Abstract
In many developing countries, the existence of the uncertified recycler seriously hinders the healthy development of the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE or e-waste) recycling industry. As a result, how the government can regulate the uncertified recycler to improve environment and public health during the recycling processes has become a critical issue. To help tackle this issue, we build an evolutionary game model to study the interactions between the government and the uncertified recycler. We conduct stability analysis of each participant and obtain four asymptotically stable states. Furthermore, we conduct numerical simulations for comparative analysis based on the current situation of the Chinese e-waste recycling industry. Our results are as follows. First, there exist multiple asymptotically stable states for the government and the uncertified recycler, namely (no-governance, maintaining status quo), (governance, maintaining status quo), (governance, industrial upgrading), and (no-governance, industrial upgrading). Then, we verify the validity of the evolutionary game model through numerical simulations and find that penalty, supervision cost, additional investment cost, and financial subsidy can significantly influence the behavioral strategy of the government and the uncertified recycler. Finally, we find that the government should adopt the reward-penalty-supervision mechanism to promote the healthy development of the e-waste recycling industry and protect the environment and public health. Specifically, first, the government’s subsidy for the uncertified recycler has upper and lower limits. Exceeding the upper limit will result in an excessive financial burden to the government, while falling below the lower limit will hinder the uncertified recycler from technology upgrading. Second, the government should strengthen the supervision of the uncertified recycler and increase the punishment for violations. Third, the government should focus on controlling the supervision cost. Fourth, according to the asymptotically stable state (no-governance, industrial upgrading), the government should prepare to withdraw from the market when the uncertified recycler chooses industrial upgrading.
Highlights
The e-waste stream has become one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world and one of the largest sources of heavy metals and organic pollutants in municipal wastes [1]
The literature related to this paper focuses on three aspects: the first aspect is the management mechanism of the government in e-waste recycling industry, the second aspect is uncertified recyclers’ current state and role, and the third aspect is the interactions between the government and uncertified recyclers
We study the evolutionary behavior between the government and the uncertified recycler under the reward–penalty–supervision joint mechanism from a dynamic perspective
Summary
The e-waste stream has become one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world and one of the largest sources of heavy metals and organic pollutants in municipal wastes [1]. In order to reduce the negative influence on the environment and public health of uncertified recycling, the Chinese government has adopted regulations on the activities of the uncertified recycler, such as Administrative Measures for Eligibility License for Disposal of Waste and Discarded Electrical and Electronic Products, and Regulation on the Administration of the Recovery and Disposal of Waste. The first research objective of this paper is to study the impacts of government policies on the behavioral evolution of the uncertified recycler. To achieve the two research objectives mentioned above, in this paper, evolutionary game theory is adopted This theory explains the phenomenon of learning, competing, and adapting in the process of system evolution [17].Its most prominent feature is the assumption that each participant is boundedly rational in the evolution process.
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