Modeling Transboundary Air Pollution in ASEAN with Game Theory
Nathasya Abenita Christien (a,b)- Aditya Purwa Santika (a*)

a) Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung 40132, Indonesia
b) PT Witteveen Bos, Jakarta Selatan 12730, Indonesia
*aditps[at]itb.ac.id

Abstract

In this research, we investigate the policies of ASEAN countries related to trans-boundary pollution using a differential game. Each country is modeled as an agent with its own pollution, which can be transferred to other countries. Each country can decide its investment rate in clean policies. When the countries aim to optimize their condition, each country incurs a pollution cost, defined as the sum of environmental costs and the costs for clean policies. The environmental cost depends on the pollution the country emits or receives from others. Their decisions are based on four variations of behavior: (1) a non-cooperative game where players optimize their own costs, (2) a cooperative game where players optimize their joint global costs together, (3) a basic imitation game where players follow their neighbors^ choice of investment rate, and (4) an advanced imitation game where players^ imitation depends on the success of their neighbors. Additionally, to model the rate of pollution transferred from one country to another, a novel method is proposed by constructing a graph that allows the consideration of spatial and meteorological aspects of the problem. From the simulations, it is found that ASEAN countries can achieve lower pollution levels more quickly when they act cooperatively rather than non-cooperatively. By imitating each other, the countries can even reach a cleaner state in the long run.

Keywords: Transboundary pollution- ASEAN- Differential game- Noncooperative- Cooperative- Imitation

Topic: Others