How to promote sustainable development of construction and demolition waste recycling systems: Production subsidies or consumption subsidies

Every year, many new buildings are built in China, generating a lot of construction waste. Although classification and recycling of construction waste is recognized as an effective means to solve construction waste, how to improve the recycling rate of construction waste in China seems to be a thorny problem. Different from previous studies that only focused on the behavior of participants in the recycling or sales stage, this paper, more thoroughly, develops a four-party evolutionary game model, which involves the government department(GD), Construction and Demolition Waste (C&DW) recyclers, C&DW producers and consumers and also considers their behaviors at both the recycling stage and the sales stage. Using this model, this paper studies what kind of government subsidies could promote the sustainable development of construction waste recycling systems effectively, and analyzes the influence of several key factors among 22 factors on the model through the real data of two construction waste resource integration projects in Wuhan and Sanya, China. The results show that 1) when the GD is willing to pay high subsidies, both production and consumption subsidies could make enterprises actively participate; on the other hand, when the GD is only willing to pay fewer subsidies, subsidizing production seems to be a more effective tool; 2) by mobilizing public participation and regulating carbon trading price, the GD could promote enterprises to recycle construction waste, but it could not promote consumers to buy renewable products; 3) by investigating different enterprises, the GD can determine the potential benefits of different subsidy methods, so as to determine its own subsidy strategies. Finally, this paper provides some possible suggestions for all parties involved in the system to help China better realize the recycling of construction waste renewable resources. (c) 2022 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper develops a four-party evolutionary game model to study how to improve the recycling rate of construction waste in China. The results show that government subsidies can encourage enterprises to actively participate in construction waste recycling, but may not promote consumers to buy renewable products. Mobilizing public participation and regulating carbon trading price can have positive effects on construction waste recycling.