Monetary compensation or ecological restoration? A tripartite evolutionary game analysis of marine ecological damage governance in China

Marine ecological damage compensation (MEDC) involves complex interactions among governments and enterprises, creating implementation challenges and uncertainty regarding the applicability of alternative compensation mechanisms. To examine stakeholder behavior and identify the governance conditions under which different compensation mechanisms become stable evolutionary outcomes, this study develops a tripartite evolutionary game model involving the central government (CG), local governments (LGs), and sea-using enterprises (SUEs) within China’s governance framework of central coordination and local implementation. By incorporating key policy variables, including monetary compensation standards, ecological restoration costs, and penalty mechanisms, the study systematically explores the evolutionary dynamics of stakeholder strategies under monetary compensation and ecological restoration compensation schemes. The results show that differentiated penalty mechanisms effectively promote regulatory compliance by LGs and ecological responsibility fulfillment by SUEs, thereby accelerating the convergence of the system toward a stable equilibrium. Monetary compensation standards exhibit clear governance thresholds: excessively low standards fail to cover restoration expenditures, whereas excessively high standards undermine enterprise participation and policy implementation conditions. Restoration cost is identified as a key factor affecting the relative suitability of compensation modes. Ecological restoration compensation is more likely to become the stable evolutionary outcome when government-led restoration costs are high, whereas monetary compensation is more applicable when restoration costs remain manageable. In addition, SUEs exhibit a higher probability of accepting compensation policies under the monetary compensation arrangement. This result reflects SUEs’ strategic responses under different institutional arrangements rather than an intrinsic preference for a particular compensation mechanism. These findings suggest that effective MEDC requires the coordinated design of compensation standards, restoration responsibilities, and reward–punishment mechanisms. Establishing scientifically grounded compensation standards, strengthening multi-level regulatory incentives, and dynamically selecting compensation modes according to restoration costs can improve governance performance and policy implementation. This study contributes to the literature by comparing monetary compensation and ecological restoration compensation within a unified evolutionary game framework and provides practical insights for optimizing MEDC policies.