Developing a symbiotic relationship between recyclers and manufacturers: An evolutionary game perspective

Under the pressure of environmental performance appraisal and the public's environmental concerns, based on industrial symbiosis and using an evolutionary game, our paper investigates firms' abatement behavior. We explore whether implementing carbon taxation and cap-and-trade or dynamic carbon taxation and cap-and-trade can effectively induce firms to reduce carbon emissions through industrial symbiosis. Moreover, we propose a waste-dependent symbiotic chain between recycling suppliers and manufacturers. Our results indicate that carbon taxation and cap-and-trade can effectively facilitate the formation of a symbiotic chain. In addition, the government should enforce taxation rates and adjust market-oriented carbon trading prices so that the two players can realize a win-win situation through the symbiotic chain. Concerning the evolutionary stability trajectories of the two populations, a mixed strategy existed only under dynamic carbon taxation and cap-and-trade situations. Additionally, we find that the impact of dynamic carbon taxation on the two populations' intention to apply carbon emission reduction has the opposite effect. Further simulations prove that the taxation maximum does not affect the steady state of the recycling suppliers; however, as the taxation maximum rises, the proportion of manufacturers who adopt carbon emission reduction decreases.