ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Do Collaboration and Subsidies Sustainably Promote Port-Shipping Emission Reduction? An Analysis of Multi-Games and System Dynamics
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China
- 2Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai, China
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Government environmental subsidies and port-shipping enterprise collaboration are common ways to promote carbon emission reduction. To analyze the long-term effects of collaboration and subsidies, game models based on decentralized and centralized decision-making are constructed: Stackelberg games led by either the port or the shipping enterprise, vertical integration, and Nash bargaining game. Then, by comprehensively analyzing government subsidy coefficients, corporate investment costs, and shippers' low-carbon preferences, the collaborative model that maximizes both emission reduction effectiveness and industry profits is identified. On this basis, the game reaction function and system dynamics are combined to reflect the nonlinear complex feedback, in order to accurately analyze the port-shipping green transformation under dynamic effects of decision delay, technology update and subsidy decline. The findings reveal that the centralized decision-making model yields higher shipping decarbonization benefits than the decentralized model. Excessive subsidies may discourage independent innovation. Therefore, subsidies only play a short-term incentive role, while collaboration can promote the sustainable development of the port and shipping industry.
Keywords: emission reduction, Environmental subsidies, Game theory, Port and shipping collaboration, system dynamics
Received: 29 Sep 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pu, Yan and Yuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Guanghui Yuan
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