AUTHOR=Yang Hualei , Wu Yuanyang , Yao Yidan , Zhang Siqing , Zhang Shuo , Xie Lin , Li Zhiyun , Tang Lili 

TITLE=How to Reach a Regional Cooperation Mechanism to Deal With the Epidemic: An Analysis From the Game Theory Perspective

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.738184

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2021.738184

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=The outbreak and persistence of COVID-19 has posed a great threat to global public health and economic development. The continuous economic deterioration has been intensified due to the continuous prevention and control measures, such as closed management. Insisting on prevention of the epidemic or economic restart has become a dilemma for all countries. Epidemic prevention is not only the main behavior of a single country, but also a common problem faced by all countries in the region. Continuous prevention measures will affect economic development, but early restart of the economy is faced with the recurrence of the epidemic. In order to avoid the emergence of prisoner's dilemma in the governance of the epidemic, each country cannot make decisions with its own optimization, and it is necessary to build a regional cooperation mechanism to achieve the overall optimization of the economy and prevention in the epidemic. Based on the game theory, this paper theoretically verifies the feasibility of regional cooperation to governance the epidemic by comparing the changes of regional overall utility in the case of cooperation and non-cooperation, and puts forward specific cooperative income distribution scheme according to the different attributes of countries. Our results show that in the presence of population mobility, regional cooperation to governance the epidemic can minimize the total number of infected people and maximize the overall utility of the region, which is significantly better than the overall benefits of the region in the case of non-cooperation; However, in detail, the smaller the difference of preference for preventing and controlling the epidemic between the two, the more likely it is to lead to a win-win situation; otherwise, there will be one with damaged interests; When damaged interests appear, the appropriate distribution of cooperative income to the country with small economic scale and low preference in preventing the epidemic is more conducive to the achievement of cooperative mechanism and the realization of win-win situation in the region.