Cooperation stability and bistability in green innovation consortia

Abstract Sustained cooperation in green innovation consortia depends on the incentives of governments, leading enterprises and knowledge-contributing members. This study develops a tripartite evolutionary game of institutional optimization, resource integration and deep participation. The payoff matrix yields three actor-specific cost ceilings for local stability of full cooperation. Under an illustrative baseline with uniformly positive enterprise and member margins, an analytical argument establishes convergence from every strictly interior initial state. Numerical integration of 125 initial states per scenario reproduces full cooperation and three stable partial-cooperation configurations under separate cost increases. Local stability does not, however, guarantee attraction from arbitrary initial states: with other baseline parameters fixed, full cooperation and enterprise-only active integration coexist for member participation costs between 60 and 160. At a cost of 150, different initial shares approach different corners. Parameter sweeps further distinguish changes in adjustment trajectories from changes in stability and attraction; both cost and return parameters can affect cooperative configurations. These theoretical findings support diagnosis of actor-specific payoff margins and initial cooperation conditions, while leaving empirical calibration, environmental outcomes and optimal policy allocation for future research.