Rethinking residential consumers’ behavior in discarding obsolete mobile phones in China

Abstract

Abstract Significant progress has been achieved in China's electronic waste (e-waste) management, since a series of laws and regulations based on extended producer responsibility began to be enforced in 2011. In 2016, China's second batch of e-waste catalogue, which includes the mobile phone, was given priority. This study intended to propose potential approaches for addressing obsolete mobile phones management by examining residents' returning and recycling preferences and awareness in a typical city – Foshan, China, via face-to-face questionnaire surveys. The residents expressed their keen awareness of potential hazards caused by mobile phones and actively supported collection activities. However, 62.1% of residents stored their obsolete mobile phones at home, while only 4.7% of the mobile phones ended up in regulated treatment enterprises. The results indicated that most residents had much higher expectation on benefits from their obsolete mobile phones than their actual value, although only 1/3 of them declared the benefits would hindered their participation in collection activities. The formal collection channels, the convenience of collection facilities and guarantee of information security would also accelerate the collected amount. Additionally, this study investigated the structure of collection system and the relevant flow of mobile phones, and shed light on implications towards future studies and managerial implementation.