College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, PR China
Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Beijing 100029, PR China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 11 October 2011
Received in revised form
26 September 2013
Accepted 2 October 2013
Available online xxx
The aim of this paper is to investigate the behaviour of consumers toward waste mobile phone recycling on a
national scale in China. With this goal in mind, a questionnaire survey was performed on a nationwide scale
to explore consumers behaviours, attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for recycling waste mobile phones.
There were 1035 effective questionnaires, and the questionnaire was analysed with principal component
analysis and multinomial logistic regression analysis. The results revealed that the actual service life of
mobile phones in China is generally shorter than three years. Due to the current level of economic development and the traditional concept, only 47.9% of consumers agreed to pay for waste mobile phone recycling,
and most consumers WTP was 0e5% of the recycling costs. The main factors affecting the consumers WTP
were region, education level and monthly income. Therefore, mobile phone producers and the government
should mostly share the responsibility of waste mobile phone recycling. With an improvement in public
environmental awareness, it may be possible for consumers to afford recycling fees in the future, through
either a prepaid deposit, or purchasing the product with the fee embedded in the price. In addition, it is
important to support environmental education to promote environmental awareness.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Waste mobile phone
Questionnaire
Recycling
EPR
Management
1. Introduction
With the rapid economic development and the continuous
improvement of peoples living standards, the electronic communications industry has experienced a trend of rapid growth in China. As
of 2004, China became the largest producer and consumer of mobile
phones in the world (MIIT, 2005). The production of mobile phones
has reached 1.13 billion units, accounting for 70.6% of the global
production. In 2011, there were 986.25 million users, which brought
the popularising rate reach to 73.6% in China (ITU, 2011; MIIT, 2012).
Moreover, the service life of mobile phones in China is generally less
than three years and is even close to one year in a portion of cases,
due to the pursuit of fashion and the desire to acquire new mobile
phone functions (Ha et al., 2010; Ongondo and Williams, 2011; Polk
and Drpalov, 2012). There are approximately 70 million waste
mobile phones being generated every year in China (Yu et al., 2010;
0959-6526/$ e see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
Table 1
Relevant laws and regulations of electronic wastes in China.
Laws and regulations
Major contents
Implementation time
Administrative rule
2001.12.17
Administrative rule
2003.10.09
Law
2005.04.01
Administrative rule
2006.04.27
Administrative rule
2007.03 0.01
Administrative rule
2007.05 0.01
Administrative rule
2008.02.01
Law
2009.01.01
Technical standard
2010.04.01
Decree
2011.01.01
Administrative rule
2012.05.21
Law
2012.07.01
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
Table 2
Questionnaire.
Basic information
City:
Age:
Sex:
Monthly income:
Education level:
,1 year
,2 years
,3 years
,4 years
,5 years
,more than 5 years
,Outdated style
,Outdated function
,Damage
,Others
,Stored at home
,Thrown away as ordinary garbage
,Recycled by Green Box Program
,Recycled by Old-for-New activity
,Sold to the peddler and second-hand market
,Would rather give the phone to families or friends than recycle it at a low price
,Do not know where to send the phone
,Mobile phone can be used as data storage equipment
,Being afraid of disclosure of privacy
,Absence of a sound recycling system
,Weak environmental awareness
,Absence of government regulation
,Absence of laws and regulations
,Old-for-New activity
,Door-to-door collecting service
,Collecting sites in community built by government
,Business hall of mobile telecom carrier
,Service centre and maintenance centre
,Have no
,Know
,Have no
,Know
,Have no
,Know
,Have no
,Know
,Have no
,Know
idea
idea
idea
idea
idea
,Knowing
,Knowing
,Knowing
,Knowing
,Knowing
,Knowing
,Knowing
,Knowing
,Knowing
,Knowing
very little
quite well
very little
quite well
very little
quite well
very little
quite well
very little
quite well
,Very familiar
,Very familiar
,Very familiar
,Very familiar
,Very familiar
,Government
,Manufacturer
,Seller
,Consumer
,Communication operator
,Common responsibility
,Disagree
,Agreement, Payment Pattern: Deposit system
,Agreement, Payment Pattern: paying when purchasing the product with
the payment embedded in the product price
,Agreement, Payment Pattern: paying when the product is asked for disposal
,Others
,0e5%
,6e10%
,11e15%
,16e20%
,21e25%
,more than 26%
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
and accessory units. However, the recycling rate was very low in
comparison to the amount of waste mobile phones (Wang et al.,
2011) due to the voluntary nature of this program. Thus, there is
no guarantee that consumers will participate in the program,
particularly because they can obtain a bonus by selling their
obsolete cell phones (Kunming, 2011).
