Consumer Preference for End-of-Life Scenarios and Recycled Products in Circular Economy

Abstract

The way consumers dispose of end-of-life products (EoL products) and their acceptance of recycled products largely determine the final direction of resource flow. Therefore, clarifying consumers’ preferences for end-of-life scenarios (EoL scenarios) and recycled products and guiding consumers to participate in a circular economy is of great significance for enterprises and society to transition to a circular economy. However, as far as the existing research is concerned, there is a lack of comparison and summary of consumer preferences based on multi-category EoL products and recycled products. Therefore, this study took four categories of common consumer durables as the object to study consumers’ preferences for EoL solutions and recycled products and, based on the survey results, user segmentation in the market and consumer type segmentation in the CE were performed. The research results show that users generally support product reuse, and they generally have the highest acceptance of second-hand products and the lowest acceptance of refurbished products; meanwhile, consumers’ acceptance of recycled products varies by product type; according to the differences in preferences, consumers are divided into groups with different consumption characteristics; based on the differences in support for product recycling and recycled products, consumers are divided into the high perception group, the general perception group, and the low perception group in CE. The results of this study can provide reference for related research on sustainable waste management and sustainable consumption.