Incentive-compatible payments for watershed services along the Eastern Route of China's South-North Water Transfer Project

Abstract

In transboundary rivers, upstream and downstream users have different interests, which affect their willingness to pay to protect the river's ecological services. This is true of the Eastern Route of China's South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP), with the added complication that the State Council Office (of SNWT Construction Committee) supervises upstream and downstream users. This paper analyses the strategies of upstream users, downstream users and the State Council Office, to explore an incentive-compatible system of payments for watershed services through a tripartite evolutionary game model. The results demonstrate that: First, whether lower Yangtze governments can obtain payments ..