Express packaging waste recycling: Stakeholders’ dynamic behavioral changes based on a computational evolutionary game theoretic approach

Abstract

Identifying stakeholder behaviors is crucial in managing municipal express packaging waste. Prior studies have neglected the impacts of the advertising effect and environmental preference and thus fail to detect stakeholders’ behavioral changes under different policies. To address this limitation, we build a computational evolutionary game model that integrates the advertising effect, environmental preference benefits, and economic and information policies. A numerical simulation is then conducted via a differential equation solver embedded in MATLAB software to identify the behavioral changes of the government, express delivery enterprises, and consumers. The results indicate that subsidies induce enterprises and consumers to reach their stability strategy more quickly, with maximum behavioral change rates of 0.82% and 0.64%, respectively. The marginal impacts of information policy and environmental preference benefits are greatest for consumers, whose behavioral change rates can reach 1.33% and 1.52%, respectively. For enterprises, a 1.71% behavioral change rate can be achieved by increasing the government’s effort level. An increase in enterprises’ effort level causes both enterprises and consumers to reach a stability strategy more quickly and achieves behavioral change rates of 4.21% and 1.51%, respectively. Our model can be used to predict stakeholders’ behavioral changes in the waste disposal industry, and the findings of this study provide novel ideas for waste management practitioners to use in encouraging recycling behaviors.