Towards sustainable manufacturing: information sharing framework of end-of-life immediate return

Abstract

We live in an economy that is exhausting natural resources. With the improvement of the world economy and the rapid development of its electrical industry, electrical and electronic products are continually upgraded, electrical and electronic equipment waste (WEEE, or e-waste) which endangers human health is increasing rapidly. To reintegrate economy within ecological limits, it is to increase social and environmental sustainability. As businesses are endowed with resources and capabilities to drive the change, they also have valuable information that can positively impact production and consumption systems. Based on this, this research is intended to explore Business-to-Consumer (B2C) communication in communicating immediate post-consumption (end-of-life) return in the closed-loop supply chain. The communication is based on information sharing activity where businesses consider including specific end-of-life return information. The purpose of this research is to explore information content and message framing that could be used to present end-of-life product return information, and how it affects consumers’ attitude towards return information and consumers’ immediate return intention based on formative research suggested by social marketing theory. The proposed framework visualizes the relationship of proposed types of information and information presentation towards consumers’ immediate return attitude, as well as environmental motivation and environmental knowledge as the moderators in consumers’ segmentation. This exploratory research is intended to support qualitative and quantitative studies which aim to clearly (a) justify that time and quality of return should be included in product return information, (b) understand the effect of information presentation (message framing) on consumers’ immediate return intention of used electric and electronic appliances, (c) investigate how individual’s environmental motivation and knowledge influence their way of processing immediate return information.