The collective strategies of major stakeholders in land expropriation: A tripartite game analysis of central government, local governments, and land-lost farmers

Land expropriation, during the rapid urbanization process in China, results in rural conflicts and presents barriers in sustainable development. Collective strategies of major stakeholders should be clearly understood for finding effective measures to cope with conflicts. However, the existing studies usually assume two types of stakeholders, which overlook the complicated practices as, at least central, government, local governments, and land-lost farmers are three major stakeholders. This research aims to explore the collective strategies of the three major stakeholders and examine how various factors contribute to conflicts with a tripartite evolutionary game model. The tripartite model is established based on the evolutionary game theories and relationships among the central and local governments, and land-lost farmers. A simulation analysis is also conducted on the MATLAB platform, which shows that serious asymmetry of information between stakeholders leads to the low efficiency of the game or serious conflicts. Thorough discussions on the influencing factors have also been conducted. The findings can provide good references for the central and local governments to reduce conflicts during land expropriation.