Abstract
The rapid growth of China’s electric vehicle (EV) market has led to a peak in end-of-life (EOL) power batteries, yet the recycling sector remains dominated by informal operations. This paper incorporates the formal and informal recycling participation behaviours of EV owners into the framework of evolutionary games, systematically examines the mechanism by which governmental incentive and disincentive mechanisms influence the evolutionary stability of each party, and constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model involving the government, recycling enterprises, and EV owners. Numerical simulation experiments conducted using PyCharm 2.3 provide an in-depth exploration of the strategic evolutionary trajectories of each participating agent. The findings indicate that (1) the stable strategy for the game-theoretic system of EOL power battery recycling is government non-regulation, recycling enterprises adopting formal recycling practices, and EV owners participating in formal recycling; (2) strengthening penalties against recycling enterprises will accelerate their transition towards formal recycling strategies, while increasing incentive levels can significantly enhance the steady-state probability of firms opting for formal recycling; (3) government subsidies for EV owners encourage both EV owners and recycling enterprises to adopt formal recycling, with recycling enterprises shifting first. This study enriches the application of evolutionary game theory in the field of EOL power battery recycling and further provides guidance for the healthy development of the recycling industry.