Age-friendly regeneration of urban settlements in China: Game and incentives of stakeholders in decision-making

The age-friendly regeneration of urban settlements has been promoted in China to meet older people's demand for aging in place. However, there are some contradictions among stakeholders in the decision making, hindering the regeneration process. Therefore, after identifying the stakeholders and their contradictions and clarifying their benefits and strategies, this paper established an evolutionary game model of the local government, investors and residents and then explored the stable strategy set of the evolutionary game of stakeholders. A case simulation method was used to test the theoretical results. This paper found the incentive measures that improve the efficiency of the decision making regarding the age-friendly regeneration of urban settlements. This paper also found that under limited conditions, the only stable strategy set of the stakeholder game was the local government, investors and residents implementing active intervention, coordinating opinions and agreeing on benefits strategies, respectively. The evolutionary sequence of the stable strategy set is local government -> investors -> residents, which was very important to the application of incentive measures and the proposal of policy implications and suggestions. The effective incentive measures to improve the age-friendly regeneration decision-making efficiency included the following: direct subsidies, indirect subsidies and direct punishment for investors and passive compensation and sharing coefficient optimization for residents. Some policy implications and suggestions for improving decision-making efficiency and promoting the age-friendly regeneration of urban settlements in China are proposed in this paper. The local government can appropriately increase direct and indirect incentives and apply moderate punishment. It is very important that the local government pays attention to the design and operating principles of incentive measures. Otherwise, the wrong design and operation might lead to the failure of incentive measures. The higher-level government should supervise the local government carefully and propose relevant policies and regulations to clearly punish the negative attitudes of the local government. Investors can share more incremental income with residents to promote the development of corporations and the recognition of the local government and residents. Residents should make a good balance of advantages and disadvantages in the decision-making of age-friendly regeneration.

Automated summary

This study analyzed the contradictions among stakeholders in urban aging-friendly regeneration and proposed incentive measures to improve decision-making efficiency. It identified the stable strategy set of active intervention, coordination of opinions and agreement on benefits strategies among the local government, investors, and residents.