Carbon emission control considering the reward and punishment mechanism in shipping

The control and monitoring of vessel carbon emission is gradually being a crucial task in green shipping. As stated by the International Maritime Organization, incentives are encouraged to stimulate relevant practitioners to take active strategies. In this research, a tripartite evolutionary game involving three groups of main stakeholders (port authorities, ship owners, charterers) is developed, aiming at analyzing their strategy selection under the implementation of the reward and punishment mechanism (RPM). The numerical simulation indicates that port authorities could improve the low-carbon awareness of vessel-related stakeholders effectively through formulating a reasonable RPM, leading to the ideal situation that carbon emission can be controlled without the need of introducing external force in the future. Further, the influence of key parameters (i.e., additional cost, revenue increment, environmental benefit) on the strategy selection is thoroughly examined and evaluated, which provides insightful implications for the formulation of the dynamic and reasonable RPM.