Applying regulations in the embryonic energy civil-military integration industry to achieve sustainable development: A tripartite evolutionary game study

In recent years, low-carbon development, and the change in military technology in relation to energy change have necessitated new energy innovation. Moreover, low-carbon development and civil-military integration (CMI) aim to improve economic sustainability. Thus, undertaking new energy innovation under the CMI approach is an efficient way to achieve energy technology innovation and economic sustainable development. However, there is inefficient cooperation between civilian enterprises (CEs) and military enterprises (MEs) due to inadequate government regulations regarding CMI. Considering the instability of this embryonic industry, evolutionary game theory (EGT) could be effective for analyzing the strategies of the local government (LG), CEs, and MEs in the Chinese new energy CMI industry. Thus, this study built a tripartite-agent evolutionary model to analyze the impact of LG regulation on enterprise cooperation. The results suggest that, 1) the punishment mechanism is an essential regulation tool; 2) the LG's correlation return from enterprises' cooperation influences the level of the encouragement it provides; 3) if penalty mechanism fails, increasing the support above the medium degree to CEs and decreasing the ratio of MEs' excess earnings from cooperation to below the medium degree could support enterprises achieve cooperation. This study supplements the inadequate research on joint innovation on military and civilian energy issues. Moreover, the research results could provide references for real-world practice.