To achieve the dual-carbon goals, incentivize the transition of conventional generation units into flexible regulating resources, and ensure that traditional generation units receive compensation for providing ancillary services, a scientific and effective inertia compensation mechanism is urgently needed. First, the current inertia compensation mechanisms in China are summarized, and their key elements are extracted. Based on these, an inertia compensation mechanism that coordinates government incentives with power producers’ decision-making is designed. Subsequently, a leader-follower game model is proposed to determine the optimal inertia compensation coefficients for generators. The upper level represents the government, which aims to set optimal compensation coefficients based on power producers’ inertia support performance to maintain the total system inertia within a specific range. The lower level represents the decision-making behavior of power producers, who seek to minimize total production costs under the compensation coefficients set by the government. Finally, the leader-follower game optimization model is reformulated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model and solved using commercial MILP solvers. Case studies are conducted to perform sensitivity analysis, effectiveness evaluation, and large-scale system adaptability analysis of the inertia compensation coefficients, validating the effectiveness and practical applicability of the proposed method.