In the context of developing the digital platform economy, trade-in programs have become an effective strategy for e-commerce platforms to stimulate consumption. Many head e-commerce platforms have launched their own trade-in programs. However, the existing research on trade-in programs is still stuck in the traditional trade-in model. The purpose of this study is to explore whether there is a new and more beneficial trade-in program. In this paper, we construct the Stackelberg game model between a brand owner and a B2C e-commerce platform under two trade-in programs and use optimization theory to obtain the equilibrium results of the model. The results indicate that the performance improvement of the new-generation product will promote the increase in two-generation products’ price under traditional trade-in programs, the price of the new-generation product will increase, and the price of the previous-generation product will decrease under new trade-in programs. The brand owner always prefers traditional trade-in to new trade-in. However, the e-commerce platform prefers traditional trade-in to new trade-in just when the previous-generation product is durable enough and the performance improvement of a new-generation product is small enough; otherwise, it prefers new trade-in to traditional trade-in. These findings are beneficial to the operational practices of e-commerce platforms and brand owners.

With the emergence of a large number of waste electronic products and the enhancement of social awareness of environmental protection, the recycling of waste electronic products has become one of the pressing issues of social concern. Government environmental regulation is an important policy to promote the development of the remanufacturing industry. In this paper, we study the government levies recycling and disposal fees on original products for environmental governance and establish two game models based on the perspective of maximizing social welfare with no government regulation and a tripartite liability system. The optimal decisions on wholesale, retail prices and quantity of original and remanufactured products, as well as the recycling and disposal fee are analyzed under both models. Based on the numerical results, the impact of the main parameter (such as the responsibility sharing ratio) on the decisions and profits of the parties is discussed. The results show that (1) the wholesale and retail prices of remanufactured products are not affected by government regulation; (2) the tripartite liability system can increase the output of remanufactured products and reduce the output of original products while cutting the profits of remanufacturing supply chain members, and increasing social welfare; (3) government’s optimal recycling and disposal fee is not related to the sharing ratio. The study can provide practitioners with suggestions for ways to develop environmental regulation.

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