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Recycling and reuse of the electric vehicle (EV) batteries are ways to extend their limited lives. If batteries can be traced from production to recycling, it is beneficial for battery recycling and reuse. Using blockchain technology to build a smart EV battery reverse supply chain can solve the difficulties of lack of trust and data. The purpose of this study is to discuss the behavioural evolution of a smart EV battery reverse supply chain under government supervision.

This study adopts evolutionary game theory to examine the decision-making behaviours of the government, EV manufacturers with recycled used batteries and third-party EV battery recyclers lacking professional recycling qualification.

On the smart reverse supply chain integrated by blockchain technology, a cooperative recycling strategy of the third-party EV battery recycler is the optimal choice when the government tends to actively regulate. The probability of the EV manufacturer choosing the blockchain adoption strategy exceeds (below) the threshold, and the government prefers negative (positive) supervision. According to numerical analysis, in the mature stage in the EV battery recycling industry, when the investment cost of applying blockchain is high, EV manufacturers' willingness to apply blockchain slows down, the government accelerates adopting a negative supervision strategy and third-party EV battery recyclers prefer cooperative recycling.

The results of this study provide opinions on the strength of government supervision and the conditions under which EV manufacturers and third-party EV battery recyclers should apply blockchain and cooperate. On the other hand, this study provides theoretical analysis for promoting the application of blockchain technology in smart reverse supply chain.

Compared with previous research, this study reveals the relevance of government supervision, blockchain application and cooperation strategy in smart EV battery reverse supply chain. In the initial stage, even if the subsidy (subsidy reduction rate) and penalty are high and the penalty reduction rate is low, the EV manufacturer should rather give up the application of blockchain technology. In the middle stage in the EV battery recycling industry, the government can set a lower subsidy (subsidy reduction rate) combined with a penalty or a higher penalty (penalty reduction rate) combined with a subsidy to supervise it. The third-party EV battery recycler is advised to cooperate with the EV manufacturer when the subsidy is low or the penalty is high.

Consumers have pervasively relied on mobile reviews in digital economy. However, little knowledge exists regarding how customers adopt several mobile reviews to make purchasing decisions. With the assistance of reader-response theory, this study investigates how the consistency of product reviews, in terms of their adherence to both other reviews and the prior experience of the customer, affect perceived quality, confirmation of the customer's expectations, the customer's level of trust in the seller and the consequent purchase intention.

Based on a scenario simulation and an online experiment to collect data, the authors employed AMOS to test the proposed hypotheses using survey data collected from 314 customers in Study 1 and 420 consumers in Study 2.

The results indicate that global consistency positively and significantly contributes to confirmation, perceived quality and trust in sellers while sequential inconsistency positively and significantly influences perceived quality. Meanwhile, purchase intention is positively and significantly promoted by confirmation, perceived quality and trust in sellers, and initial valence has some moderating effects on these relationships.

This study contributes to the understanding of how customers apply product reviews to make purchasing decisions from a new angle. It also elucidates the way in which the perceived consistency of product reviews affects how reviewers are perceived and the consequent effect of these perceptions on a customer's purchase intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate remanufacturing operational strategies considering uncertain quality of end-of-life (EOL) products and differential consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for new products and provide suggestions on the remanufacturing mode selection for the original equipment manufacturer (OEM).

This study considers three remanufacturing modes, i.e. in-house, outsourcing and authorization modes. By establishing and comparing decision models of three modes from the perspectives of profit, consumer surplus and environment, the optimal remanufacturing mode is discussed.

The results suggest that if the OEM’s remanufacturing capability is high, the in-house mode brings to the highest environmental performance, OEM’s profit and consumer surplus. Otherwise, the outsourcing mode (authorization) is the best benefit to environment (consumers if the unit production cost of new products is not too high). As for the preference of two decision-makers to outsourcing and authorization modes, if the difference of consumers’ WTP for new products is low, the OEM prefers the outsourcing mode; otherwise, the OEM prefers the authorization mode. The preference of the third-party remanufacturer (TPR) to remanufacturing mode is affected by consumers’ WTP for remanufactured products, WTP difference for new products and remanufacturing quality level standard.

These results can provide operational insights into how to select remanufacturing mode when the quality of EOL products is uncertain and consumers’ WTP for new products is different under three remanufacturing modes.

This paper is among the first to investigate the joint effects of EOL products’ uncertain quality and differential consumers’ WTP for new products on the operational strategies and performance under different remanufacturing modes.