The Green Card Recycling Activity for mobile phone batteries
was initiated in 2006 by Suning, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony
Ericsson and Lenovo. This program specically recycled waste
mobile phone batteries. All of the recycled waste phone batteries
were sound treated by professional treatment companies that were
commissioned by Suning, China mobile and individual consumers;
however, the activity was only a short-term voluntary initiative that
lasted one month (SOHU, 2006). Accordingly, the positive effect of
the activity was very limited.
From Jun. 1, 2009 to Dec. 31, 2011, the Chinese government had
proposed an Old-for-New Activity, and sales enterprises, such as
Gome and Suning, were involved in the recycling activity. However,
waste mobile phones were not yet included in the related Old-forNew Catalog (including TV sets, refrigerators, washing machines,
air conditioners and computers). In general, China has not set up a
practical waste mobile phone recycling system because of the lag in
laws and technology and the very low recycling rate. In addition,
most recycling and treatment activities mainly driven by economic
benets were ineffective (Qu et al., 2013; Xing and Lu, 2008).
3. Methodology
3.1. Questionnaire design
Before the nal data gathering, 200 questionnaires were
distributed to consumers through a pilot survey carried out in
Tianjin and Shanxi from Dec. 17, 2010 to Dec. 27, 2010. Based on the
feedback, a revised survey was conducted from Feb. 20, 2011 to
Mar. 15, 2011. The survey contained questions on basic socioeconomic information and three other parts. The socioeconomic information included questions regarding sex, age, city, education
level, and monthly income. The rst of the three additional survey
parts uncovered consumers behaviours and attitudes on recycling
and treatment of waste mobile phones. The second part aimed to
investigate the consumers environmental awareness of waste
mobile phones recycling and treatment. The third part surveyed the
consumers willingness to pay for recycling and treatment of waste
mobile phones and factors inuencing their willingness (see
Table 2).
3.2. Sampling methods
The purpose of this paper was to investigate the behaviours,
attitudes and willingness of customers to participate in waste
mobile phones recycling on a national scale. This paper adopted the
stratied random sampling method to carry out the survey due to
the tremendous differences and high heterogeneity among population groups.
Consumers recycling behaviour was directly related to the level
of the regions economic development, so this paper used the per
capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the basis for the stratied
random sampling. According to preliminary calculations from 2010
(NBSC, 2011), Chinas GDP had reached 39.7983 trillion Yuan
(Renminbi, RMB), and the per capita GDP was 29,678 RMB. The per
capita GDP of Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin, the three municipalities directly governed by the Central government, had exceeded
60,000 RMB and reached or approached the per capita level of the
moderately developed countries (Sina, 2011). However, the per
capita GDP of some provinces, such as Yunnan, Gansu, Guizhou,
Table 3
Region division of the Questionnaire.
Region
A
B
Above 5000
3000e5000
2000e3000
1000e2000
were less than 15,000 RMB. Consequently, the paper divided the
entire country into four sub-regions: A, B, C, and D with the per
capita GDP as the criteria (see Table 3). And no less than 1000
questionnaires were distributed in the 4 regions (Table 4).
There were some difculties in distributing questionnaires due
to the wide geographical area. Therefore, this paper adopted two
distribution channels for the survey, including an on-site method
and an on-line, web-site method.1 Both methods had advantages
and disadvantages. The respondents interviewed using the on-site
method had strong randomness and high representativeness, but
this method needed a higher level of manpower and material resources. Although the on-line, web-site method was more convenient and less resource intensive, the respondents were limited to
netizens, which were poor in representativeness. To make full use
of the advantages of these two methods and to enhance the
representativeness and accuracy of the data, this paper adopted
both survey methods.
3.3. Modelling methods
3.3.1. Stratied random sampling
In sample surveys, we often divide a population into a nite
number of disjointed subpopulations, namely, strata (Hu et al.,
2008). Assuming that a nite population with N elements is
divided into k strata, and the ith stratum possesses Ni elements,
k
X
Ni
(1)
i1
k
X
ni ;
(2)
i1
where: i 1,2,.,k.
