Research On Game Models For Recycling And Treatment Of Waste Electronic Products

Since1990s, the amount of waste electronic products has grown rapidly. The European Union well as other developed countries and regions has issued a series of regulations to promote recycling of waste electronic products, and the waste electronic products have been recycled and treated effectively due to well-established recycling and treatment systems. Such successful recycling and treatment system is achieved by cooperation among governments, producers, consumers and processors. Since the Chinese electronics industry has been facing increasing pressures for sustainable development and environmental prevention, the Chinese government has paid great attention to recycling and treatment of waste electronic products, and tried to solve the problem by legislations, pilot projects and other measures learning from developed countries. However, due to the particular circumstances of the china's economic, technological and cultural situations, the performance of recycling and treatment for waste electronic products is unsatisfactory. Therefore, it is necessary to explore key issues during operation of waste electronic products recycling and treatment, and then try to provide suggestions for the government, the electronic products producers and waste electronic product treatment facilities. Thus, based on the systematic analysis of waste electronic products recycling operation, considering two main recycling and treatment modes, producer-leading and processor-leading, this dissertation develops game models with respect to the identified key issues.Firstly, game models between governments and producers under the consideration of government incentives in relation to recycling and treatment of waste electronic products are established. In China, most electronic product producers are currently reluctant to engage in recycling and treatment of waste electronic products, which results from many barriers, and there are some complex relationships among these barriers. Governments'measures aiming at motivating producers evolves overtime, and the information asymmetry exists between governments and producers. Based on the situation above, the grey Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory(Grey-DEMATEL) method is utilized to analyze the barriers for producers to implementing recycling and treatment of waste electronic products, and an evolutionary game model between governments and producers with governments' incentives is established. The results show that the basic cause is lack of effective government incentives and the key factor is lack of effective reverse louistics system. Further, based on the results above. recommendations for governments to make reasonable incentive policies and for producers to establish an effective recycling system are given. The evolutionary game model analyzes different evolutionary stable strategies, and explores behavior features of local governments and producers. In addition, the necessity of establishing local supporting regulations and standards as well as developing a feasible supervision mechanism is discussed. The game models can provide decision support for both governments and producers.Moreover, the game model of recycling channels selection by waste electronic products treatment facilities within the context of competition between double chains is established. Through the literature review, four recycling modes in the recycling market are summed up, and the game model of the recycling channels is established under the background of market mechanism. A numerical case is further used to simulate and analyze the game equilibrium outcome. The outcome shows that the results of recycling channels selection under the sole market mechanism are not beneficial to consumers and social welfare. Therefore, the evolutionary game model of recycling channels selection by waste electronic products treatment facilities under government incentives is established and numerical simulations are made to verify the utility of the model. The game models of recycling channels selection under the situations of both market mechanism and government incentives provide implications for waste electronic products treatment facilities to effectively select recycling channels.Chinese waste electronic products treatment facilities have choices of ecological and non-ecological treatment modes in the current situation. Under the information asymmetry problem, the evolutionary game model of treatment modes selection is established and the evolutionary trend of treatment approaches selection under different conditions is analyzed. With the situation that the governments'measures aiming at driving producers evolve overtime and the information asymmetry appears when governments regulate treatment facilities, the evolutionary game model of treatment modes selection is established. The evolutionary game model analyzes different evolutionary stable strategies and explores the behavior features of local governments and treatment facilities. The results show that a feasible supervision mechanism is necessary. Due to evolutionary game theory's incapability of describing evolutionary game process, the system dynamics is applied to simulate the evolution of treatment modes selection under government regulations, which can provide decision-making supports for governments.