Full length articleDeterminants shaping willingness towards on-line recycling behaviour: An empirical study of household e-waste recycling in China
Introduction
The rapid economic development and advancement in science and technology have led to the rapid popularisation and widespread use of household appliances and electronic equipment. With the continuous upgrading of products, the quantity of electronic waste increases dramatically, at present China has become the world’s second largest electrical and electronic products abandoner after the United States. E-waste refers to discarded electrical appliances or electronic equipment. It mainly includes appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, televisions, and electronic products such as computers and mobile phones (WEEE). These electronic devices contain a large amount of heavy metals (such as copper, aluminium, cadmium, chromium, etc.), and their release to the environment will cause severe over-concentration of heavy metals in air, dust, soil, sediments, and plants (Song and Li, 2015). Human health suffers from exposure to such electronic items in terms of the waste metal in the environment (Xu, Yang et al., 2012; Chan and Wong, 2013). According to the “White Paper on the Waste Electronic Product Recycling Industry in 2016”, China’s “four machines and one brain” (TV, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, and computers) reached more than 112 million units in 2016 (CHEARI, 2016). According to the same White Paper, as a newly added electronic product based on the first batch of waste electrical and electronic products consisting of “four machines and one brain”, the number of mobile phones wasted have reached nearly 183 million units in 2016 (CHEARI, 2016). According to the “China Renewable Resources Recycling Industry Development Report in 2017” issued by PRC Ministry of Commerce, the total recycling of electronic waste in China in 2016 was approximately 16.055 million units, approximately 3.66 million tons, having an increase of 5.1% year-on-year (MOFCOM, 2017). This shows that China’s e-waste recycling problem is increasingly serious, and at the same time China is facing a huge pressure on e-waste processing. The amount of electronic waste needing recycling, and serious environmental pollutions allied, have increasingly highlighted the importance of e-waste recycling.
In June 2015, Prime Minister Li Keqiang presided over the deployment of the State Council executive meeting to promote the “Internet Plus” action, the Conference adopted the “Internet Plus” action guidance for the promotion of “Internet Plus” to promote entrepreneurial innovation, e-commerce, green ecology, and other key areas to form a new industrial model of the development objectives of the task. In January 2016, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the “Internet + Green Resources Action Plan (2016–2020)” in the “Internet + Green Ecology” programme, which will establish a new model of “Internet + Recycling”. Therefore, in the context of the current Internet + scheme, coupled with the Chinese government’s great encouragement, on-line recycling platforms based on B2B, B2C, and other e-commerce models, such as Love Recycling, Taolv, Haoshou, and Baidu Recycle, have emerged as the times require. On-line recycling generally refers to that mode of recycling whereby residents use an Internet recycling platform to recycle their recoverable waste, which incorporates the concepts of the Internet, technology, and mode of recycling into the overall process of resource recovery (Huaidong, 2018). On-line recycling as a new product in the Internet new era, more consumers now participate in the process of on-line recycling, and there are more research literatures available. Corder et al., (2014) discussed the development status, existing problems, and corresponding countermeasures of Australian waste Internet transactions; Wei, 2016 proposed the construction of an Internet recovery model and its specific operating procedures based on different stakeholders. Zhou and Gao, 2015 explored the development advantages, limitations, and development significance of “Internet + Recycling” of urban minerals, proposed that the on-line recycling model is a recycling trend, and built an innovative model of on-line recycling based on O2O perspectives. Fortuna and Diyamandoglu (2015) took New York City Waste Match in the United States as their research object, and analysed the site’s recycling situation, including the amount of recycled content, recycled products, etc. Li et al., 2016 discussed the current situation of the on-line recycling industry and the opportunities and challenges faced by future development. Liu, 2015 discussed the changes that the Internet brings to recycling and then designed a universal recycling strategy in the face of change for e-waste internet recyclers from the perspective of consumers. In addition, there are some relevant scholars to study the current development of specific on-line recycling websites. Han and A, 2014 analysed the development model of the “Love Recovery” web-site in detail, and argued that the recycling modes of cooperation between the company and Internet e-commerce platforms such as “Love Recovery”, JD.com, and No. 1 stores have brought about significant development opportunities and a large number of users. Li et al., 2015 used the “Love Recycling” website as an example to clarify the main factors influencing consumer participation in e-waste on-line recycling. Through an examination of the research in this field, we can see that theoretical studies are still in their initial stage. The current research is mainly based on qualitative description and analysis, and the content mainly involves the status of on-line recycling, recycling modes, and their construction, recycling significance, and development trend. The drawback is that empirical research remains sparse. Based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and the background of the driver for electronic waste recycling, we find the factors affecting intentions to participate in e-waste online recycling behaviours by a literature survey and in-depth investigation. This article considers the moderating effect of economic income and educational level on consumer recycling behaviour and its functional path. This work offers strong research significance related to the understanding of factors influencing on-line recycling and optimisation thereof.
In the research, we introduce and explain the research foundations and our theoretical framework in Section 2, describing current e-waste recycling modes, the theoretical basis for the research and our hypotheses. The methodology is outlined in Section 3, where the questionnaire design and data collection process are elaborated on. This is followed by data analysis in Section 4 and discussion and implications in Section 5. We draw conclusions in Section 6.
Section snippets
Current e-waste recycling modes
At present, there are mainly three traditional methods of residential electronic waste recovery in China including irregular recycling, producer consortium recovery, and professional third-party enterprise recovery. As shown in Fig. 1, China has not formed a separate recycling channel for electronic waste at present, still mainly following the traditional individual recovery channels, which account for 80% of the total amount of electronic waste recycling (Yu, 2014). There are two outlets for
Scale and questionnaire design
Scale is a tool for quantitative measurement of abstract concepts and characteristic variables. The accuracy of measurement variables determines the effectiveness of the results of the final data analysis. In this study, the research variables that need to be measured include three dimensional variables in the TPB model (behaviour attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behaviour control), and economic motivation related to the recycling behaviour (i.e., the economic benefits of electronic
Reliability and validity analysis
Reliability analysis, also known as reliability analysis or internal consistency analysis, is mainly employed to test whether, or not, the scale has stability and consistency when measuring related variables. This paper uses Cronbach’s consistency coefficient to analyse reliability. Cronbach’s α coefficient for the four variables selected here are all greater than 0.7, which proves that the reliability of the scale is fairly good and that the data are reliable. Validity refers to the validity
Discussion and implications
From the results, we conclude that Hypotheses 1–7 are supported while Hypothesis 8 is not. We now discuss the effects of each of the variables, respectively. The effect coefficients of perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, behavioural attitudes, and economic motivation on e-waste on-line recycling intentions are 0.232, 0.213, 0.208, and 0.139, indicating that these four factors have a significantly positive effect on residents’ willingness to participate in e-waste on-line recycling,
Conclusions
In this research, we explore the factors influencing Chinese residents’ e-waste on-line recycling willingness and the path of this influence with extended TPB methods. We identify that perceived behavioural control, subjective norms, behavioural attitudes, economic motivation, income level, and education level can all influence residential on-line recycling willingness in a positive manner. Correspondingly, we propose some suggestions for government, other related departments, and on-line
Acknowledgements
This study is supported by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (Reference No. 71625003), Yangtze River Distinguished Professor of MOE, National Key Research and Development Program of China (Reference No. 2016YFA0602504), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Reference No. 91746208, 71573016, 71403021, 71521002, 71774014, 71804010), Humanities and Social science Fund of Ministry of Education of China (Reference No.17YJC630145), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
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