What influences residents’ intention to participate in the electric vehicle battery recycling? Evidence from China

A large number of Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries are intensively reaching their end-of-life, implying a significant risk of environmental pollution and sustainable development. Guiding the residents to select the formal recycling channels is the key to realizing the closed-loop supply chain. Therefore, a solid questionnaire is designed to further investigate their recycling intention. In the context of a China case study, a total of 1083 valid samples are obtained. By establishing the structural equation model and agent-based model, the impacts of critical rational and bounded rational determinants are identified and analyzed. The results show that: (i) perceived behavior control exerts the highest impacts on recycling intention, followed by economic incentive, subjective norm and self-identity; (ii) residents who lack the recycling cognition hold vague judgment on the difficulty of transfer behavior, and require more auxiliary information; (iii) every unit increase in the recycling price, the number of service outlets and the ratio of residents with positive attitude and high cognition will lead to an improvement of 6.93%, 1.89% and 2.69% in the recycling rate, respectively. Eventually, practical policy implications are proposed for the government to strengthen public participation.