The impact of government intervention measures on recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment in China considering consumer decision

Abstract The Chinese government introduces a series of intervention measures to promote the collecting and recycling of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). However, under the current government intervention measures, the enthusiasm of stakeholders to participate is not high. Therefore, it is necessary to study the evolution of each stakeholder's willingness to participate under government intervention measures. This paper regards consumers as the stakeholder to construct a four-party evolutionary game model composed of the government, consumers, the collector, and the recycler and studies the dynamic evolution strategy of each stakeholder and the stable strategy of the evolutionary game model. The results indicate that providing incentive measures may not necessarily enable stakeholders to participate in the collecting and recycling of WEEE. In addition, even if no incentive measures are given, as long as the government strictly supervises and takes severe penalty measures, this also can enable consumers, the collector, and the recycler to participate in the collecting and recycling of WEEE. This paper provides a theoretical tool for the government to formulate a reasonable government intervention mechanism and also provides reference and guidance for other countries with a low WEEE recycling rate to improve their own intervention measures.