Title: Analysis of greenhouse gases trading system using conversations among stakeholders

Authors: Setsuya Kurahashi, Masato Ohori

Addresses: Graduate School of Business Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 3-29-1 Otsuka, Bunkyo, Tokyo, 112-0012, Japan. ' Hitachi Soft Engineering Corp., 4-12-7 Higashi-shinagawa, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract: Greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction agreement makes up the targeted reduction of a legally binding GHG for each country or region. It enables us to buy and sell some GHG with other countries; it is the GHG trading system. But now, some free riders, they do not accept the target, spring up all over the world, the USA and some developing countries. The reduction of the free riders is most important thing for success of GHG treading system in current situation. The aims of this study are: 1) to derive an emergence mechanism of the free riders; 2) to consider the reductive mechanism of the free riders. In order to examine a relationship between some governments, some companies, and some consumers under the social dilemma of world warming, this paper applies the agent-based approach using interaction among them as conversations. The experimental results have shown that the reason of the free riders emergence is the indeterminacy of the effect of their reducing GHG and free riders are able to be controlled by the consumer|s behaviour.

Keywords: multi-agent simulation; agent-based modelling; genetic algorithms; greenhouse gases; GHG emissions; agent-based systems; multi-agent systems; MAS; emissions reduction; GHG trading systems; global warming; free riders; consumer behaviour.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2010.034528

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2010 Vol.38 No.4, pp.274 - 282

Published online: 07 Aug 2010 *

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