1.1 Research Backgrounds and Motivations
With the increase of global attentions in environmental sustainability, many countries have put lots of interests in green practices as the key factors to real-ize sustainability (Co-operation & O.F.E., 2009). In order to achieve sustaina-ble development targets, conventional green solutions are based the concepts of
“end-of-pipe” for reducing extant adverse impacts of environments. Under such situations, many firms might be passive to use the green solutions for avoiding the harms for environment instead of employing proactive measures to reduce sources of waste or pollution (Hsu, Choon Tan, Hanim Mohamad Zailani, & Jayaraman, 2013). However, solely emphasizing on how to promote environmental sustainability towards to level of firms may lead to negative impacts on whole supply chain (Cousins, Lamming, & Bowen, 2004). For re-ducing the sources of wastes of pollutions, firms have leveraged the open ac-tions by which the green initiatives will be expanded beyond the level of firms to entire supply chain, including multi-organizations and up-down streams (Vachon & Klassen, 2006). In order to thoroughly carry out the green solutions in supply chain, it is necessary to introduce a green supply chain in initial stage of production process instead of solely utilizing end-of-pipe approach in later stages. Such introduction of green supply chain in early stage will be beneficial for facilitation of environmental sustainability and, further enhancement of economic and technical performance of value chain within industries (Carter &
Rogers, 2008; Weng, Chen, & Chen, 2015).
In recent years, the international community has been continuously pro-moting the green supply chain. Governments have successively formulated en-vironmental protection laws and regulations to require manufacturing manu-facturers. The EU promulgated the “Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazard-ous Substance in Electrical and electronic equipment” (RoHS) in which the products must follow the relevant regulations before they can be marketed in order to safeguard the safety of consumers and reduce environmental risks.
Facing various tests and industries in terms of environment, it is a major challenge. Its influence covers the terminal industries such as electronics and automobiles, and it also has a structural impact on the upstream products, ma-terials and raw mama-terials industries. Due to the continuous improvement of in-formation technology, new products have been introduced one after another, and the global physical resource changes have taken shape. Therefore, with the promotion of global awareness of environmental protection, the continuous development of green technologies and the emphasis and requirements of en-vironmental protection in various countries, it is necessary to meet both the technical and environmental protection requirements for the production and manufacturing of products. In the process of developing design and production manufacturing to integrate environmental considerations, the procurement of raw materials have to be follow the regulatory requirements of environment (Brewer & Arnette, 2017), the entire product life cycle must be environmental-ly friendenvironmental-ly design, therefore, in the product life of the various stages of the process, from the raw material mining, manufacturing to use, waste recycling, must be friendly to the environment.
This research discusses the key successful factors being faced by domestic handset electronics manufacturers under the trend of RoHS directives and
ex-plores the ways in which mobile phone electronics manufacturers respond to the challenging environment. It also analyzes the key elements of handset elec-tronics manufacturers' process materials and how to apply appropriate technical strategies.
1.2 Research Purposes
In accordance with the research background and motivations discussed above, this research aims to explore the key factors of the process materials that affect the use of RoHS for handset electronics manufacturers. The purpose of this study is summarized for the following three points: (1) Find out the key factors affecting adoption of RoHS for handset electronics manufacturers; (2) Examine the potential causal influential relations between key factors; (3) Pro-vide an analytical model and empirical results that can be served as the basis to define the environmental protection policy to promote the RoHS materials.
1.3 Research Scope
The development and design of mobile electronic technology products aims to make our daily life more convenient and enhance the quality of our life.
However, under the guidance of its leading-edge science and technology prod-ucts, this research aims to build a manufacturing process that affects the use of RoHS by handset electronics manufacturers. The hope is that both science and technology and environmental protection are both a production and develop-ment environdevelop-ment; therefore, their motivation for research is that, in considera-tion of the ever-increasing internaconsidera-tional protecconsidera-tion and emphasis on the envi-ronment and the scientific and technological living envienvi-ronment in which
easy In the light of the changes of the times, the quick replacement resulted in the shortening of the cycle of the product life cycle.
In order to enable the technological products to achieve the environmental protection, the mobile phones during the design and production have to rely on a green point of view for protecting the environment. Making a green assess-ment at all stages of manufacturing not only can provide the positive contribu-tions for environmental protection, but also can meet the future technology products face replacement cycle of rapid life cycle. Hence this study will affect the handset electronics manufacturers use of RoHS process materials, the key factors in providing RoHS process materials direction, the scope of the study is divided into the following stages according to the viewpoint of their handset electronics manufacturers and the relative importance of the key factors of their green standards at each stage of handset electronics manufacturers: (1) RoHS process material technology, (2) raw material procurement reliability, (3) man-ufacturing safety, (4) the use of the applicability, (5) cost-benefit relevance.
1.4 Research Limitations
Due to an environmental directive adopted by the EU 2003 (RoHS), there are still many companies that are just importing and marketing green products.
As far as the current market share of green products is still to be strengthened, the research limits in a relatively complete series of proprietary products cannot be obtained as a green product evaluation criteria for the relevance of research;
would like to cell phone electronics manufacturers as a case, the relevant RoHS environmental directives literature discussion, as the basis for the evaluation of mobile phone manufacturers guidelines.
1.5 Research Process
In this research, in addition to above-mentioned sections, the operation process regarding the implementation of research can be split into several steps.
First, the key factors will be collected from the literature review. These key factors will be used to design a questionnaire for experts’ survey. Then, the PLS-SEM will be utilized to confirm the hypothesized relationships proposed from this research. Finally, the empirical results and conclusions will be pro-posed. The research process is illustrated in Figure 1-1.
Figure 1-1 Research Process.