Evolutionary game analysis on government subsidy policy and bank loan strategy in China’s distributed photovoltaic market

Aiming to meet increasing energy demand and reduce carbon emissions caused by fossil fuel consumption, China is vigorously supporting the diffusion of photovoltaic (PV) generation equipment. The government and banks are recognized as playing irreplaceable and important roles in promoting PV investment. Therefore, this study applies a tripartite evolutionary game model to theoretically analyze the evolutionary stable strategies of the government, banks, and PV investors in China’s distributed PV market, and quantitatively discuss the contributions and limitations of government subsidies and bank loans in the diffusion of PV facilities. Simultaneously, numerical simulations are conducted to elaborate on the dynamic evolution paths of tripartite stakeholders in different stages. The results show that there are five possible evolutionary stable strategies in the early, middle, and mature stages of PV industry. But not all stages are suitable to induce PV investors. Compared with the early and mature stage, only in the middle-term stage, government subsidies and bank loans can very critically induce PV investors to start installing or installing larger-capacity equipment. In addition, the results reveal that both the government and banks prefer PV investors to install larger capacity equipment, which corresponds to higher investment costs, but accordingly, PV investors are more likely to obtain government or bank support. These conclusions provide unique insights and valuable support for the establishment of government subsidy policies and bank loan strategies.