Intensive use and low-carbon development of industrial land under the Chinese decentralization: A case study in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region

Abstract To achieve intensive use and low-carbon development of industrial land in China, it is important to coordinate the conflicts of interest among stakeholders in the process of land expropriation and utilization. However, the complex interaction mechanism and influencing factors among stakeholders make it difficult to achieve the goal under the Chinese decentralization and unique land development pattern. To solve these problems, this paper first analyzes the four main stakeholders’ conflicts of interest in the process of land expropriation and utilization, that is, the central government, local government, peasant, and enterprise. Then, we construct two evolutionary game models to examine the dynamic changes of stakeholders’ different strategies and take the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region as an example to compare the impacts of factors on strategies under different conditions using simulation analysis. The research shows that under the Chinese decentralization, adjusting the action strengths of different stakeholders can have different effects on system equilibrium. In terms of the central government's reward and penalty, increasing the reward and penalty for local government will shorten the time of system equilibrium to a different degree, and there is little difference between the effects of political and economic penalties. Interestingly, increasing the incentives for peasants cannot promote the system equilibrium in advance. In addition, the key to local governments’ decision on illegal land expropriation lies in benefits rather than costs, and investment in low-carbon technology reform with positive externalities is easier to control than investment in economic production with negative externalities associated with pollution emissions.