Stakeholder Conflict Amplification of Large-Scale Engineering Projects in China: An Evolutionary Game Model on Complex Networks

Large-scale engineering projects make tremendous contributions to China’s social and economic development; meanwhile, due to the diversity of stakeholders, the dispersion of time and space, and the complexity of information dissemination, large-scale engineering projects are easy to cause conflicts among stakeholders that affect social stability. The previous studies on stakeholder conflicts of large-scale engineering projects mainly focused on the game model among stakeholders, without considering the influence of stakeholders’ interaction complex networks formed by social relations on the conflict amplification. For the two main stakeholders of the government and the resident that play a key role in China’s large-scale engineering projects, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model of the main stakeholder conflict amplification and analyzes the evolutionary results of the conflict between the government and the resident in different situations. The small-world network is chosen as the complex network type of the simulation study since it is very similar with the topology of the realistic social network. Based on the NetLogo simulation platform, the stakeholder conflict amplification process of large-scale engineering projects on the small-world network is analyzed, and relevant management measures are proposed to defuse the stakeholder conflict of large-scale engineering projects. By using the evolutionary game model on complex networks, this paper studies the stakeholder conflict on the small-world network, providing reference for stakeholder conflict management of large-scale engineering projects in China.