Abstract:

Cooperative game is a useful method to study management， and there exist multi-level structure and priority coalition in reality cooperation， which affect their final reasonable allocation. For example， in the cooperative governance of transboundary watershed， there are limited horizontal coalitions between adjacent watersheds and vertical hierarchy characteristic. In this paper， the classical definition of the core value is generalized to the cooperative game with hierarchical structure firstly. Then， a goal programming solution model of multi-level structure cooperative game with priority coalitions is established by introducing the priority factor to represent coalition priority. Moreover， the model is used to solve the cost allocation and compensation in transboundary watershed governance. In addition， it is demonstrated that： （1） There is a corresponding relationship between the optimal solution and the core of the multi-level structure cooperative game with priority coalitions. （2） The solution of multi-level structure cooperative game with coalitions is a general extension of the solution of single-level coalition structure. （3） For multi-level structure cooperative game， the solution of cooperative game with priority coalition is a general extension of structure without priority coalition. The conclusions of this paper can be drawn that the closeness of the sub-coalition in the hierarchy and the priority coalition relationship have significant effect on the cost allocation result， that is， the closer sub-coalition and the higher priority coalition lead to the greater cost saving.

Key words: multi-level structure, cooperative game, priority coalition, goal programming, watershed management