3.3.2. Likert-type scale
The Likert-type scale is the most common research method for
surveying opinions and attitudes in the social and business sciences. Respondents are asked to respond to indicate their level of
agreement with a declarative statement. For a ve-point method,
each scale point could be labelled in accordance with its agreement
level as follows: A strongly disagree, B disagree, C neither
disagree nor agree, D agree, and F strongly agree. Based on
what is being measured, the scale labels could be worded differently (Li, 2013; Ryan and Garland, 1999). In part two of the study,
the attitude, belief, knowledge or experience of the respondent was
1
The web-site for the questionnaire: http://taidu8.com/sr/faces/welcome.jsp?
surveyId394C967144A111E085A52679EA2A13E0
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
Table 4
Distribution of the sample.
District
Total
285
255
280
280
1100
5. Discussion
279
241
271
273
1064
98.0%
273
94.5%
227
96.8%
264
97.5%
270
96.7%
1035
95.8%
89.0%
94.3%
96.4%
94.1%
Table 5
Demographic composition of the sample.
N (number)
Sex
Male
Female
Age
10e20
21e30
31e40
41e50 and above
Monthly income (RMB)
0
1e2000
2001e3000
3001e5000
5001e8000
8001e15,000
Education level
Senior High School and Below
Junior College and Bachelor
Master and Above
Region
A
B
C
D
Total
558
477
53.9%
46.1%
153
426
291
165
14.8%
41.2%
28.1%
15.9%
345
228
198
189
54
21
33.3%
22.0%
19.1%
18.3%
5.2%
2.0%
193
572
270
18.6%
55.3%
26.1%
273
227
264
270
1035
26.4%
22.0%
25.5%
26.1%
100%
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
Table 6
Mean value of the ve questions.
Question
Q2-1
Q2-2
Q2-3
Q2-4
Q2-5
Mean value
1.46
2.96
2.45
1.78
1.90
economic development and the traditional concept of waste responsibility. Another 47.9% of consumers agreed to pay the costs of
recycling and treatment; however, the consumers had different
opinions regarding the payment method. Approximately 20.3%
wanted to pay deposits at the time of purchase, deducting costs
from the deposits and returning the remaining part when handing
in their e-waste products, and 15.7% believed recycling costs should
be embedding in the price of the product. The remaining 11.9% of
consumers were more inclined to pay the costs to the recyclers as
part of the actual e-waste collection.
In this case, consumers exhibited low WTP. About 65.2% of
consumers WTP was 0e5% of recycling costs, and 19.1% of consumers WTP was 6e10%. Only a small number of consumers would
accept higher take-back fees.
5.3.2. Inuencing factors of WTP
This study determined the inuencing factors of WTP with a
multinomial logistic regression analysis in SPSS. WTP was set as the
dependent variable, and region, education level, and monthly income were set to be inuencing factors. The signicant values of
the Chi-square test are all smaller than 0.01 (Table 7). Therefore,
these 3 WTP factors were signicant.
This study also indicated the relationships between WTP and
the 3 factors (Tables 8e10). The average values in the 3 tables
revealed that the number of consumers decreases as the WTP increases. Moreover, when WTP was higher than 15%, the number of
consumers in regions A, B, C, D was only 7.7%, 6.5%, 5.6%, and 4.4%,
respectively. This implied that the consumers from developed areas
were willing to pay more for waste mobile phone recycling. When
WTP was lower than 5%, the percentages of the number of consumers were similar in the 4 regions, and the level of economic
development had no signicant impact on WTP. Therefore, it could
be inferred that a payment of 5% of the recycling cost is accepted
nationwide.
WTP of consumers with different monthly incomes are shown
in Table 9. When WTP was higher than 15%, consumers with highincome levels were still likely to participate in recycling programs
in each WTP level (5.50% > 4.70%; 1.50% > 0.57%; 0.70% > 0.33%).
When WTP was lower than 5%, there were no signicant differences regardless of whether the customers monthly incomes were
above or below 3000 RMB. Consequently, consumers would likely
accept 5% of the recycling cost.
Table 10 indicates the WTP of consumers with different education levels. When WTP was lower than 10%, there was no obvious
distinction between more-educated and relatively less-educated
customers regarding e-waste recycling behaviour. However, when
WTP was higher than 10%, 17.5% of consumers with a masters
degree or above could accept this rate, 17.2% of the consumers in
Junior colleges and universities could accept it, and only 14.1% of
the consumers in senior high school or below could accept it.
Perhaps the reason behind these differences is that consumers with
a higher education level are very knowledgeable and have a greater
environmental awareness.
