Exploring Chinese consumers' attitude and behavior toward smartphone recycling

This paper aims to provide latest research results on consumer attitudes and behaviors about smartphone recycling. In particular, the study considers China as an example and reviews the country's recent progress in legislation and business practice in smartphone recycling. The study relies on a national survey to identify the patterns and trends in Chinese consumers' recycling attitudes and behaviors. Our results show that on top of incentive and convenience, information security is the number one requirement for consumers to recycle their smartphones. Additionally, although China has made significant progress in improving social environment and people's consciousness for phone recycling, more people still choose to store their waste smartphones at home. Moreover, the impact of recycling service on the sales of new phones is also discussed in the context of closed-loop supply chain design. As an exploratory attempt to understand smartphone recycling from the consumers' perspectives, this article presents critical factors influencing consumers' attitudes and behaviors in China, and sheds new lights on future academic research directions as well as on managerial applications and policy-making.