Multi-stakeholder evolutionary game and collaborative governance mechanisms for promoting low-carbon agricultural machinery under China's dual-carbon goals

Introduction Under China's dual-carbon goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality and the broader agenda of agricultural pollution control, the promotion of low-carbon agricultural machinery requires stable coordination among the government, agricultural machinery enterprises, and professional large-scale farmers. Methods Taking Heilongjiang Province as the research context, this study constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model involving these three stakeholders to examine their strategic choices, evolutionary stability conditions, and the effects of key parameters on system dynamics. Model parameters are determined using statistical yearbooks, enterprise information platforms, field interviews, and expert consultations, and numerical simulations are conducted in MATLAB. Results The results show that the system can evolve toward an ideal stable state characterized by active regulation, low-carbon supply, and purchase adoption. However, the convergence speed and stability of this state are jointly affected by policy incentives, carbon-pricing constraints, penalty intensity, transition costs, and market returns. Under the carbon-tax policy scenario designed in this study, moderately increasing the carbon-emission costs borne by high-carbon agricultural machinery producers, strengthening penalties for non-compliant production, and providing reasonable purchase subsidies for professional large-scale farmers can enhance enterprises' willingness to supply low-carbon machinery and farmers' willingness to adopt it. Conversely, excessive government regulatory costs, enterprise transition costs, and farmers' purchase costs hinder the system's evolution toward the ideal stable state. Discussion The findings suggest that low-carbon agricultural machinery promotion depends on a balanced combination of policy incentives, carbon-pricing constraints, penalty regulation, cost sharing, and market-based returns. Such coordination can expand the supply and application of low-carbon agricultural machinery, reduce carbon emissions and environmental pollution associated with agricultural machinery operations, and generates potential environmental health co-benefits. This study provides theoretical support and decision-making references for the low-carbon transition of agricultural machinery and the source control of agricultural production pollution.