Article Peer-Reviewed
Charging-for-Recycling Business Model and Consumer Adoption of Recyclable Electronics
Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, University of Auckland Business School, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Received: 2 June 2023 Accepted: 13 November 2023 Published: 16 November 2023
This article is part of the Special Issue Capturing the Sustainable Impact of Early-Stage Business Models.
Abstract
High costs of recycling operations have kept recycling rates low for many consumer electronics. Meanwhile, increasing the adoption of more recyclable electronics among consumers remains a challenge. Motivated by Best Buy’s decision to charge consumers a flat fee to accept their used TVs/monitors for recycling, we study how charging for recycling would influence consumer adoption of recyclable electronics. Through experimental studies, and building on relevant behavioral insights (nudging and the theory of planned behavior), we compare the charging for recycling scenario with free recycling and recycling tax as current baselines. We find that, compared to the baselines, charging for recycling increases the adoption of recyclable electronics as long as consumers are not in emergency purchase situations. Our results suggest a potential alternative to unsuccessful direct green marketing and cast doubt on prohibiting retailers from charging for recycling.
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Copyright © 2023
Mahmoudzadeh. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use and distribution provided that the original work is properly cited.
Cite this Article
Mahmoudzadeh, M. (2023). Charging-for-Recycling Business Model and Consumer Adoption of Recyclable Electronics. Highlights of Sustainability, 2(4), 283–302. https://doi.org/10.54175/hsustain2040019
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