Research on the Evolutionary Game of Rural River Governance Under the River Chief System

The river chief system (RCS) has been progressively integrated into rural river governance, resulting in notable improvements in river environments. However, the governance involves multiple stakeholders with conflicting interests and challenges, including low efficiency in collaborative governance. Based on evolutionary game theory, this paper explores the strategy evolution mechanism of multiple stakeholders in rural river governance under the RCS. A four-party evolutionary game model is constructed, involving the government, rural river chiefs, functional organizations, and villagers. By employing phase diagrams, Jacobian matrices, and Lyapunov’s first method, we investigate the evolutionary process of the four-party game and analyze its asymptotic stability. The study identifies the following two evolutionary stable strategies: lenient supervision, no patrol, governance, and participation and lenient supervision, no patrol, governance, and non-participation. Then, numerical simulation analysis is conducted using MATLAB 2024b to validate the scientific rigor and effectiveness of the evolutionary game model and analyze the impact of key parameters’ changes on the strategy choices of each stakeholder. The findings provide guidance for improving the efficiency of multi-stakeholder collaboration in rural river governance and the smooth implementation of the RCS in rural areas.