How to Promote Quality and Equity of Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Development in Undeveloped Rural Areas of China: An Evolutionary Game Study

To promote the sustainable development of early childhood education (ECE) in undeveloped rural areas of China, it is vital to guarantee high-quality equity for all children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Focusing on analyzing the efficacy of the Chinese governments’ policy support to promote quality and equity, the study constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of ECE providers in undeveloped rural areas, local governments, and central government, and correlates the governments’ financial investment with the regulation and supervision in ECE as strategy combination via a reward-punishment mechanism. Through the evolution process of “change-adjustment-convergence” of behavioral decisions, each party seeks optimization to achieve the ideal stable equilibrium state. The numerical simulation is used to verify the dynamic evolutionary process. The simulation results presented the governments’ subsidies and reward, regulation, and supervision have a substantive effect on the improvement of quality and equity. Consequently, the governments should strengthen the regulation and supervision of rural ECE, formulate a more reasonable reward and punishment mechanism, and adjust and optimize the policies and measures to improve the efficiency of educational funding. This study can provide reference value for the optimization of relevant policies and the practical operation of new policy-making.