection and regultion organization, and the shortage of the new inspection and regultion organization were sumarised.Secondly, the existing literature on China’s coal mining safety inspection and regulation is short of researches on systemically dynamic game under the bounded rationality and also has not proposed effective stability game control scenarios. Therefore, the Chinese coal mine safety inspection and regulation was analyzed from the perspective of evolutionary game and its evolutionary game was divided into the monomorphic population evolutionary game, double population evolutionary game, and systematic evolutionary game. Specificcally, monomorphic evolutionary population game including the evolutionary game of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety’s inspection behaviors, the evolutionary game of coal enterprises’ safety production behaviors, and the evolutionary game of local regulation departments’ regulation behaviors; the double evolutionary population game including the evolutionary game between the the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety and coal enterprises, the evolutionary game between the local regulation departments and coal enterprises, the evolutionary game between the the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety and local regulation departments, and the systematic evolutionary game of coal mine safety inspection and regulation, which includes the the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, the Local Regulation Departments of Coal Mine Safety, and coal enterprises. Afterwards, the monomorphic population evolutionary games, the double population evolutionary games, and the systematic evolutionary game were analyzed under the bounded rationality. The analysis results demonstrated that the stability of equilibrium solution of the monomorphic population evolutionary games and the double population evolutionary games can be obtained by analyzing the determinant and trace value of the Jacobi matrix of the system at the equilibrium point, but it difficult to analyze the systematic evolutionary game’s determinant and trace value of the Jacobi matrix of the system at the equilibrium point. Therefore, the systematic evolutionary game among the the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, the Local Regulation Departments of Coal Mine Safety, and coal enterprises was simulated by adopting system dynamics(SD) to analyze its stability of equilibrium solution which including the stability analysis of equilibrium solution under initial pure strategy, the stability analysis of equilibrium solution under initial mixed strategy, and the stability analysis of equilibrium solution under initial general strategy. The simulation results show that strategy selections of the three stakeholders fluctuate repeatedly which indicates the evolutionary stable strategy does not exist in the game playing. This conclusion also provides an explanation on the high frequent of major coal mine accidents.Afterwards, in order to improve coal mine safety inspection and regulation effect and reduce coal mine enterprises’ illegal behavior, the effective stability game control scenarios on the the existing fluctuations in the the systematic evolutionary game playing among the the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety, the Local Regulation Departments of Coal Mine Safety, and coal enterprises were studied. Consequently, the dynamic penalty control scenario was proposed to control the fluctuations and then simulated and certified theoretically. The results show that the dynamic penalty control scenario can restrain the fluctuations effectively and make the game stable, but coal enterprises may also not choose safety production as their optimal strategy. Therefore, the dynamic penalty control scenario was opyimized and then proposed the optimized dynamic penalty-incentive control scenario. Furthermore, the optimized dynamic penalty-incentive control scenario was simulated and certified theoretically again. The results show that the optimized dynamic penalty-incentive control scenario can not only restrain the fluctuations effectively but also present an ideal evolutionary stable strategy in which coal enterprises could nearly choose safety production as their optimal strategy. Finally, the concepts of improvement measures on China’s coal mine safety inspection and regulation organization were proposed from the perspective of coal mine safety inspection and regulation organization’s regime and model on the basis of the above study of the evolutionary game analysis and effective stability control scenarios of coal mine safety inspection and regulation system.