Through the above analysis, it was concluded that monthly income and education level have a positive relationship with the
Table 7
Likelihood ratio of test results.
Effect
2 Log likelihood of
reduced model
Chi-square
df
Sig.
Intercept
Region
Education level
Monthly income
757.272
842.449
828.672
878.285
0.000
85.178
71.400
121.013
0
15
20
25
0.000
0.000
0.000
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
Table 8
Different willingness to pay of the 4 regions.
Region
0e5%
6e10%
11e15%
16e20%
21e25%
A
B
C
D
Average
65.50%
65.70%
64.80%
65.60%
65.40%
20.20%
23.70%
25.00%
17.80%
21.70%
6.60%
3.90%
4.50%
12.20%
6.80%
5.50%
3.90%
3.40%
3.30%
4.03%
2.20%
0.00%
1.10%
1.10%
1.10%
0.00%
2.60%
1.10%
0.00%
0.90%
Table 9
WTP of different monthly incomes.
Monthly income 0e5%
0
1e2000
2001e3000
Average
55.70%
79.00%
74.10%
69.60%
29.60%
11.80%
18.20%
19.87%
7.00%
2.60%
5.20%
8.27%
6.10%
6.50%
1.50%
4.70%
1.70%
0.00%
0.00%
0.57%
0.00%
0.00%
1.00%
0.33%
3001e5000
5001e8000
8001e15,000
Average
71.40%
66.70%
85.70%
69.4%
11.10%
16.70%
14.30%
17.0%
4.80%
5.60%
0.00%
5.90%
9.50%
5.60%
0.00%
5.50%
1.60%
5.60%
0.00%
1.50%
1.60%
0.00%
0.00%
0.70%
Table 10
Different willingness to pay of different education level.
Education level
0e5%
6e10%
11e15%
16e20%
21e25%
More
than 25%
70.3%
15.6%
7.8%
6.3%
0.0%
0.0%
64.6%
21.8%
5.9%
6.1%
4.0%
1.2%
67.3%
66.4%
19.3%
18.9%
9.3%
7.7%
2.7%
6.0%
4.1%
2.7%
1.4%
0.9%
EPR was an important theory for determining the responsibilities regarding e-waste recycling. However, this theory
does not mean that only manufacturers should take charge of the ewaste recycling fee. The collaboration and coordination of multistakeholders is also a key component of EPR. Therefore, the government, manufacturers, sellers, mobile telecom carriers, professional recovery operators and consumers should all participate in
waste mobile phone recycling. As a government-dominating society, the Chinese government should rst formulate specialised laws
and a complete reasonable management system on small WEEE.
Another important element is to encourage other stakeholders to
participate in waste mobile phone recycling, especially integration
of informal peddlers and private workshops into formal recycling
system through laws and economic incentives instead of simply
prohibiting these informal sectors (Qu et al., 2013). However,
considering the consumers traditions and the low WTP in China,
producers and the government should mostly share the responsibility of waste mobile phone recycling.
In addition, it is important to support environmental education
to promote environmental awareness; environmental education
plays a major role in improving childrens future environmental
behavioural practices. Meanwhile, environmental publicity activities for the general public, at least for a short period of time, should
continue to be organised regularly in communities, enterprises,
government agencies and universities. Measures for recycling could
be effectively conducted only when consumers are fully knowledgeable about e-waste (e.g., its harm, relevant management policies and recycling system) (Afroz et al., 2013; Song et al., 2012; Yoo
and Kwak, 2009). With the improvement of public environmental
awareness, it may be possible in the future for consumers to afford
some recycling fee either through a prepaid deposit or when purchasing the product with the fee embedded in the price.
Moreover, we should extend the service life of mobile phones
through three methods. First, manufacturers should extend the
designed service life of mobile phones with new technologies,
especially regarding the battery life. Second, consumers could
extend the actual service life of mobile phones through reduction of
their upgrading frequency, or through donation of unused phones
to others. Finally, the administrative departments should reorganise and standardise the secondary market, requiring second-hand
labels for second-hand phones.
This paper rst performed a questionnaire survey to analyse
consumers behaviours, attitudes, and their WTP for recycling outdated mobile phones on a national scale. Due to limited resources
such as time, money and manpower, the respondents are anonymous through two distribution channels (i.e., an on-site and an on-
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006
Please cite this article in press as: Yin, J., et al., Survey and analysis of consumers behaviour of waste mobile phone recycling in China, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.10.006