Emergency public health management: a game theoretic analysis
Creators: name: Zhou, Yuxun
Publisher: name: University of Southern Queensland
Year: 2023
Subjects: Individual preferences
Game theory
Emergency public health
Applied mathematical modeling
Epidemiology

description: Unexpected and emergency public health issues play a vital role in the history of human development. Bubonic plague, AIDS, Ebola virus, and COVID-19 have all substantially impacted the development of human society. Emergency public health events have the following essential characteristics: emergency, rapid spread, high infection rate, high mortality, etc. Every emergency outbreak of public health makes governments unprepared. This thesis aims to: 1. Understand governments' and citizens' actions and strategies in emergency public health events; 2. Defining the game mechanism between government and citizens (consumers and manufacturers) in an emergency public health event.
This thesis uses evolutionary game theory, signal game theory, and the extended SEAIR model to study the strategies between government and individuals (citizens). This thesis also uses empirical and numerical methods to analyze the long-term impact of COVID-19. Based on the thesis by publication structure, this thesis is divided into five parts. Firstly, the thesis shows that COVID-19 has a long-term impact through empirical panel data analysis (Article 1/Chapter 3). Secondly, this thesis exhibits the indirect and direct effects between COVID-19, government policies, and the economy through the structural equation model (Article 2/chapter 4). Thirdly, in the presence of influence, this thesis studied the interaction between government and individuals by analyzing the strategies of individuals under different assumptions (complete rational and incomplete rational) (Article 3/chapter 5). Fourthly, this thesis used the epidemiological model and game theory to analyze why people always protest for anti-epidemic policies (Article 5/chapter 6). Finally, the thesis extended the existing theory by introducing individual preference and political economy in analyzing public health events combined with limitations (Article 4) of the existing literature.
The findings are as follows. First, COVID-19 is a periodic outbreak. Its eruptions have peaks and troughs. Therefore, humanity needs to be prepared to live with COVID-19 for a long time. The severity of the government's restrictive policies has corresponded to the peaks and troughs of the COVID-19 outbreak. Second, COVID-19 has an essential impact on the economic environment. It indirectly affects economic development through population movements. Government restrictions affect the economic environment via positive and negative cycles. Positive cycle: governments adopt strict restrictive policies to improve the economic environment by reducing the ii scale of COVID-19 and increasing human mobility; Negative cycle: Government inaction worsens the economic environment by further expanding the COVID-19 pandemic scale and reducing human mobility. The deterioration indicator of the economic environment has an indirect positive effect on the pandemic scale of COVID-19. Third, the government should take strict punitive measures while fighting the epidemic. Punishment policies are better than subsidies. That is because the punishment policy will bring incentives for enterprises and individuals to fight against the epidemic and enough incentives for the government to fight against the epidemic (due to the positive fiscal revenue obtained by the punishment policy). Fourth, the government cannot create a policy that satisfies individuals with different preferences at the same time (individuals are classified as "health-centered" or "freedom-centered"). This thesis found that individuals prefer camouflage when a public health emergency arrives. The government will formulate different anti-epidemic policies according to other infectious viruses.
The contribution of this thesis is divided into three parts. First, from the issue perspective, this thesis's significant contribution to the research topic is a further analysis of government and individual behavior using individual preferences based on existing literature. The lack of a classification of personal preferences is a significant limitation of existing literature on COVID-19 (public emergency). Therefore, this thesis extends the theory by taking individual preference as the core variable analysis. Second, from the methodology perspective, this thesis combines the game theory with the epidemiological model in the research method. This thesis uses the results of the epidemiological model as the payoff function of the game model to analyze the participants and the development of COVID-19. It is the limitation of the existing literature on methodology. The findings extend the current research findings and contribute to further theoretical expansion. Third, from the practical perspective, the findings can provide a rigorous scientific basis for future government policy.