Regulating Crude Oil Theft to Safeguard Pipeline Infrastructure: A Tripartite Evolutionary Game and System Dynamics Approach

Crude oil theft through illicit pipeline drilling presents substantial economic and environmental challenges, eroding national revenues while causing ecological damage through spills and contamination. Although Chinese legislation assigns pipeline security responsibilities to county-level and higher administrations along energy corridors, local governments (LGs) frequently exhibit lax enforcement due to fiscal limitations and competing budgetary priorities. To address this systemic challenge, our research develops an innovative analytical framework that integrates a tripartite evolutionary game model among the central government (CG), local governments, and oil thieves (OTs) with a two-layer small-world network architecture. This interdisciplinary approach combines strategic interaction analysis through replicator dynamics and Lyapunov stability theory with complex network simulations of intergroup behavioral diffusion. Our computational experiments yield three critical insights. First, proactive CG supervision substantially elevates LGs’ enforcement motivation through financial accountability mechanisms, creating cascading deterrence effects that drive OTs toward extinction. Second, while equilibrium outcomes remain stable across scenarios, strategic convergence speeds demonstrate parameter sensitivity. Specifically, amplifying the fine allocation ratio (η) to LGs and increasing noncompliance penalties (Fg) accelerate regulatory adoption, whereas upfront enforcement subsidies (C1) prove ineffective due to their nonrecurring nature. Third, the novel two-layer network model reveals how CG intervention restructures intergroup connectivity patterns, amplifying regulatory compliance through enhanced information diffusion and peer effects among local jurisdictions. This study contributes to incentive design for oil theft mitigation by bridging evolutionary game theory (EGT) with multilayer network dynamics, offering policymakers actionable insights for balancing enforcement costs and deterrence efficacy.